Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 22, 2004

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

There’s an event coming up in the life of our community, of our society, that I feel compelled to talk to you about this morning even though it hasn’t happened yet. This coming Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, Mel Gibson’s movie "The Passion of the Christ" opens in theaters. I imagine you’ve all heard about it. It has received massive publicity. It is being loudly touted in Evangelical Christian circles as a powerful tool for reaching out to the un-churched. The promotional materials for the movie say it is the story of the last twelve hours of Jesus’ life. The movie is by all accounts so graphically violent and gory that it is difficult to sit through. Jewish leaders have expressed significant concerns that it will lead to a rise in anti-Semitism, a real danger whenever certain aspects of the Gospel stories are taken as historical fact. Mel Gibson has been playing something of a double game around this issue. He’s the one, so I read in the P-I, who brought up the anti-Semitism issue in the first place. Yet he has now apparently cut the most objectionable anti-Jewish scene out of the movie. The entire movie appears to me to be a highly problematic undertaking for a great variety of reasons. Still, I of course have not seen the movie. It isn’t out yet. So I can’t really preach about this movie. I can, however, give you a few words of caution about Biblical epic movies generally that may be helpful, and I can tell you about some of the promotional materials that are being used to hype the movie.

First of all, any movie made from a Biblical story necessarily represents not the Bible itself but the filmmaker’s personal vision of the story. It is helpful, therefore, to read the Bible story, or in this case stories, before you see the movie. That is true of a movie about the Crucifixion in particular. Those of you who attended my Lenten study series last year on the Passion stories in the four Gospels know that those accounts are varied and indeed inconsistent. In this movie we necessarily have the Gospel according to Mel Gibson. He of course has artistic and religious freedom, as do we all. There is, however, a profound danger in this movie, the danger that one man’s interpretation will become engrained in the public consciousness as Gospel truth. The forces of conservative Christianity are doing everything in their power to see that this in fact happens.

It is also helpful, I believe, to know something about the filmmaker himself. In this case, what we know about Gibson’s religious position is disturbing. He is a member of a reactionary--in the technical sense--Catholic sect that rejects the findings of the Second Vatican Council, known popularly as Vatican II. That is the council of the Roman Catholic that, forty years ago now, finally brought the Catholic Church at least part way into the modern world. Among other things, Vatican II introduced the mass in the vernacular, the language of the people, so the people could understand the liturgy. It opened the door to better ecumenical relations with other Christian churches. It approved the use of modern critical techniques for Catholic Biblical scholars. Importantly for the context of this movie, it declared that the Jews were not and are not responsible for the death of Jesus. Gibson rejects this council. It is important to keep his personal, reactionary position in mind when evaluating how he has told the story of Christ’s Passion.

In the case of this movie in particular, there is another caution I want to give you. If the promotional materials for the movie accurately reflect the movie’s theology--and they may or they may not--that theology is, to me at least, suspect at best. As I said, I haven’t seen the movie. I have, however, seen some of the promotional literature for the movie that has been sent to the church by Evangelical organizations. The theology expressed in those materials is worth knowing about whether or not it actually appears in the movie.

The movie is being promoted in large part under the slogan: "Dying was his reason for living " This slogan is shorthand for a fundamental underlying theology that is profoundly literalistic in its assumptions. That is, it takes all of the following statements literally: Jesus is the Son of God, the Second Person of Trinity. He came down to earth and was incarnate in the man Jesus of Nazareth for one purpose, namely to die. He had to die because only the death of God’s own Son could be enough of a sacrifice to placate God, who is so offended by human sin that God cannot forgive that sin unless a supreme sacrifice is made first. No mere mortal could make such a sacrifice. Only God, in sacrificing God’s own Son, could offer a sacrifice of the cosmic magnitude required to satisfy the affront to God’s dignity that human sin represents. In this theory, salvation is available only for those who believe these things. All of these assumptions lie behind the slogan "dying was his reason for living." And I’m here to tell you this morning: No it wasn’t! Although his death was crucially important in a way that I’ll say more about in a minute, dying was, in my opinion, most decidedly not his reason for living.

I know that the theology I just outlined is probably very familiar to many of you. Many of you grew up in churches considerably more conservative in their theology than this one, and I know that you heard this interpretation of the significance of Christ again and again. You may think it’s good Biblical theology. You may, therefore, be surprised, perhaps even shocked, to learn that this interpretation of the significance of Jesus, at least in its most complete and fully developed form, is less than one thousand years old. That is, it was formulated in the High Middle Ages and is therefore closer in time to us than it is to Jesus. It was first fully formulated in the year 1109 by a monk named Anselm of Canterbury in a book called Cur Deus Homo?, which is Latin for "why did God become human." It has roots in the Bible, but it is not itself Biblical.

