Sacramental Cinematography

In 2004 on the Tuesday night preceding Ash Wednesday and the start of the Lenten season, Mel Gibson released his much anticipated "The Passion of the Christ" that was both hailed and criticized. There are some theological difficulties with the movie. I have heard it said, for instance, that the Christ shed so much blood in this movie that he died three times over. While the amount of blood shed was meaningful to an understanding that it was by His blood that we are saved, the notion that no human being could have lived through that blood loss and made it to the cross gave the impression that Christ was some sort of super human. We might like to think this at times, but let us remember that the truth of the incarnation is just this fact - that Christ became a man like you and like me. There was nothing supernatural about the beating he received, save the faith he had to keep him on that cross. Physically speaking, he died as any other man in his condition would have died under the same set of circumstances. We have to remember this because his true humanity is crucial to our salvation.

Having said that, I think that Gibson's sacramental theology is "spot on," as the English are fond of saying. If you remember, during the crucifixion scene, the picture cut back and forth between the events on Golgotha and the scene the night before in the upper room when Jesus was breaking bread with his disciples. As Jesus' hands were nailed to the cross, the scene cut to Jesus taking the bread. As the cross was raised up, the scene cut to Jesus raising the bread. As the blood dripped from his hands, the scene cut to show the wine. "This is my body," Jesus said, "given for you."

This scene brilliantly showed the beautiful truth that the Fathers wrote about, namely that the actions of Jesus in the upper room cannot be understood apart from his actions on Golgotha. In other words, Jesus is doing the same thing on Friday that he did on Thursday night. And this understanding further undergirds the understanding that Christ is somehow truly and mystically present in our celebration of the Eucharist. Not that he is crucified again, somehow transported to each of our churches, but rather that we are transported back 2000 years to that rock in the shape of a skull. That seeing the bread raised and the cup of wine, we are seeing our savior, "the Lamb standing as though slain," as John puts it. And that by partaking of the bread and wine, we are made one with him, one with his death, and one with his life.

ADVENTUS

"Tears are falling, hearts are breaking.
How we need to hear from God.
You've been promised, we've been waiting.
Welcome Holy Child.

"Hope that you don't mind our manger.
How I wish we would have known.
But long awaited Holy Stranger,
Make yourself at home.

Bring your peace into our violence.
Bid our hungry souls be filled.
Word now breaking heaven's silence.
Welcome to our world.

"Fragile fingers sent to heal us.
Tender brow prepared for thorn.
Tiny heart, whose blood will save us
unto us is born.

"So wrap our injured flesh around you.
Breath our air and walk our sod.
Rob our sin and make us holy.
Perfect son of God.

Welcome to our world."

-Chris Rice

Irenaen Wisdom

Irenaeus has, in my mind, the greatest understanding of the incarnation of all of the early Fathers. I am prepared to argue for that. For the time being, I just wanted to give you a snippet of the kind of thing that makes this man's theology imminently beautiful and at the same time practical:

"So He (Jesus) united man with God and wrought a communion of God and man, we being unable to have any participation in incorruptibility if it were not for His coming to us, for incorruptibility whilst being invisible, benefitted us nothing: so He became visible, that we might, in all ways, obtain a participation in incorruptibility." -Irenaeus

That, my friends (with all apologies to Dorothy Parker), is true poetry.

From a Distance?

The Christmas season is upon us Bloggers!

Please forgive my absence. Alas, school work is bearing down and the days grow frighteningly short for the amount of work left. However, I felt the following deserved a brief comment.

There are countless examples these days of how a majority of people (Christians even?) while celebrating Christmas completely miss the significance of it. This hit me tonight as I was studying and listening to Jewel's Christmas album. one of the few Christmas CDs that my wife added to our immense collection (have I mentioned that I love Christmas music?) Unfortunately, in an otherwise fine album, she includes the song: "God is Watching Us From a Distance" (made famous by Bette Midler a few years ago). While it is certainly a nice sentiment, it does not belong on a Christmas album because the one truth of Christmas is that God came near! The incarnation is the story of the once distant God taking flesh to walk among us. And with the coming of the Spirit, the remaining truth of Christmas is that he never leaves! Even death does not separate him from us. Thus, to put "God is watching us from a distance" on a Christmas CD profoundly misses the point.

Might I suggest to Jewel "O Come O Come Emmanuel" instead. For as Matthew tells us, Emmanuel means "God with us." And, in my mind, nothing grasps the true meaning of Christmas better than those three words.

"The Incredibly Wonderful Mystery of Christ"

The other day I struck up a conversation with a fellow student in the Graduate School of Theology who is Catholic. As we often do in this world, somehow we landed on the subject of Christ. She made the comment that many people in her tradition struggle with the truth that Jesus was literally divine. "Can you believe that?" she asked. I replied: "Actually, most people I run into in my tradition struggle with the fact that he was literally human."

This somewhat amusing exchange reminded me of a quote from the great fifth century saint and Father Cyril of Alexandria, who in his theological masterpiece "On the Unity of Christ", wrote the following:

"Indeed the mystery of Christ runs the risk of being disbelieved precisely because it is so incredibly wonderful. For God was in humanity. He who was above all creation was in our human condition; the invisible one was made visible in the flesh; he who is from the heavens and from on high was in the likeness of earthly things; the immaterial one could be touched; he who is free in his own nature came in the form of a slave; he who blesses all of creation became accursed; he who is all righteousness was numbered among transgressors; life itself came in the appearance of death."

The insight that Cyril and the other Fathers of that era drew out of the Scriptures, is that Christ had to be both human and divine, otherwise we would be left in our sin - that precisely is the incredibly wonderful mystery of Christ.

I'm also reminded of a story told by a more recent saint, the late singer/songwriter Rich Mullins. Once a man approached him to say that he had used Mullins' "Awesome God" as the theme of a protest event. "What were you protesting?" Mullins asked.

"The movie "The Last Temptation of Christ," the man answered.

"Why were you protesting it?" Mullins asked.

The man replied, "Because it portrays Christ as human."

Mullins responded, "Oh. I thought that was the good news."