The controversy about Jesus films…

The controversy continues about Mel Gibson’s filming of the Passion. I think the recent article by Peter Boyer in the New Yorker entitled “The Jesus War” is perhaps the most comprehensive of the various pieces I’ve read. (For some reason I can’t find it at the New Yorker online, but it has been put up in what appears to be the same text here). More than anything, the controversy reminds me of how deeply many of us care about biblical texts, even in this day and age of postmodernity, and how deeply interpretive all of our engagements with such texts are. A film makes that even more apparent, because it makes specific interpretive moves visible in ways that readers of print texts don’t always notice. Catholics affirm — most of the time, I think — that we are a deeply relational people, in relationship with a relational God, and because of that relationality we must also practice interpretation in community. I suppose my biggest fear about this film is that rather than inviting people into serious engagement with the gospel stories, the controversy will send people into their “separate corners” and away from precisely that kind of communal struggle over meaning. I hope instead we’ll find our ways deeply into the questions it raises. Gibson’s film is not the only film to raise such issues, and there is a nice site at the NT Gateway which provides useful links to “celluloid” representations of Jesus.