Pastor, Oakhurst Baptist Church
First Sunday in Lent, February 29,2004
Lent is traditionally a season of repentance. In that vein, our Lenten theme this year is “Turning to God.” Often, repentance is seen more as turning from something; turning away from bad habits, bad attitudes, and bad behaviors that hurt other people and our self. But repentance can be seen in another way that may be more helpful. It is turning toward. It is turning to God.
On the first Sunday of Lent each year, we begin with one of the versions of Jesus’ time in the wilderness; this year we have the Lukan version. (4:1-13) In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus goes into the wilderness immediately after his baptism by John in the Jordan River where he heard God proclaim from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” Luke says Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit and that he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.” Why?
First of all, it is important to see the connection with the time the Israelites spent in the wilderness, which followed directly after they were delivered from the waters of the Red Sea. Luke ties the Exodus to Jesus’ baptism with 40 days in the wilderness calling to mind the forty years his Jewish ancestors’ spent in the wilderness. The temptations Jesus will face involve the same themes at the heart of Israel’s tests: food, false worship, and putting God to the test. In the wilderness, the Israelites found what it meant to be God’s chosen people and in the wilderness Jesus will understand what it means to be God’s Son, the Beloved. In case we miss all this, each of the scriptures that provide sustenance for Jesus that he quotes to the devil are all from the wilderness accounts in Deuteronomy.
William Willimon has said that the temptations are best viewed not “as bad deeds that the devil provokes Jesus to commit but rather as alternative narratives Jesus is invited to adopt as his life story. As God’s son, Jesus was called to live out a story given to him by God. The devil proposes counter narratives.”
In the wilderness, the devil first says to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Here the devil proposes an alternate story, that of a self-centered life. Command this stone to become bread. Live out a life in which you spend your energies and gifts serving yourself. But even as famished as he was, Jesus knows that he is called to live out a story of service and love of others. As he will say later, “I am among you as one who serves.” (Luke 22:17) So Jesus counters this temptation by quoting from the script of God’s story saying, “It is written, “One does not live by bread alone.”
The devil then tries another tact. Jesus is shown in an instant all the kingdoms of the world and told, “To you I will their glory and all authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”
Again, the devil offers Jesus an alternative story. Why not use your power to rule the world? That way you can really have things the way you want. You can really help people by being a political ruler. It is indeed tempting, but again Jesus understands that he is called to live out a story where the love Of God is a more force more powerful than that of any political ruler on earth. Jesus resists the temptation to implement the kingdom of God by decree, and returns again to the script-ure, saying, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord, your God, and only serve God.’”
The devil does not give up easily. Jesus is then brought to Jerusalem, to the very top of the pinnacle of the temple. And the devil says, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.” Instead of trusting God, why don’t you get real proof? Throw yourself down from the temple and force God’s hand. The people need this kind of real proof if they are going to follow you. The devil once again offers an alternative story. Jesus’ identity hangs in the balance “Will Jesus win Jerusalem by coercing death and avoid death by the display of supernatural identity?”
The devil has seen how much the scripture is central to Jesus. So this third time, he is ready. The devil quotes scripture himself, from Psalm 91, “For it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
Perhaps here is the source of the old adage, “Even the devil can quote scripture.” But Jesus knows the difference between appropriate and wrongful use of scripture; as Shakespeare has put it “There is no error so gross but that some sober soul will bless it with a proper text.” Jesus answers again from his script-ure, the story of the Jewish people’s time in the wilderness, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” The devil gives up. For now. “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.”
Who is this devil? The word translated, as “devil” in the original tongue was something like “the slanderer.” Mark’s version uses Satan, which is “the adversary:” As Fred Craddock writes, “The scriptures variously characterize the power of evil within the world; tendencies within ourselves; a personal being outside ourselves; a powerful angel gone astray; a cosmic power; and organized forces arrayed against the will of God for the world. In whatever images or concepts, Scripture agree with experience that there is in us and among us strong opposition to love, health, wholeness, and peace. In fact, it is those who are most engaged in the way of God who seem to experience most intensely the opposition of evil. If Jesus struggled, who is exempt?”
