Fashionable Fundamentalism
by Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah
Cinemas across quite a bit of the globe are going
to be packed this Pesach/Easter holiday. They always are, of
course – but this year, a very particular group of people
will be flocking in droves to see a film depicting scenes of
horrifying, sadistic violence. Who are these people? Young macho-males
pumped up with testosterone? No: pious Christians, eager to
bear witness to the suffering of their beloved saviour, Jesus
Christ. Apparently, scores of churches in this country have
made block bookings for their congregants. And so, good, gentle
people of all ages are going to be treated to a vivid, condensed
re-enactment of the last hours of a Jewish Galilean teacher
and healer, called Jesus of Nazareth, who was brutally murdered
on a Roman instrument of torture around nineteen hundred and
seventy years ago.
You’ve all heard about the film, of course: Mel Gibson’s
‘The Passion of the Christ’. Who is Mel Gibson?
To most of us, he’s a Hollywood actor – the star
of blockbusters like ‘Mad Max’ and ‘Braveheart’
– who, like a number of his colleagues, has recently turned
director. So, what’s he doing directing a film about the
death of Jesus? Well, when he’s not doing the day job,
Mel Gibson is extremely busy living out a very conservative
version of Catholicism, which includes being a devoted husband
and father to seven children, and taking a public stand in favour
of ‘family values’ and against abortion, homosexuality
– and a host of other so-called ‘evils’.
Mel Gibson is passionate about his faith. Does that explain
why he has directed a film that not only focuses on the last
days of Jesus, but devotes fifty minutes of screen-time to the
torture and humiliation of his Lord? – including a twenty
minute flagellation marathon, when Jesus is whipped to bloody
shreds, fifteen minutes of Jesus carrying the instrument of
his death, and falling repeatedly under its weight, and another
fifteen minutes concentrating on the excruciating suffering
of this young man as he hangs aloft, his body dragging against
the nails in his hands and feet. There is no doubt that torture
is bloody and cruel, but why the harrowing exposure?
I haven’t seen the film – I only saw the documentary
about it on Channel 4 the Sunday evening before last–
and I’m not going to see it. I never knowingly go to see
films that directly depict extreme violence. I think it’s
exploitative – and in the context of the death of the
man who eventually became the focal point of a new religion
and Lord for millions of people throughout the Earth, offensively
manipulative. And I haven’t even got to the issue of the
extent to which Mel Gibson’s epic incites anti-Semitism.
On one level, ‘The Passion of the Christ’
is a new cinematic departure for Mel Gibson, but on another
level, his other films, like ‘Braveheart’ and
‘Mad Max’ – which I also haven’t seen
– have often depicted gruesome violence. Mel Gibson
may be a devout Roman Catholic, but his ardent devotion seems,
like other zealots and fundamentalists, to spring from a well-pool
of horror. A happy family man, perhaps, but the way in which
he has portrayed ‘The Passion of the Christ’ suggests
that he is also an extremely tormented person, who is all
too familiar with the ‘shadow-land’ of Life.
Nothing wrong with that, of course – many of the people,
who make, the most profound contribution to society, are those
for whom the rocky, barren wilderness is a very well-worn terrain.
But it’s how you live with your brokenness, your losses
and your terrors that really matters. Before he returned to
the faith of his father, Hutton Gibson – more of him in
a moment – Mel Gibson was an alcoholic, who, according
to the interview he gave for the Channel 4 documentary, felt
completely empty and lost. Re-engaging with his Catholic roots,
has given him new meaning and a sense of purpose. But has it
really addressed his torments, or simply given him a new medium
for expressing them? Apparently, like any good Catholic, Mel
Gibson, not only believes that he killed Christ, but in the
film, he took it upon himself to be the one who hammers in the
nails: An extreme gesture of identification by any standards.
So, who is hammering nails into Mel Gibson?
One of eleven children, Mel Gibson was born into a strictly-observant,
traditional Catholic family, dominated by the figure of his
father, Hutton Gibson. A disciplinarian, determined to instil
his Catholic faith into his children, Hutton Gibson is also
a man of very strong views. For over forty years he has been
a fierce opponent of the Vatican II reforms, and vehemently
against what he sees as the laxity of the Papacy. But he hasn’t
confined his zeal to the state of world Catholicism, he has
also expressed, on a number of occasions, extremely offensive
statements about the Jewish people and ventured into the arena
of Holocaust denial. To be quite blunt, Hutton Gibson is an
anti-Semite.
Of course, that doesn’t make his son an anti-Semite
– in fact, Mel Gibson vehemently denies the charge, declaring
that, ‘To be an anti-Semite is un-Christian.’ But
herein lies the problem. While it is, of course, absolutely
true that being a Christian does not make a person an anti-Semite
– many, many Christians across the globe abhor anti-Semitism,
and organisations like the Council of Christians and Jews, both
in this country and world-wide, actively campaign against it
– nevertheless, Christian teaching – in particular,
concerning the death of Jesus – has been responsible for
inciting anti-Semitic feeling and action over the centuries.
