Last night we finally buckled down to watch Mel Gibson’s Passion of Christ. I received the DVD from NetFlix weeks ago; every day for the past month it sat on the shelf, its red envelope a baleful reminder of the bloody spectacle that awaited me.
Some friends offered to baby-sit at the last minute, and with Jana’s toe going out wasn’t really an option, so she suggested we watch the Passion of Christ.
“You know that this won’t put me in the mood,” I said, half-hoping to discourage her from the movie, but she was undeterred.
For the first 40 minutes or so, I was amazed. I’ve watched many scripture-based productions over the past dozen years, and nothing made the Bible come to life in a historical sense the way that Mel Gibson recreated 1st century Jerusalem. Every detail added to the authentic feeling of the experience: the dirty, dark-featured and Aramaic-speaking peasants, the sense of overwhelming Roman power and authority reflected in their armor, weaponry and imposing structures. I would love to think that Mel Gibson raised the bar high enough to kill the Hollywood Jesus forever, but I know that this is an irrational hope.
But when the scourging began the movie turned into an ordeal—albeit a compelling ordeal. Jana spent most of the time with her hands over her face as the Roman torturers gleefully ripped strands of skin off of Jesus’ back and sides, exposing blood and bone. By the time the scourging was over, we thankfully noticed that it was time to pick up the kids. We decided to abandon our frozen yogurt plans. We told the babysitters what we were doing.
“I have to see how it ends,” I joked.
When I told her of the various divergences from the Gospels, Jana said that she thought the Stations of the Cross were an important part of the movie‚Äôs structure. While we started the movie back up, I got online and looked up Way of the Cross on New Advent’s Catholic Encyclopedia. I became intrigued: a history dating back to the Crusades, Stations of the Cross at Catholic churches throughout the world, all part of the Lenten liturgy. Hundreds of millions of Catholics throughout the world today and through history, all walking the fourteen Stations of the Cross, all reliving the last torturous hours of their Savior‚Äôs mortal life. I returned to the movie, fully absorbed.
I began to realize how masterfully Mel Gibson created a moving picture iconography: he conjured the bleeding, bruised, broken Christ that every Catholic has seen in their churches, above their beds, over their hearts (and that many other kids have been spooked by). Gibson brought that central icon to life like no other director ever has. While I was meeting Veronika and watching Mary’s encounter with her divine son on the Via Delorosa for the first time, devout Catholics had lived through these encounters again and again. I can only imagine what it was like for some of them to stagger and stumble with Jesus through the movie and to pause at each of the stations and to reach out for Christ with the blessed Virgin, to feel the weight of the rough timbers with Simon the Cyrene, to eat the dust of the road, to feel the whip, the nails, the heat of the sun and the weight of the taunts and stares with Christ the crucified.
As someone coming from the Protestant tradition, it’s easy to say that there’s little of theological and soteriological significance in Christ’s physical torment, that the focus should be on his metaphysical suffering for humanity’s sins. But I’ve studied enough religious practice enough to know that there is another language that speaks powerfully to the mind, body and spirit, and that is the language of ritual. As the body moves it speaks and it hears viscerally. This is an entire level of communication that cannot be easily dismissed. It’s this experience that is captured unapologetically in The Passion of Christ.
4 responses so far ↓
1 David McBride // Feb 19, 2006 at 6:38 am
Interesting closing thoughts on ritual. I’ve been thinking lately about the way architecture physically influences spirituality (helped clean the church yesterday.) Outside a few key structures, Mormon meeting houses leave much to be desired architecturally. I have to look elsewhere to take my mind to a higher plane. When I enter the buildings of some other religions, I am immediately taken away to another place, based mostly on physical space. Mormon ritual can do this, but I have to try harder to get there (if I can convince the kids to reverent.) Of course I’m not considering the cost of materials. Costs saved on buildings can be directed elsewhere.
Rambling and irrelevant — those are my thoughts.
2 John // Feb 19, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Hey David–Good to hear from you again! Thanks for your supportive comment a few months back–it brought back good memories, and was very much appreciated. I hope that all is well with you and yours (and omedetou for your daughter’s arrival!).
I’m with you on the building thing. We have temples, but our chapels are not very inspiring. Non-denominational Protestants don’t do very well at this either, but I appreciate the idea that the building doesn’t matter so much as the people as houses of the Spirit.
That said, I love the Shinto ability to enshrine a beautiful natural locale and many of the older, maginificent cathedrals of Christendom. I think that the connection between spirit and space is one reason I’m fascinated by the idea of pilgrimage.
(Rambling back at’cha!)
3 Tired and Care Worn // Feb 21, 2006 at 4:25 pm
I’ve never understood the “spiritual one-upsmanship” of Mormon worship comparisons. When I was a Japanese missionary we visited some amazing Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. While I was still too young and immature then to fully appreciate the real beauty in the surroundings, these spaces were very otherworldly, even among Japanese aesthetic–even more profoundly so for a Westerner. Sure, I wasn’t trained then to place spiritual meaning in it, but I didn’t feel the need to consider it spiritually hollow. Here I was, at times, standing in a doorway erected hundreds of years ago, predating all the “history” that up till then I had experienced in America. It was awe-inspiring.
My best friend when to the Rome mission, and since I was an art student I bristled at the descriptions I would hear used to describe cathedrals he visited. “You ingrate!” I would mutter under my breath. I heard such “spiritual vacuum-like” comments later from many other Mormons when they would speak about cathedrals. I just don’t get it. (Okay, maybe I’ll concede a bit for gothic architechure–uugh
) Sure, the history of cathedral building is rife with bloodshed and politics, but it is also filled with genuine sacrifice and man’s desire to reach upward beyond himself and express beauty and transcendance. There is beauty there if you want to find it.
Even now as a self-described Mormon Humanist I just don’t appreciate the “spiritual aesthetic” in Mormonism. I wouldn’t describe it as “less than” because, hey, it works for some. For me at its nicest it is like attending a five-star hotel with a mandatory dress code. (Okay the Nauvoo temple I’ll concede is a bit eerie and interesting.) At its worst an LDS meetinghouse isn’t even barren enough to be inspiring in its sparcity. Not even Bauhaus enough to argue it is “form following function.” But there is an other-than-architectural beauty in LDS worship too. Ultimately it is just too familiar to me.
4 John // Feb 22, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Tired, you might appreciate this photo essay in Slate on the design of megachurches. It touches on some of the current trends in religious architecture (and the LDS conference center is featured).
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