passion

So I just saw The Passion of Christ. Yeah, that’s what happens when you live in Africa, everything a year old is new to you. Actually that isn’t entirely fair. I’ve really made a choice to wait to see it. When it came out a year or more ago we were here and just heard people talk about it back in the US. We had Arabic TV at the time and there was a program on every week called “Stars with Riya” not a great program but Riya woul do interviews and review the weeks top movies. The Passion was up there for a long time. So we would keep seeing the same clips of the movie and hear Riya rattle on in Arabic about it. Needless to say we didn’t understand what was going on much because the clips are pretty tame compared to the movie, and I don’t speak a lick of Arabic. Then we got back to the states and it was released to video before we left but we had other things to be getting on with so we skipped it. From all that we had heard, Jonathan and I were pretty sure we didn’t need all of the gore.

Well the other day I noticed it on a friend’s shelf and thought “I guess I could finally watch that.” I brought it home not even very sure I would watch it. Sunday night, not much to do so I thought I would give it a spin. Jonathan said he wanted to sleep well and he didn’t need that going through his head. I see his point- he’s a vivid dreamer.

Impressions: Curiousity is that it wasn’t the violence that got me (now that means I have been seriously warped by the media- too much Braveheart etc… We’ll come to that later) The thing that struck me was the beauty of Christ’s relationship with his mother. See I have a boy and I love him madly. Mary probably loved her boy madly too. There was this beautiful scene. Jesus at age 5, falls down. Mary drops everything and runs to him, picks him up and reassures him. Jesus at age 33?, falls down being beaten, Mary runs to him, lifts his head and reassures him. Now I suppose it would work better if it was Joseph but it wasn’t. That whole father’s love thing. But you could make the generalization without committing heresy that a parent’s love is a crazy passionate thing. That makes me happy. I think my wish for this movie would be more poetic license. Skip the passion, go to the humanity of his living. I’m going to sit around the rest of week putting Jesus into @’ daily foibles, grunts, and groans. My 8th grade honor’s English teacher said I was free to use by license whenever I wanted. I’m dusting it off and pinning it to my shirt. Poetic license here I come.

The thought occurred to me that was it really that easy believing in Jesus when he was alive. I don’t think so. Perhaps it is easier to believe after his death. Its too easy to dismiss a man who is alive, but death begs a question… Just a random thought.