Day Thirty-four

This thirty-fourth day of Lent brings us to the threshold of Holy Week, the time during which we must squarely face our own mortality and see what we can make of it. Early in this series we considered death as the enemy from which we want to be saved, and I’m sure that there are many whose minds remain unchanged in that regard. But for some of us the development of the notion that death could figuratively be referring to the sin of separation rather than the literal cessation of physical function sheds an intriguing light on the path to the Cross. Even the most conservative orthodoxy will not argue that Jesus was crucified to death and then buried, but it requires an open-minded and progressive theology to consider that the subsequent Resurrection is something radically different than resuscitated reanimation.

I am still asked whether or not I have seen Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. I have not, and I will tell you why. For as incredibly cruel and inhumane as Jesus’ crucifixion was, it is not for me the focus of the significance of his life and his teachings—at least not in the way that much of Christianity (and from what I understand, the movie) has come to interpret it. I do not believe that Jesus had to die upon a cross as the exclusive, preordained method for human salvation. Quite to the contrary, Jesus fully and completely revealed “the plan” for salvation in the course of his brief ministry, and his crucifixion served to prove his conviction in the Truth of his teaching to an unbelieving world that was gravely threatened by his message. As the resurrected Christ has perpetuated that Truth down through the ages we have seen the cycle viciously repeated.

Holy Week—which encompasses the Passion of the Christ—is a story of severe disappointment. It is the story of once exuberant crowds who adulated a man who quickly disappointed them by not meeting their selfish expectations of what a Messiah should be. It is the story of disciples disappointed by their own inability to understand their Master’s words and actions, a confusion that ultimately led to betrayal and denial. It is the story of a man who shares with his Abba his disappointment with the way things are coming to a close, wondering out loud if perhaps it couldn’t have ended differently. And it is the story of the most faithful experiencing the utter disappointment of watching their teacher and their friend suffer the death of a common criminal, wondering whether or not there was ever any truth to the things he had led them to believe.