Since The Passion of the Christ is in theatres...part 1

[noticed by Eric in The Door Magazine's Chat Closet]

It’s a curious thing to consider the immediate versus the underlying causes of Christ’s death. On the one hand, according to the story, he had to die, and he came to offer up his life of his own accord. No one group therefore is inherently culpable for his death. All humanity is collectively guilty since it was our sins that he came to deal with. On the other hand, the biblical account gives a fairly accurate rendition of how an innocent man became the pawn in a game played between two competing power structures.

It’s a fascinating piece of case law. The Jewish high priests can’t condemn a man to death for breaking their own Sabbath laws, but they can insinuate the effects if the Roman rulers don’t execute him. Caiaphas accuses Jesus before Pontius Pilate of the political crime of sedition—if he claims to be King of the Jews, then he won’t pay tribute to Caesar. By implication, Pilate will face a usurper if he does not immediately quell the uprising, and will have to answer to Rome for not executing Jesus.

Christ is not killed by either the Jews or the Romans. He is killed because the Jews don’t want him and the Romans can’t have him. For the Jews, to let him live means harboring a false prophet; for the Romans, continuing his life means freeing a known political terrorist. But these accusations are only tossed by each group at the opposing system of power—Jesus is not guilty of either crime, and this is so whether or not he truly is the messiah. As he says to the former charge, “If I have done wrong, then tell me what I have done,” a question to which his accusers are mute. Of the latter charge he tells Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

The story is so arranged (or so happens) that Christ falls through the cracks of a he-said, she-said argument. In between two competing definitions of justice, Christ falls guilty to neither party, but his death continues to show that true justice is foreign to this world. Guilty of no crime, he is ultimately the “victim” of political necessities much smaller than his own purpose.

--from Metaphilm's review of The Passion of the Christ