Crucifixion

I just got back home from a day trip when I saw that Channel 7 is playing Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. I saw the pirated DVD version back in Indonesia over two or three (or even four?) years ago. It was a kind of contradictive, because watching pirated version is considered as morally wrong. However it is not my intention to discuss about ethics of watching pirated DVD here.

This movie is so vulgar that it created a big controversy after its launching. Some said that it is too violently described the tortures, blood and wounded of Jesus the man. It is a blood shed movie that tries to portray a truly bloodshed event, so I wondered where is the problem. Some others suspected that it may create an anti-Semitic sentiment toward Jewish who were portrayed as the killer (not clear though, since Jesus Himself is a Jewish). I was wondering why there were no worries about the possibility of an uprising of anti-Roman and anti-religiousity as well, since they were mainly the cause of His death. Or, an anti-commodification sentiment, since Jesus was traded, commodified by Judas Iscariot, His disciple, the treasurer of the group, who traded Jesus’ life to the religious leaders at the cost of 30 silver coins.

Jesus’s crucifixion is a story of critique to any kind of established, corrupted systems. And it was played in both level of life, public and private. In public level, the political setting of Roman empire’s colony in Palestine (with its representative and smaller puppet kings) tangled with religious setting of Jewish as a strict, established religion whose people were expecting for a freedom from prolonged colonization. The power game was played obviously. Pilate who knew that Jesus is innocent, but was under pressure by Caiaphas who played his first card. He knows Pilate’s deep fear: threat from Caesar to dismantle his political power over the area. Caiaphas’ second card, the mass. He used the mass to pressurize Pilate to release Barabbas, a zealot, and exchange him with Jesus as a detainee.

In private level, Pilate, who was warned by his wife about Jesus’ innocence, was afraid that something bad will happen to his family if he persecutes Jesus. Judas as an inner ring of the disciples thought that 30 silver coins is something, and perhaps (some interpretation said this) that by putting Jesus in the corner, He will show that He is truly a Messiah, who will free Israel as a nation from Roman colonial power, physically. And there a public expectation, that this street Rabbi will turn into a military general, who will lead a rebel against Roman colonial (Jesus might have started to disappoint them when He came into Jerusalem riding a slow, young, donkey, and not a big, powerful and well trained cavalery horse). See how many realms are portrayed in this big epic: economic, politics, social (incl. religion), and ethics. They overlapped in this story, that portrayed how complicated human-made system that comprises civilization have been developed and at one point tangled in a complicated way to prepare the way the Son of a man should die. It is a big show of a humiliation. Total public embarassment. These small powers on earth were playing their own cards over the real Power Holder of the universe, without realizing it. As if they knew, world’s and humankind history might have been different, very different that I don’t have suffice imagination to imagine it. It is beyond my capacity to interpret it, I must admit.

Quiet Saturday 2009