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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
February 29, 2004
The Passion
I have nothing to say -- at least nothing yet -- about Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. I am not a movie reviewer. Before they had seen it many said the film was anti-Semitic. Now that most have they think it is absolutely disgusting. The first charge was idiotic. The second is entirely true. So far as any movie attempts to present the Crucifixion working from the information in the Gospels it must deal with the fact of a Jewish mob. Given the setting in ancient Jerusalem whose population was then largely Jewish and the execution of a man who had been characterized as a blasphemer that mob would be Jewish. A standard-issue gliberal filmmaker might like to correct this by making them "multicultural" instead. In a statement whose layered modernist irony and calculated political incorrectitude may be lost on some readers W.H. Auden once challenged the view that "the Jews killed Christ". That was a stupidly bigoted idea he explained. "The Jews did not kill Christ. It was the Romans; or to bring it up to date the French." It was historically Pontius Pilate a rather gutless Roman administrator of some personal charm who passed sentence and then washed his hands of the sentence he had passed. He could believe a man innocent yet send him to torture for reasons of state which included his own personal convenience. In the proto-modernism of the ancient world it is Pilate who asks with such droll urbanity What is truth? I know several people like him. He is the sort of guy who might now be a senior civil servant or a tenured university professor. A smooth-talking intellectual. But the Gospel has its own deep "irony" -- for the mob was Jewish and could only be Jewish not only for its place and time but for its liturgical purpose in a Passion drama choreographed not by Mel Gibson but by God. In this drama of dramas the Man who is the director is the same who is hanging on the cross. God had sent himself as Messiah not randomly to wherever but to his own chosen people the Jews and in the fullest possible knowledge that He would be rejected and crucified even by them. He then rose from the dead opening the portals of salvation for all men. It is hard even to begin to understand an event that happened in "real time" which also stands outside time and which redeems time itself. The Jews were chosen and will always be chosen; and the redeemed are redeemed not only since Christ. "The Jews" were them but are also us for that Jewish mob is Adam and all men including all Christians. St. Peter the rock denied Christ thrice; and we ourselves have denied him in every act of infidelity since the world began. He made us all into Jews in choosing us to take up his Cross. He presented himself as our rabbi. The Jews were themselves the light to lighten the Gentiles their Temple in Jerusalem was the lantern of that light and in its sanctuary there was an unutterably profound sacrificial worship by God' s own command. Now suddenly came the Christ saying that in three days he would take it down and raise it up. Out of the mystery of the Passover came his Crucifixion his descent into hell his Resurrection -- when all is made new. And all the ancient understanding of who God is and what he requires of us is transformed in this act of fulfilment. This is what Christians believe. The world will take it or leave it. God according to Christian witness could only have become Man as a Jew in a most unexpected fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies to the Jews. And he entered into the heart of the old Temple sacrifice becoming that sacrifice Himself. By the standards of the world the Crucifixion was in bad taste. The ancient world knew this and denied Christ for it. What sort of God would humble himself to be used as they used Christ's own body? Mr. Gibson's film is by the consensus of the movie reviewers in excruciatingly bad taste. As any film of the Crucifixion must necessarily be. In the words of a wise friend A person who does not feel disgust at Christianity has not understood it yet. It is absolutely disgusting what the Jews did and the Romans did and which we are doing. We are trying to kill God. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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