Mel Gibson’s film is not only very bloody, in drawing
heavily on the Gospel narratives, he also chose to make use
of direct quotations, which have been responsible for bloody
recriminations against the Jewish people for nearly two thousand
years. All three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke –
literally, the Gospels that are ‘seen together’
because they display parallel narratives about the life of Jesus
– make it clear that it was the Jewish leadership who
insisted that a reluctant Pilate, the Roman Procurator, order
the killing of Jesus, and also that the crowd were baying for
his blood. But in Matthew, there is an additional text not found
elsewhere. We read in chapter 27, verses 24-25:
So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather
that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands
before the crowd saying, “I am innocent of this man’s
blood, see to it yourselves. / And all the people answered,
“His blood be on us and on our children!”
Significantly, although, according to the canonical
order of the New Testament, Matthew is both the first book
and the first Gospel, most Christian scholars agree that it
was not written first. Dated between 80 and 100 years CE,
Matthew, like Luke – dated between 70 and 90 years CE
– was actually based on the earliest of the three Gospels,
Mark, written between 64 and 70 CE, around the time of the
Jewish War against Rome.
I hope all these dates aren’t too confusing. The point
is that, written between 50 and 70 years after the death of
Jesus, and at least a decade after the earliest Gospel, Mark,
Matthew alone includes the statement, “His blood be on
us and on our children!” The other point is – why
did Mel Gibson choose to include this quotation, when both Mark
and Luke manage to tell the story without any reference to it?
To make sense of the anti-Jewish tenor of the Gospels –
including the more theological Gospel, John, which some Christian
scholars think may have been written around the same time as
Matthew, 90 to 100 CE, or not long after – it’s
important to remember that these texts emerged in environments,
where those professing belief in Jesus as Messiah, were a Jewish
fringe minority, who were criticised and condemned by the majority
Jewish community, who did no accept their claims for Jesus.
In other words, apart from giving the ‘good news’
about Jesus, the Gospels are also a polemic against the Jewish
establishment of the era when they were written. Anger about
the rejection of Jesus as Messiah was then projected back, by
the Gospel writers, to the context of the life-time of Jesus.
So, none of the Gospels provide eye-witness
accounts of the life of Jesus, or, more importantly, of his
last days. Meanwhile, Mel Gibson’s use of the language
of Aramaic, the colloquial language of the Jewish people during
Jesus’ day, provides his cinematic portrayal with a
spurious authenticity, underlining the impression that everything
the audience sees and hears actually happened exactly like
that. Of course, no one needs to see ‘The Passion of
the Christ’ to be confronted with a narrative presented
as historical fact. All you have to do is to read the New
Testament itself, neat, without the explanatory commentary
provided by biblical scholarship. Indeed, that is what most
Christians have done since the New Testament was canonized.
Mel Gibson’s film may be able to take advantage of the
latest technology, but how different is it really from the
‘Passion Plays’ that used to be performed each
Easter? Like those ‘Passion Plays’, it is simplistic,
graphic, and one-dimensional, and has one aim in mind –
to urge the faithful to re-commit themselves to their faith.
And it looks like Mel Gibson may have succeeded in his aim:
Since Ash Wednesday, when the film was released – the
day which marks the beginning of Lent, the forty day period
of penitence before Easter – pendants bearing single
nails have sold out across America.
Today is the first day of Pesach. So, what kind
of Pesach sermon is this! According to the Gospels, the last
days of Jesus coincide with Pesach – and his last supper
was the original biblical meal that Jewish pilgrims to the
Temple in Jerusalem ate on the eve of the festival. What a
tragic irony that the festival of our liberation from persecution
in Egypt, should become so closely linked with the Christian
feast of Easter, which right up to the early years of the
twentieth century was marked by violent persecution of Jewish
communities by their Christian neighbours, fired up by the
experience of re-living the last days of their saviour. Mel
Gibson may not be an anti-Semite, and his film may not lead
to an upsurge in active Christian anti-Semitism, but there
is no doubt that it is already helping to fuel the fundamentalist
backlash against more progressive expressions of religion,
which is not only bad news for Jews, it is also bad news for
women, for lesbian and gay people, and for all those who do
not sign up to the traditionalist agenda. As we celebrate
our festival of liberation this year, let us resolve to re-commit
ourselves to the on-going struggle against bigotry, tyranny
and persecution in all its forms. And let us say: Amen.
Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah is rabbi of Brighton & Hove
Progressive Synagogue
This sermon was given on 6th April 2004
15 Nisan 5764
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