In Reply to: hey ,carol, posted by ray on February 25, 2004 at 15:50:48:
Well...I'm not sure I agree that the crucifixion is THE central event. I believe that the resurrection is THE central event. Without resurrection, the crucifixion is just another story of injustice, human suffering, and man's inhumanity to man.
While it's important to understand the physical suffering of crucifixion, it's also important to put it in context. Jesus lived and died in a brutal age, where beatings and crucifixion were fairly widespread and commonplace in the Roman empire. Most people in the U.S. will never personally experience such a level of brutality--unless they're living in a high-crime area, but even then, drive-by shootings and muggings don't compare to scourging and crucifixion. And death, on the whole, is kept hidden from sight in our culture. It happens in hospitals, hospices, and prisons, not openly out in public.
But the part of the passion story that is accessible to all of us is the relationships: We all experience betrayal, abandoment, and loss during our lives. If Gibson's drama had focused on those elements of the passion, I'd have been more inclined to see it.
I have to be honest: I can't understand how a bloody, brutal death saves me or sets me free from anything. I CAN, however, understand how the experience of betrayal, abandonment, and loss makes Jesus human, and how coming face-to-face with his divine humanity can bring about transformation of the human condition.
I think it is the resurrection that "proves" Jesus' divinity; every other element in the God-made-man theme of the story is secondary to me. I also think that if you have met the resurrected Christ in some way, shape, or form, it transforms you in an irrevocable manner that you cannot deny.
Without getting too off-track here, I also make a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. The Jesus of history was a spiritual teacher, the same teacher Mary meets face-to-face at resurrection and recognizes as Rabboni! And for me, the Jesus of history becomes the Christ of faith through the experience of coming face-to-face with the risen being of my teacher.
For those who see The Passion, I'm wondering: Does it even address the resurrection at all? If so, how is it portrayed?