Shouting At the Devil (The Passion of the Christ)

It takes going to a full-blown, all-out, on-fire Pentecostal church to experience a pastoral practice that overly respectable Christians have long viewed with contempt, the practice of looking Satan squarely in the face and telling him in no uncertain terms to get lost. Exorcisms are no match for shouting-down-the Devil sessions. If you can ever catch Bishop T. D. Jakes at just the right time in one of his many inspiring worship services, you will get this point immediately.

In Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, there was indeed a lot of shouting going on, but none of it was at the one who most deserved it. The Satan figure was given free reign to move in and out of scenes with a will of (his/her?) own --- whispering, staring, hovering, taunting, relishing, gloating --- and to put words from an old spiritual to a little different use, nobody ever said a mumblin' word. Just as Luke did not, when he closed his narrative of Jesus' temptations in the wilderness with the hair-raising words, "So, having come to the end of all these temptations, the devil departed, biding his time." (4:13)

The devil came seriously back into the picture when he took possession of Judas (Luke 22:3), and started sifting the rest of the disciples "like wheat." (22:31) Jesus then conceded him the dark night of his arrest (22:53), a darkness that returned at mid-day to cover Golgotha and "the whole land" in infamy (23:44). But unlike what happens in Gibson's picture, Luke's picture reaches out to Satan not on Satan's terms, but on God's: Satan has been "given leave" to do his destructive work.

Personally, I would like it better had Luke refrained from introducing this character altogether. His narrative has no real need of him, other than to do a little spooking around here and there. Luke's Jesus seems supremely confident that his own prayers for the disciples' faith will be answered in the long run, as they certainly were. And he is in no way himself unstrung by Satan's sifting. Unlike the anguished words put in his mouth on the cross by Mark and Matthew ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"), Luke gives him triumphant ones: "Father forgive them…you will be with me in paradise…into your hands I commit my spirit." As another song goes, if the devil doesn't like it, he can sit on a tack.

But Mel Gibson obviously needed Satan in his own reconstruction of Jesus' Passion, just as legions before us have needed Satan for their own foul purposes of hating love and loving hate. So, from Gethsemene to the foot of the cross, the Evil One flounced in and out, on (its) own, through deranged children, in the rage of Caiaphas and the terror of Pilate, and over an inflamed mob, to be seen clearly only by the one through whom God was soon to deal out its final defeat.

I think, though, that there may be an unintended gift to us in all this: for on the big screen, there it was, just waiting to be shouted at and out.

Are you ready, Satan? Try this for openers: when you tell us that you own us and are owed a divine ransom for our souls, you are nothing --- nothing --- but a liar. Still listening? Here's more: when you tell us that God is so angry with us that he must make one of us pay for everyone else's sins, you are nothing --- nothing --- but a liar. When you tell us that God's justice must be served before his love can be savored, you are nothing --- nothing --- but a liar. When you tell us that you have any power, authority, purpose, vision, or truth in you, you are nothing, nothing, nothing at all.

As for you Mel, a little shouting may be in order, too. When you tell us that you are only giving us the gospel story, you are lying to yourself as well as to us. When you tell us that your picture of the Passion is a picture of human redemption, you are lying to God. Yours is a picture of a lava flow of rage: pure, unbounded rage. An exploding star system of rage, with black holes all around. Give it up, Riggs, you want to take us down just like you took the really bad guys down in all those other lethal weapon flicks. You want to know where I saw you in your Passion Narrative? Not where you wanted me to see you, at the cross, with hammer and nail. I saw you in that wretched baby flaunted before the eyes of our misery-ridden Lord.

The Passion of the Christ is, in every sense of the word, a truly dreadful movie. But --- and this is where Satan really does get into the act --- its producers will be praying joyfully all the way to the bank.