The Rev. Donald Sensing has published his sermon for this week, concerning Mel Gibson's move The Passion of the Christ.
So the suffering of Jesus was very great, whether Mel Gibson captured it with historical accuracy or not. It is exactly the graphic portrayal of the violence that gives the movie its power. The violence against Christ and his suffering are shocking to behold, literally revolting.This movie is not the first unblinkingly to face a subject previous movies tended to sanitize or glamorize. Ironically, probably the most talented director to show violence in its raw form is a Jewish director named Steven Spielberg.
Like Gibson, Spielberg has a reputation for making violent movies, all the way back to Jaws in 1975, the story of a great white shark that eats people alive. But it was Schindler's List of 1993 and Saving Private Ryan of 1998 that cemented Spielberg's skill in weaving scenes of shocking violence into compelling narratives of salvation. For, like The Passion of the Christ, Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List are about salvation and the costs of attaining it.
After some thoughtful discussion, Sensing reaches a simple but devastating conclusion. Food for thought in this Lenten season.
Christ's suffering was great. The fact compels us to ask whether our Lord so painfully lay down his life just so we can live the way we are living. God's grace is free, but God forbid we ever think it cheap. We were, wrote Saint Paul, bought at a price.Posted by Alan at March 7, 2004 09:30 PM