I love movies. How I wish that movies that are targeted at a
“Christian” audience were better than they usually are. It is as if Hollywood thinks that
Christians are so desperate to have a belief validated in a movie that they
will applaud almost anything.
The Coen Brothers just released a film lampooning movies
such as the Robe or the Silver Chalice of the 1950s. By some serendipity a new
movie, Risen, has been released in time for Lent 2016. It seems designed to try
to offer the physical proof that Thomas famously sought when told of the
resurrection.
It is an imaginative creation of a Roman
Empire police procedural that follows a military tribune trying to
uncover facts of a reported resurrection. Joseph Fiennes plays Clavius as an
ambitious soldier who desires wealth and power so that “he can know just one
day of peace.” Clavius is present at the death of Jesus but is given the charge
of dealing with a rumor of resurrection. He is caught trying to reconcile his
knowledge of the realities of life and death and human nature with the
experiences he sees. He demonstrates this by furrowing his brow and saying that
he is puzzled. Eventually he gets to tag along with the disciples on the road
to Galilee and the ascension. In this way the
film tries to supply an “objective” viewpoint to add credence to the gospel
accounts.
The figure of Pilate is portrayed as a world weary
bureaucrat, anxious about a visit from the emperor Tiberius. Pilate goes along
with the crucifixion as a way to decrease political pressure. He is annoyed
that the death has not ended the pressure, and now a slogan, Jesus still lives
seems to be spreading.
Of course, Mary Magdalene represents the tired trope and
misreading of the Bible that she was a prostitute. The disciples are giddy with
the resurrection and its promise of eternal life. The Judas theme continues
with a disciple who leads the Romans toward discovery of the hiding place of
the close inner circle of Jesus.
It is a pastiche of some gospel material, notably the
crucifixion account in Matthew and the post-resurrection chapters in John
20-21. Unsatisfied with the gospel sightings, the movie has the risen Jesus
heal a leper. It includes the shroud of Turin
image, not as a medieval forgery, but an immediate discovery there in the tomb,
notwithstanding that no gospel in the Bible, or other later gospel material,
reports it. It goes beyond Scripture in having a non-believer catch sight of
Jesus, when we have no reports of that experience.
The resurrected Jesus is portrayed in a decidedly physical
form, although he does appear and vanish. We do not see the resurrection but
have it reported. The film has an ascension scene not of a slow rising in the
heavens but in a blinding flash of light similar to that reported by the Roman
guards for the resurrection itself.
The great theologian Karl Barth tried to play both side of
Easter by claiming it to be beyond history’s analysis but an event nonetheless.
Paul struggles to come to grips with it by using his image of a spiritual body.
Indeed, I admire the way the bible refused to describe the resurrection and the
reticence of the Risen One in appearing only to disciples, instead of Pilate or
the Pharisees. Part of the reason we have Lent is for us to face the horrors of
the death of Jesus couple with the Easter experience without a shred of
empirical evidence. As Josh Groban sings in To where You Are: “isn’t faith
believing/all power can’t be seen?” Some events resist being filmed
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