Glenda Simms
TYRONE REID, in the March 28, 2004 edition of The Sunday Gleaner reported that more than 30 churches had already rented Palace Amusement Cinemas in order to facilitate their followers' viewing of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.
Mr. Reid also quoted Mr. Douglas Graham, chairman of Palace Amusement Company, who observed that the movie has caused many church-goers to be moved spiritually and emotionally and that they expressed these feelings in many 'Amens and Hallelujahs'.
Obviously Mel Gibson's movie has done what many parsons and priests had not been able to do on a regular basis. He has, according to the Palace Amusement spokesperson, some "Christians huddling together in spiritual introspection and reflection".
The hype and excitement around Mel Gibson's movie have also motivated me to think back on the ideas about Easter and the last moments of Christ's life that impacted on my childhood.
DISTINCTIONS IN THE CHURCH
I was raised by a great-grandmother who was a "solid pillar of the local Anglican Church (back then it was the Church of England).
Great-Grandma not only attended her church every Sunday, she also helped to clean and decorate the front section, especially on those Sundays when the "real" parson preached and administered Holy Communion. On other Sundays, the headmaster preached and the overall involvement of the church-goers was scaled down.
Of course when "parson preached" all the "rich" and "almost white" folks who lived in the big houses in Malvern and its environs also came to church and sat in "their shiny pews".
As a child, I had a clear attitude about these distinctions in the church. I also had a strong response to the many observances that characterised the Anglican approach to the Scriptures and to the worship of God.
I knew then that I did not enjoy the rituals and stories that explained the happenings on Good Friday.
My great-grandmother believed that in order to show our appreciation of the life of Christ we should not make a fire or eat while, in her words, "Jesus was on the cross".
She convinced me that it was necessary for me, a child, to endure the pangs of hunger until 12:00 p.m. when, in her words, "they took Jesus off the cross".
From the earliest hours of Good Friday to noon, my great-grandmother would read the entire story of Christ's torture, abuse and eventful "death on the cross".
I remember being horrified and scared by the images that only a child's imagination could make real. I knew then, as I know now, that a murderous mob jeered, beat and stabbed Jesus Christ to death. I remember thinking of the pain, the grief and the blood and I couldn't wait for my ancestor to stop reading about the gory details of that Good Friday long past.
My fondest memory of the Good Fridays of my childhood was the moment when I was allowed to break my fast and rush to the nearest sword-rose tree to tap the bark and see red sap that I was told was the "blood of Jesus" because it was this tree that was used to make the cross to which he was nailed.
No movie by Mel Gibson can rival the horribly violent pictures which my childhood imagination painted each Good Friday as I listened to the story of the last hours of Jesus' life.
My responses dovetailed with the psychologist Jean Piaget's Concrete Operational stage which described how children mentally represent and reason about the world.
VIEWS ON 'PASSION'
It is for this reason that I am intrigued by the passions that are expressed around one film.
Don Retson, staff writer of the Edmonton Journal discussed the divided opinions on the Passion's potential for evangelism in the February 28, 2004 edition of his newspaper.
Retson quoted several pastors and religious leaders. Some see the movie as a "Godsend" which will help them to share the "good news".
Still others hope that the movie will have "a very positive effect in bringing people to Christ".
Others stated opposing views on the value of the film. Retson quoted Professor John Hull, the head of the education department at King's University College. Hull was not inspired by Mel Gibson's multi-million dollar effort. He argued that "the film portrayed gross violence to the point of nausea".
Hull's sentiment has been echoed by a wide cross-section of religious leaders in North America. By the same token the opposite view is held by many others who argue that even if the graphic violence was hard to take "the point of the film is that the suffering of Christ was horrific".
It is this latter view that coincides with my "concrete operations" stage of cognitive development. Perhaps Mel Gibson also understood the violence of Jesus' death at a very early stage in his life.
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
It is also interesting to note that while the theologians are arguing about the evangelical merits of the Gibson film, others like David Gibson who wrote in the New York Times, asks questions about the authenticity of the physical portrayal of Jesus in the Passion.
He described Mel Gibson's Jesus "as a Hollywood hunk who probably bears little resemblance to what Jesus of history looked like."
Apparently, the historical period and the ethnicity of the Nazarene were not those of the Passion's Jesus a role which is played by Jim Caviezel "a dark-haired, blue-eyed star with brooding good looks".
Obviously Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is giving new energy to historians, artists, philosophers and ordinary Christians who need to reclaim the true meaning of Easter and refocus the season's passions away from "bun and cheese" and the "Easter bunny".
Dr. Glenda Simms is the executive director of the Bureau of Women's Affairs.