In the midst of these temptations, Jesus turned to God to find his calling and his identity. That is what we are about as well during these 40 days of Lent. It is not just turning away from bad habits, bad attitudes, and bad behaviors that hurt other people and our self. (Though that may be involved.) It is turning to God, discovering anew the story to which that God has called us, both as individuals and as a community. Like Jesus, the temptations to choose an alternate story come to us from the social, political, and religious arena of our lives.
And they are ongoing. Jesus leaves the wilderness with a deeper understanding of what it means to be God’s Beloved Son and the calling to live God’s story. There will be plenty of temptations away from the wilderness. The tempter departs from him until an opportune time.
As we turn to God during these 40 days of Lent, we also turn toward Jerusalem. Each week, our lectionary texts will look at Jesus on the journey to Jerusalem. There he will face persecution and crucifixion. Each week we will listen to one of the last words Jesus spoke from the cross and examine how those words reflect the way he lived his life. Along with the lectionary texts, those of us on the Lent worship planning team have been studying what has been called Jesus’ “seven last words from the cross.”
At our Ash Wednesday service, we began with Jesus’ first words from the cross in John’s gospel. To his mother, he said, “Woman, here is your son.” And to his disciple, “Here is your mother.”
The next morning I went to see “Mel Gibson’s, “The Passion of Christ.” Gibson was very astute and theologically sound in releasing this movie on Ash Wednesday. However we respond to it, Lent is an appropriate time for Christians to focus on the Passion: Jesus’ trials, suffering, and death.
I found the movie to be very compelling. It is well made and for the most part, well acted. As Eleanor Ringel says, “…everyone at least should agree that the artistry and the brilliant film technique in ‘The Passion’ are undeniable.” Since I have for some time now been contemplating Jesus’ last words from the cross, I was particularly interested in how they would be portrayed. It was one of the places I was most moved. Jewish actress Maia Morgenstern, whose parents were Holocaust survivors, beautifully portrays the role of Mary. The movie is in some ways a depiction of a mother’s worse nightmare seeing her child die such a horrific death. Jesus’ first words from the cross, “Woman, here is your son” could almost be a sub-title of the movie.
The movie at times touched me but it also appalled me in what seemed to me to a gross distortion of the scriptures. The gospels say Jesus was mocked and beaten first by the guards and crowd after his arrest by the high priests. Gibson lets his imagination run loose with the various ways this might have happened. Before he even gets to Pilate, Jesus is already beaten to a pulp, with one eye swollen shut.
Later, the gospels say that Pilate had Jesus scourged, which meant to be lashed or whipped. In John’s gospel, he says he was flogged. Gibson devotes a full ten minutes to a graphic imagining of what this scourging was like. Just when you think it’s through, the guards pull out another medieval looking torture instrument and go at it again. At one point, cackling soldiers pull out some type of metal ball they swing with nails on it to rip Jesus’ skin out in chunks. Now all this is before the crucifixion. The Bible is very restrained in describing this, with no details of how he was scourged. But not Gibson’s version. If a person were tortured like this, they would have been dead or at least comatose and unable to speak by the time he was placed on the cross. Because of this, Gibson’s Jesus did not feel fully human to me. It was as if Gibson is telling us that we should love Jesus because he endured more suffering than anyone else who ever lived. More than “Bravehart.” More than the “Patriot.” More than those guys who died in spaghetti westerns. This is a Jesus who can take more pain than anyone that ever lived and keep getting back up for more. Gibson seems to believe that we are to love Jesus more because of how much physical suffering he endured.
What makes this even more problematic is that it is for the most part it is separated from the life and teachings of Jesus. The movie has some brief flashbacks, which help put Jesus’ suffering in the context of how he lived his life, but not nearly enough. Leaving out some of the imagined scourging would have left room for more things like the Sermon on the Mount which would have helped make sense of why all this was happening, why he was so revolutionary and threatening to the political and religious leaders.
