My dad sent me an interesting article today that discusses the most important difference between The Passion of the Christ and the Gospel: the Gospel glosses over all the suffering. While Passion will probably do a great job at depicting how terrible a thing to die on a cross would be, the Gospels themselves don’t focus on it. It wasn’t until many years later that Christian rhetoric centered on the suffering instead of the sacrifice.
[To focus on the details of the crucifixion] would be as odd as welcoming home a wounded soldier, and instead of focusing on the victory he won, dwelling on the exact moment the bayonet pierced his stomach, how it felt and what it looked like. A human soldier might well feel annoyed with such attention to his weakness rather than his strength. He would feel that it better preserved his dignity for visitors to avert their eyes from such details, and recount that part of the story as scantly as possible to focus instead on the final achievement.
This is the sense we pick up in the Gospels. Jesus’ suffering is rendered in the briefest terms, as if drawing about it a veil of modesty. What’s important is not that Jesus suffered for us, but that Jesus suffered for us.
Of course, the film’s purpose is to tell the story to modern audiences for whom suffering is an integral part of the tale, but the fact that it wasn’t at the time is interesting. Since the suffering is now such a big part of the Passion, I wonder if one could say that it doesn’t mean the same thing it did 2000 years ago. And if it doesn’t, wouldn’t that bring huge theological consequences if our culture has rewritten the single focal point for our faith? Are we getting it wrong?