Two more nuanced editorial reviews of the Passion appeared in today’s edition of the Mennonite Weekly Review online.
Paul Schrag writes:
Though extreme violence is the movie’s centerpiece, it is violence invested with meaning and taken seriously, not crassly winked at or offered as shallow entertainment. As a story of Jesus’ life, the film is incomplete. But as an imaginative vision of Jesus’ last hours, it makes an unforgettable and mostly positive impact.
But I really liked what Robert Rhodes had to say:
One of the luxuries of life in North America is that Christianity is not of necessity a suffering faith. Here, because we are free to gather and worship, we can afford to focus on “victory†and “new life†and the many blessings of conversion and redemption.
Perhaps this is why so many seem offended by the extreme degree of violence to be found in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Here, we are not used to focusing on the bloody rigors of the cross, or on the quivering tendons and gushing blood of the man nailed to it. Instead, our faith lexicon, especially among more mainstream Protestants, is filled with images of renewal and grace and, ultimately, of arguably undeserved comfort. Unfortunately, placing so much emphasis on the joys of redemption robs the cross, and our faith, of some of its radical strength.
Such violence is what Christ endured for us all, as Gibson’s movie makes painstakingly clear. It is good that we remember this, too. We also should consider the contribution each of our sins made to that violence, and to the violence that continues all around us even today.
The Anabaptist tradition embraces constructive suffering, and it embraces the cross not merely as Jesus’ unique sacrifice (which in one sense it is) but also as Christian duty. The preeminent modern Mennonite theologian, the wonderful John Howard Yoder, writes:
The innocent, silently uncomplaining suffering of Christ is not only an act of Christ on our behalf from which we benefit; it is also an example of Christ for our instruction, which we are to follow. This portrait of Christ is to be painted again on the ordinary canvas of our lives. Did not Jesus himself say that those who would follow him must deny themselves and take up their cross?
(Bold emphasis is Hugo’s). Where Anabaptists break with other evangelicals and with our Catholic brothers and sisters is over the sense that Jesus’s response to the cross ought to be our own response to the threat of violence. As He went to Calvary, so too should we, rather than take up arms (either as individuals or in armies). Jesus’ action is redemptive but also normative for our lives.
One more line from Yoder:
No one created in God’s image and for whom Christ died can be for me an enemy, whose life I am willing to threaten or to take, unless I am more devoted to something else – to a political theory, to a nation, to the defense of certain privileges, or to my own personal welfare – than I am to God’s cause: his loving invasion of this world in his prophets, his Son, and his church.
When I do go see the Passion, it will be with those thoughts in mind.