To separate Jesus’ life and teachings from his crucifixion and death distorts the story. But the other strange thing about the movie is how much is fabricated and not in the Bible. I had expected it to be truer to the gospels. For anyone, it would have been a huge challenge to decide which stories from the passion narrative you choose and which you leave out. But I was shocked by many of the scenes that were thrown in that are nowhere in the Gospels and some of them are troubling indeed.
For instance, in Matthew’s account Pilate’s wife sends word to him that she has had a troubling dream about Jesus. It made her think he might be innocent and she pleads that Pilate should do nothing with him. In the movie, she becomes a major character, and at one point secretly meets with Jesus’ mother and Mary Magdalene. There is a tender exchange between them that makes Pilate’s wife look like a follower of Jesus. This takes place immediately after the ten-minute scourging and Pilate’s wife brings clean cloths which the two Mary’s use to wipe up Jesus’ blood off the floor. And there is a lot of blood. I sat there and thought, “Hey that’s not in the Bible.” There were many more strange additions.
In one scene a wild bunch of kids follow and taunting Judas unmercifully. Shadowing them is the devil, played by a woman. (Hmmm…what’s that about?) The devil has a very prominent role not found in the any of the gospel passion narratives, including a scene where Jesus violently crushes a snake, which had slithered out of the devil’s clothes.
Then there is the interaction between Jesus and the two criminals also being crucified. One is taunting Jesus and the other tries to stop him, saying that Jesus, unlike them, is innocent. It is one of my favorite passages when he asks Jesus to remember him and Jesus says, “Truly, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
It was well done and I sat there moved by this, until suddenly a crow flies onto the screen and abruptly pecks out the eyes of the other criminal. Where did that come from? It made you wonder whether Jesus’ request, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing” fell on deaf ears.
When Jesus side is pierced, this gives Gibson one last opportunity to be graphic showing blood and guts spilling out, but then he has Jesus’ mother and Mary Magdalene stand there while it sprays on them.
Where is that in the Bible? So I guess if someone asks what your Pastor thought of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Christ,” you could tell them that he thought it was too much Mel Gibson and too little Bible.
Is the movie anti-Semitic? I saw it in an interfaith setting and afterwards every Jew I heard from said it was blatantly anti-Semitic. A main objection, which I understand, is that Gibson paints all the Jewish leaders as caricatures. Not one stands out with a unique personality. They are (in the words of one reviewer) “a mass of anonymous beards and hateful glances skulking beneath hoods of power.” There is even a scene where the priests join the guards in spitting on and beating Jesus, which none of the gospels say the priests actually did.
On the other hand, Pilate comes off as a sympathetic, almost heroic character. History tells us that he was a brutal leader who had no problems with crucifying Jews. In the most troubling scene, Jesus speaks a line to Pilate in private that is nowhere in the gospels telling Pilate that he will not be the one seen as ultimately responsible but that the Jewish leaders would be. Christians coming out of the movie not seeing how Jews could see any anti-Semitism in it is akin to whites that think racism has disappeared from our culture. Just because they do not see it does not mean it is not there.
The movie ends with only a hint of Resurrection. Jesus is shown briefly alive in the tomb but he appears to no one. I only got a quick glimpse, but he did not look happy to me. The movie separates the Passion from the life and teachings as well as from the joy of Resurrection. There are 40days in Lent but the Sundays do not count. They are “little Easters” reminding us that even as we focus on Jesus’ suffering and death, we are Resurrection people.
Should you see the movie? That’s up to you. Each of you who see it will have a different take on it. What I have said is certainly not the gospel truth. But neither is this movie the gospel truth. One of the things that most troubles me is that it is being presented by so many churches and clergy as the “actual factual account” of the Passion of Christ and its real meaning. But in the end, it is “The Passion of Christ” according to Mel Gibson.
Mel Gibson has given us an opportunity to contemplate the meaning of Jesus’ suffering. I personally do not think he got it right, but he sure got a conversation going. I do believe we must enter into the very conversation and yes, witness, to who we believe Jesus is. That is a vital question on our Lenten journey. Whether you go or not, I strongly recommend you read the Book.