“The Passion of the Christ” by Mel Gibson has spawned a remarkable public discussion with widely divergent viewpoints. Some Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, have hailed it as a tremendous evangelizing tool which will bring thousands of people back to church. Important Jewish leaders have expressed the fear that the movie will inflame anti–Semitic sentiments. The film critic David Denby calls it “a sickening death trip, a grimly unilluminating procession of treachery, beatings, blood and agony,” which “falls in danger of altering Jesus’ message of love into one of hate.” Another critic, Roger Ebert, reflecting on his experience of the Stations of the Cross as a Catholic youth, admits that the film gave him for the first time “a visceral idea” of the sufferings of Christ.

In creating his film, Mel Gibson had every right to concentrate on the sufferings of Jesus during the last hours of his life, and to offer his artistic interpretation of those climactic events. Clearly, he did not intend to present a comprehensive view of the life of Jesus or an explanation of what precipitated his arrest and execution. Nor was his intention to examine the impact of his death and resurrection on believers, which helps explain the otherwise odd omission of the declaration of the Roman centurion that Jesus truly was the Son of God (Mk 15:39). Gibson’s real intent was to portray the passion of Jesus in an extremely graphic way to shock viewers into appreciating the enormous price the Savior paid for our sins. In stressing the bodily sufferings of Jesus, Gibson stands in a long tradition of Christian piety going back to the thirteenth century, when, among other things, Francis of Assisi received in his own body the stigmata, the wounds of the crucified Lord, while meditating on the crucifixion. Before the thirteenth century, Christian writers and artists put more stress on the victory of the cross than on the agony of Jesus. After the time of Francis, popular Christian devotion gradually put more and more emphasis on the physical sufferings of Jesus. Crosses, which had previously displayed ornamentation or the figure of the risen Christ, began to bear more realistic sculpted images of the crucified Lord.

Beginning in the middle of the fourteenth century, Stations of the Cross were set up throughout Europe for those who could not make a pilgrimage to the Via Dolorosa, the original stations in Jerusalem. By the eighteenth century, European Catholics were very familiar with the standard fourteen stations, which include the non–biblical scenes of Jesus falling three times, meeting his sorrowful mother, and encountering Veronica, who wipes his face. In the United States, Catholic immigrants from Europe carried on the devotional traditions which highlight the sufferings of Jesus. Crucifixes were prominently displayed in churches and homes. Many parishioners gathered for Stations of the Cross, especially on the Fridays of Lent, to join in prayer and reflection on the fourteen scenes of the passion artistically portrayed on the walls of the church. On Good Friday, Catholics continued the practice of venerating the cross by kissing the feet of the crucified Jesus. Many parishes held Sorrowful Mother devotions, which emphasized the sufferings of Mary during the passion. Mel Gibson is clearly influenced by this pre–Vatican II devotional Catholicism. The movie highlights the non–biblical scenes of the Stations of the Cross. His portrayal of Mary, the mournful, faithful mother close to Jesus throughout his last hours, is powerful and moving as is his use of the traditional story of Veronica. His vivid depiction of the sufferings of Jesus, with only a slight nod to the resurrection, reflects the dominant piety of Catholics before the Council. It is not surprising that many Catholics find Gibson’s treatment of the passion familiar, if overdone and excessively violent.

Evangelical Christians, on the other hand, who do not celebrate Lent and worship in churches without crucifixes or Stations of the Cross, encounter a largely unfamiliar world of emotionally–charged visual images of the passion. Gibson’s graphic treatment of the passion can remind us of important Christian truths. As true man, Jesus was subject to temptation and knew the emotional pain of rejection and abandonment. He suffered an extremely cruel form of public execution, employed by the Romans to reinforce control over a subjugated people. The cross is an essential component of Christian faith. There is no authentic Easter joy without the horrible events of Good Friday. Jesus was not only a wise ethical teacher and a compassionate healer, but also the suffering servant, a man of sorrows who bore the sins of the world. His teaching is challenging as well as comforting. Authentic Christian discipleship demands taking up the cross in order to build the community of peace and love. The movie can serve as a corrective to a sentimental Christianity, which effectively denies the humanity of Jesus and the Reality of the cross.

On the other hand, Gibson’s exclusive and relentless focus on the torture of Jesus can easily lead to a distorted view of the Gospel. Contemporary Catholic theology provides a larger framework for understanding the cause and meaning of the sufferings of Jesus. As the letter to the Phillipians indicates, Christ Jesus humbled himself becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross (2:8). Jesus came to do the will of his Father, to proclaim the kingdom of justice and peace, to establish a new order based on love and forgiveness. His bold actions on behalf of the kingdom alarmed those in power. According to John’s Gospel, the Sanhedrin, led by the high priest Caiaphas, planned to kill Jesus after he raised Lazarus from the dead on the grounds that his growing popularity would cause the Romans to tighten their control over the Jewish people (11:47–53). According to the Synoptic Gospels, the chief priests sought to destroy Jesus after his provocative act of cleansing the temple, presumably, because it constituted an implicit claim to authority over the religious practices of Israel and thus threatened their position of power (Mk 11:18). It was the fidelity of Jesus to his mission that brought him into direct conflict with the religious authorities and set up a potential confrontation with the Romans. He did not seek suffering and death, nor was he a mere victim of circumstances. His obedience embraced the cross.

Contemporary theology insists that the true meaning of the passion emerges only in the light of the resurrection. It rejects the popular notion of an angry God who demanded the horrendous suffering of Jesus as satisfaction for sin. On the contrary, the loving God responded to human sin with a merciful plan of salvation centered on Jesus Christ. God’s grace and love, operative throughout all history in the whole human family, found the perfect respondent in Jesus of Nazareth. He courageously served the cause of God and humanity, and this cost him his life. On the cross, he freely handed himself over to his Father in an act of loving surrender. His fidelity to God, made definitive and irrevocable in his death, led to the resurrection, the vindication of his life of self–giving love. Jesus died into a new and richer life. The whole New Testament, including the passion accounts, was written from the perspective of believers, convinced that God raised Jesus to life. Resurrection put the glorified Lord into a new relationship with his disciples. He became life–giving spirit for the whole human family. We are saved because Jesus, representing the whole human family, was raised to life by his Father.

Contemporary theology insists that we are saved by the death and the resurrection of Jesus, not just by his agonizing death and his atoning blood. The cross is not an end in itself. Christianity is not a masochistic religion. Salvation is not dependent on the severity of the scourging of Jesus or the amount of physical torture he was able to absorb. The crucifixion is not meaningful apart from the appearances of the risen Lord. Belief in the resurrection transforms the gruesome account of the passion into a joyful story of hope.

“The Passion of the Christ” has created a marvelous opportunity to reflect on important issues, including the relationship between Christians and Jews, the nature of evil, and the problem of religious violence. It is difficult to gauge the impact of Gibson’s film on the way Christians perceive the suffering and death of Jesus. We can avoid some of the potential distortions by viewing the horrors of the passion from the perspective of the resurrection, which validated the obedience of the Lord.