Sermon Archive
The Passion of the Christ
Sermon preached by John Burdett at Evensong on 28 March 2004
A couple of years ago my wife and I joined a party of people visiting Assisi. There were a dozen Americans in the group, from Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Amongst them were Chuck and Nancy Duvall, and since then Chuck and I have kept loosely in touch.
Three weeks ago I had an email from him saying: 'If you get a chance to see Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, do so; I'd love to learn of your reaction'. The film was, of course, only released in this country a few days ago. I wonder if the release was timed so that it was close to today, Passion Sunday.
I didn't really want to see the film for several reasons.
I think it could be argued that the important thing is that Jesus was prepared to be condemned to death and executed. He made his great decision in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knew that if he continued on the course that he had set himself it was bound to end in his execution - and he was scared. He wouldn't have been human if he hadn't been scared. And he asked his Father to show him a way of escape. And when he could see no way he accepted it and said: 'Not my will but yours be done'. And from that moment he was committed and had no control over what happened to him.
His mother had had a similar experience. When the angel told her that she would give birth to a son she said: 'I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said'. And from that moment she was committed and had no more control over what followed than any woman who finds that she's pregnant. And when she saw her Son's body receive its final violation as the soldier's spear pierced his side, I wonder if she remembered how when he was six weeks old she and Joseph took him to the temple in Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, and how Simeon had said to her: 'A sword will pierce your own soul also'.
Jesus might have been stoned to death like Stephen, who was also condemned to death for blasphemy; and if he'd died like that he would still have died for our sins, died doing his Father's will. So to that extent the horrifying nature of his torture and execution are from our point of view almost irrelevant, though they were far from irrelevant from his point of view, poor man.
Chuck disagrees with me. He says: 'It is almost as though the magnitude of human sin over time required the most maximum endurance of pain and suffering to expiate. Scourging was half the deal of the crucifixion practice. It was meant to half kill. No such subject was destined to survive. The Gospels and even common human knowledge seem unaware of its awesome horror. The movie fixes this modest oversight for all time.'
But the flogging occupies about 25 minutes of extreme violence. Anne Wroe, in her book Pilate, says that under Roman rule the severity of the flogging depended on what was to happen next. If the judge intended to let the victim off with a flogging only, it was as brutal as he thought necessary. But if the victim was to proceed directly to crucifixion, the scourging was relatively light to preserve his strength. So the film is probably inaccurate.
I had another reason for not wanting to see the film. I'm always reluctant to see 'The film of the book', especially if it's a book that I'm very familiar with. I have a picture in my mind of what things were like and I don't want that picture to be contaminated by someone else's picture. I have only come across one film that I thought was better than the book it was based on. That was Whisky Galore; and in that case I saw the film before I read the book. But I do agree with Chuck that much of the criticism of The Passion of the Christ probably comes from people who've never seen the film - let alone read the Book!
A blockbuster film is normally viewed as entertainment. Is the viewer demeaning himself in being entertained by torture? Are we in danger of harking back to the mediaeval practice of public executions? Is the audience merely being offered a ghoulish thrill?
But Chuck says: 'We've all seen grisly films. This is pretty much very very grisly. But it is not entertainment. The film is an experience, a valuable and faith-enhancing one at that. Our church alone rented the movie house two successive mornings for group viewings and was sold out both times. Our church communion the next Sunday was the most meaningful I've ever been to. Those in your flock who see the film will be at a new level. You, as a leader need to go where they will be. Give in to the movie, you know the script word for word; you'll find every word there. Cleave to those words.'
So on Wednesday we went to see it. This isn't the occasion for me to give a review of the film. My opinion of it isn't important. But for what it's worth, both Margaret and I are glad we've seen it. The brutality is appalling, as it is meant to be. But no one could have survived a beating like that. Jesus would have been dead before he ever got to Calvary.
But what forces itself into your mind as you watch these dreadful things is 'Where was God in all this? Jesus' mother was there with him at the end, as she had been with him at the beginning. But where was his Father?' And one answer to that was given last week by a Jewish rabbi.
During Lent, Radio 4 has been broadcasting a series of talks on Christ's words from the Cross. Last week Rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok talked about 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' He said: 'As a Jew, I cannot accept the theology of the cross. For me, Jesus did not die to save humankind. Nonetheless, the image of divine suffering symbolized by the cross - which is at the heart of the Christian tradition - is paralleled by the Jewish insistence that God suffers as we suffer.'
He quoted the story told by Elie Wiesel of something that happened at Auschwitz. 'One day the SS guards hanged two Jewish men and a young boy in front of the whole camp. The men died quickly, but the child did not.
'Where is God? Where is He? someone behind me asked... But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive.
'For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face...
'Behind me, I heard the same man asking: 'Where is God now?' And I heard a voice within me answer him: 'Where is He? Here He is - hanging here on this gallows...'
Rabbi Cohn-Sherbok says: 'It is a tragedy that the Cross has become a symbol of division between Jews and Christians since the reality to which it points is a Jewish reality as well. In the past the Cross was brandished in the pogroms by murderers, and was perceived as a sign of intolerance, oppression and hatred. Yet, if Jesus' crucifixion is understood pre-eminently as a symbol of divine vulnerability, then in Jesus' final words we can uncover an image of God's presence in His seeming absence'.
'Though human beings are unaware of Him, he is present in His hiddenness. He's hidden because human beings have been granted freedom to act. Hence when humans perpetrate evil, it is they who are to be blamed, not God. God, in giving human beings the freedom to choose to be good, at the same time necessarily gave them the freedom to be evil. God teaches us what goodness is, but He does not intervene in the course of human affairs, compelling us to be good or preventing us from being evil. This does not mean, however, that God is no longer concerned with creation. On the contrary, God is continually present, despite his apparent absence. He is with us in our joy, and our suffering. And, as we suffer, so does He.'
As a Christian I'd like to go further than that. And what I want to say is summed up in a hymn that in its simplicity is so well known that many of us know it by heart and can sing it while we're thinking of something else. So as we sing it, will you try and think about the words and their awe-inspiring significance?
There is a green hill far away.
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