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“‘PASSION’ LEAVES VIEWERS SPEECHLESS AND REFLECTIVE”
David Sable
Award of Outstanding Merit - $1,000

David Sable is a computer programmer for a non-profit relief organization headquartered in Boone, NC. He and his wife, Loretta, live in Deep Gap with their two sons. He has written a freelance column called “Out in the Deep” for the local newspaper, The Watauga Democrat. He may be reached at outdeep@yahoo.com.

I’ll leave the alleged controversies surrounding Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” to the gallons of ink dumped gratuitously throughout the nation’s newspapers in previously written editorials and reviews. Much of the debate may be explained with the simple axiom, “one brings out of the movie much of what one brings in.”

When I attended the film, I sat behind an energetic collection of youths from Watauga High. They were engaged in innocent fun, adolescent social interaction, and the securing of the refreshment supply line. When the curtain rose and the giggling and whispers continued, I began to wonder if I had picked the wrong night to see the film that I both anticipated yet dreaded to see.

It was evident from the opening scene that this film was different than others in the religious drama wasteland. We were not looking at a celluloid gospel tract where Jesus, dressed in white, quoted accurately from the King James Bible as He stood before self-righteous mannequins that were positioned to look like His sinister enemies. Rather, we were feeling ourselves embarking on an intense journey. Suddenly, we were touching the walls of His world.

While I, by a quirk in design, make it my habit to remain seated at the end of any film to listen to the closing song and read the names of the gaffer and best boy, I am generally in the vast minority on this one. Nevertheless, when the Passion ended and the credits rolled, no one moved. People sat in stunned silence, stared up at the screen, dabbed tears from their eyes, and thought deeply trying to ascertain the significance of what they had just experienced. When the camera finally turned off, people rose, spoke in whispers, hugged friends and family and reluctantly made their way to the lobby. For that brief afterglow, “Welcome to Mooseport” seemed shallow and trite and a waste of time.

What was it in this movie that affected us so poignantly? Certainly it wasn’t the mere intensity or violence as Hollywood has no lack of such fare which young people consume like pizza before they race out during the credits to talk to friends or put their quarters into the slot of the Vice City computer game in the lobby.

The impact of the movie hit because the film ousted Jesus from “the religious story time” of our mind and back into history where He belongs. It forced us to affirm that Jesus and His sufferings were real in the same way that Michael Jordan and his basketball achievements were real. No longer could we manage Jesus as a religious ideal that reminds us to smile at strangers, exercise patience while driving, and give occasionally to the needy. The movie put flesh and blood on the One towards whom we would feel more comfortable if He were but a distant myth.

The film forced us to feel the agony of Jesus’ prayer, the sense of riot at his trial, the sadistic scorn of the Roman guards, the wearying steps to Mount Calvary, the horror of Roman execution, the intensity of the Savior’s pain, and the enormous sacrifice for humanity. No longer could we hide behind personal beliefs in a pluralistic and postmodern society. This was history in all its reality, and there was no denying it.

The early church worked hard to maintain that Jesus was “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled” (1 John 1:1). They taught a real Jesus who walked, breathed, left footprints in the sand, and exerted weight on a chair when he wearily slumped down. He was not merely an ideal, a concept, or an invisible spirit.

This is why we left the theater speechless. The human heart would be happy to believe in a sanitized Jesus who lives behind closed church doors or is relegated to the innocuous realm of inner consciousness. However, the movie’s gripping portrayal forced us to face the reality of the crucifixion of Jesus the Christ and ponder its implied personal message. This shut our mouths, impacted our souls, and, in many ways, troubled us deeply.

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