What we’re talking about here is called the classical atonement theory. Let me share with you what Marcus Borg has to say about this theory. In his book The Heart of Christianity Borg gives essentially the account I just gave of the origin of this theory, without some of the details I just gave. Then he says:

If taken literally, all of this is very strange. It implies a limitation on God’s power to forgive; namely, God can forgive only if adequate sacrifice is made. It implies that Jesus’ death on the cross was necessary--not just the consequence of what he was doing, but that it had to happen, that it was part of God’s plan of salvation. It also introduces a requirement into the very center of our life with God: knowing about and believing in Jesus and his sacrificial death.

Now let me tell you another major reason why I think there are problems with this medieval interpretation. Look at what it does to the life, the ministry, the message, and even the Resurrection of Jesus. It makes them all irrelevant. It doesn’t matter who he was as a man. It doesn’t matter what he taught. It doesn’t matter how he lived. It doesn’t even matter that he rose from the grave. Only two things matter, first, that he was the Second Person of the Trinity walking around in human form and, second, that he died, specifically, that he was crucified and died a horrible, agonizing death. (Incidentally, in the Gospel of John, which is normally the favorite Gospel of conservative Christians, he doesn’t die a horrible, agonizing death but rather quite a serene, peaceful one, but never mind.) For this interpretation, all the rest of his story might just as well not be there.

And for me, at least, making Jesus nothing but God Incarnate whose purpose was to die makes him irrelevant for how we live our lives. He called us to radical acceptance and inclusion of all those whom society calls outcasts. This theology says: "So what? That’s not what he was about. He just came to die!" He calls us to radical discipleship, and his story teaches us that radical discipleship can get you crucified. This theology says: "No it doesn’t! He wasn’t crucified by the powers of the world because he was faithful to the Kingdom of God. He was crucified because that was God’s will for him. It has nothing to do with our life of discipleship." Folks, "dying was his reason for living" theology makes Jesus irrelevant to our lives.

Compare that image to today’s Gospel lesson, Luke’s version of The Transfiguration of Christ. Yes, there’s lots of supernatural goings-on; but pay attention to two things. First, note that the voice from heaven, which is presumably the voice of God, says: "Listen to him." Listen to him! Not, believe in him, although believing in him is important.. Not, believe that I sent him down there from up here to die for your sins. Listen to him! Listen to what he has to say. Learn from him and, by implication at least, follow him. Then look at what Jesus does in this lesson. Peter wants to stay on the mountain in the presence of God. Jesus will have none of it. He comes back down off the mountain, that is, he comes back into the world and sets about his ministry of healing. He heals a boy with a demon. Luke comments: "And all were astounded at the greatness of God." Jesus was revealing to the people, to us, the greatness of God, first and foremost in his life, in his ministry, in his living, teaching, and healing.

And yes, also in his dying. Jesus’ death is important; but it is not important because it was the purpose of his living. It was the consequence of his living, not its purpose. You cannot understand his death without understanding his life. Jesus was crucified because he refused to turn his back on God. The powers of the world crucified him because they couldn’t stand his message of radical inclusivity, of God’s unconditional love and grace for all people. And in going to the cross rather than renounce his faith Jesus demonstrated to us God’s unshakable solidarity with us in all the aspects of our lives, up to and including our deaths. In Jesus’ death at the hands of the demonic powers of the world, God demonstrated God’s inalienable presence with us in all things. That’s why Jesus’ death is important. Dying was not the purpose of his living, it was the result of his living; and it demonstrates God’s fathomless love for us.

So by all means go see Mel Gibson’s movie if you want. It doesn’t sound like much fun, but whether or not to see it is up to you. If you do see it, however, just remember: It’s one man’s interpretation. It is not Gospel. It cannot be purely Biblical, not the least because the Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion are so sparse that no one could make a full-length movie out of them without adding in all sorts of details that aren’t in any of the Gospels. Before you go, please read all four Gospel accounts of the crucifixion first. That will help put the movie in perspective and help you understand Gibson’s interpretation. Maybe you’ll get something out of the movie. I don’t know. I haven’t seen it. It isn’t out yet. Just remember. It is the Gospel according to Mel Gibson. And, if the movie tells you dying was his reason for living, say to yourselves: No it wasn’t.