This goal means showing us what real scourging and crucifixion would
look like. "I didn't want to see Jesus looking really pretty," Gibson
goes on. "I wanted to mess up one of his eyes, destroy it."

It's a mark of our age that we don't believe something is realistic
unless it is brutal. But there's another factor to consider. When the
four evangelists were writing their own accounts of the Passion, they
didn't take Gibson's approach. None of them depict Jesus with a
destroyed eye. In fact, the descriptions of Jesus' beating and
crucifixion are as minimal as the writers can make them.

"Having scourged Jesus, Pilate delivered him to be crucified," the
Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) agree. "When they came to the
place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him."

Little more than a dozen verses later he is dead. The evangelists did
not linger over his suffering in order to stir our empathy. The account
of physical action is so brisk that, back when I was in seminary, I
asked one of my professors why we presume Jesus was nailed to the Cross,
rather than bound with ropes. He supposed it was because Paul later
refers to redemption through Christ's blood.

If Mel Gibson had allotted his time the way the evangelists do, the
majority of his film would have been about the swirl of people around
Jesus in his last days, how they interact with him and what they do
because of him. The scourging and crucifixion would have passed in a flash.

Why would the earliest Christians have handled these events so
discreetly? Not because the events were thought unimportant; the whole
Gospel story builds toward them. Not because the writers were squeamish,
or because they were ashamed. St. Paul speaks boldly about Jesus' saving
blood and proclaims that he will boast in the Cross.

But in the earliest Christian writings we see a different understanding
of the meaning of the Cross, one which, shockingly, didn't think it was
important for us to identify with Jesus' suffering. For contemporary
Christians it's hard to imagine such a thing. The extremity of Jesus'
sacrifice has been the wellspring of Christian art and devotion for
centuries. It has produced great treasures, from late Renaissance
paintings of the Crucifixion, to the meditations of Dame Julian of
Norwich, to Bach's glorious setting of "O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded."
Mel Gibson's "Passion" arrives as the newest entrant in a very old
tradition. A funny thing happens, however, if we press further back in
time. Before the middle ages, depictions of the Crucifixion show very
little blood. Though the event itself was no doubt horrific, artists
preferred to render it with restraint (like the Gospels, but unlike
Gibson). The visual elements in an ancient icon of the Crucifixion are
arranged symmetrically, harmoniously, and the viewer is placed at a
respectful distance. The depiction is not without drama: Mary and the
disciple John, at the foot of the Cross, reel in grief. But Jesus does
not reveal any sense of torment. He is serene, almost regal.

What changed? In the 11th century, a theory emerged that shifted the
common understanding of the Cross. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury,
proposed that our sins constituted a debt to God that could not be
simply erased without unbalancing justice. The debt was too immense for
any human to pay, and only Jesus' death could be an adequate sacrifice.
Protestant Reformers retained the same theory substantially intact, but
during the Enlightenment some theologian proposed instead that Jesus'
suffering is meant to unite us in grateful love toward the Father,
rather than pay a debt.

In both cases, Jesus as the God-Man takes on the sin of the world, bears
its crushing weight, and accomplishes divine reconciliation. The
movement in this drama is from earth to heaven, and the Cross means
"suffering."

Yet for the first millennium, and continuing in Eastern Christianity
today, the Cross means "victory." In this idea of the atonement, God in
Christ effects a rescue mission. Humans are being held captive by Death,
due to their voluntary involvement in sin, and are helpless to free
themselves. In a majestic sweep of events Jesus takes on human life in
order to die, invade hell, and set the captives free. The focus is much
broader than the Crucifixion alone. The movement is from heaven to
earth, the reverse of the later pattern. Paul, writing about 60 AD,
describes this divine descent in the words of the earliest existing
Christian hymn:

"Who, though he was in the form of God, Did not count equality with God
a thing to be grasped, But emptied himself, taking the form of a
servant. And being found in human form, he humbled himself to death,
Even death on a Cross." (Phil 2:6-8)

Early Christians understood the Cross to be the way that Jesus broke
into the realm of Death. Suffering itself is not the point.

How then could Jesus be a ransom, sacrifice, or offering? Early
Christians understood such terms to mean that it cost Jesus his life to
rescue us. It was a sacrifice to the Father, as a soldier might offer a
superlative act of courage to his beloved general. It was the price of
entry into the realm of Death. It cost Jesus his life's blood to enter
Hades and save us, but it wasn't a payment to anybody.

This helps us see why they did not linger over the details of his
suffering. It would be as odd as welcoming home a wounded soldier, and
instead of focusing on the victory he won, dwelling on the exact moment
the bayonet pierced his stomach, how it felt and what it looked like. A
human soldier might well feel annoyed with such attention to his
weakness rather than his strength. He would feel that it better
preserved his dignity for visitors to avert their eyes from such
details, and recount that part of the story as scantly as possible to
focus instead on the final achievement.

This is the sense we pick up in the Gospels. Jesus' suffering is
rendered in the briefest terms, as if drawing about it a veil of
modesty. What's important is not that Jesus suffered for us, but that
Jesus suffered for us. It is the contrast with his eternal glory that
awed the earliest Christians.

Eastern Orthodox hymns for Good Friday convey fearful wonder:

"Today he is suspended on a Tree who suspended the earth over the
waters. A crown of thorns is placed on the head of the King of angels.
He who covered the heavens with clouds is clothed in a false purple robe."

At such sights, "The heavenly powers trembled with fear...The whole
creation, O Christ, trembled; the foundations of the earth were shaken
for dread of thy might... The sun hides its rays at seeing the Master
crucified... The armies of the angels were amazed."

Mel Gibson's "The Passion" promises to be a landmark expression of the
strand of devotion that emphasizes identification with Jesus'
sufferings. It is a strand that has produced powerfully affecting works
of art, and moved and inspired Christians for centuries. The Crucifixion
was, in fact, bloody and brutal- Gibson is on solid historical ground in
wishing to depict them this way-and when he prayerfully reads the
Gospels, no doubt these are the pictures that appear in his mind.

But these pictures are not, actually, there in the Gospels. The writers
of the Gospels chose to describe Jesus' Passion a different way. Instead
of appealing to our empathy, they invite us to awesome wonder, because
they had a different understanding of the meaning of his suffering.

END