Word: jesus
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...something absolutely had to happen is to imagine what it would be like if it had happened in some other way. That is what David Gray is doing in a comfortable Geneva, Ill., living room with six other men from his church. They are, as it were, brainstorming Jesus' death. "What if God's plan were that Jesus comes to earth," asks Gray, "and he does these teachings and he talks nice. You know, 'Love your enemy ...' And then he is taken away and not killed. Why in God's plan did he have to suffer like this...
...word I would add to this discussion," says a third. "Obedience. [Jesus] was totally obedient...
...movie, of course, is The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's version of Jesus' final hours on earth--which, since it opened on Ash Wednesday, has been seen by more than 30 million people. It is now Holy Week, and across the country over the next seven days even more people will be talking about Christ's Passion. In the U.S. alone, tens of millions will attend church and participate in services that relive the death and Resurrection of the Messiah. For a certain sector of the public, the seasonal spirit has been further enhanced by the publication...
...Christ has certainly done its bit to combat Christianity lite. The film's stance on atonement could best be described as substitutionary (that initial Isaiah quote sets the theme) with a strong dose of Catholic Passion piety (the very gory details), a pinch of exemplarism (the flashbacks to Jesus' teachings) and those sulfurous whiffs of the ancient good-vs.-evil model. In other words, an understanding almost as eclectic as the average American's. Will it convince anyone of any particular philosophy? Perhaps not, but it is a reminder that the question of why Jesus died requires some sort...
...dire valley of Good Friday. When the Roman Catholics among them hear the priest recite the verse from Isaiah--"He was wounded for our transgressions ... by his stripes we are healed"--they may remember that it was with those words that Gibson commenced his reimagining of the scourging of Jesus. When many Lutherans engage in the meditative adoration of the Cross and when congregants at even the least liturgical Protestant churches sing, "Let the water and the blood/From Thy wounded side which flowed/Be of sin the double cure," they too may more vividly imagine the Cross and the blood...