Ready for My Close Up

     It really does not matter what you think of Mel Gibson these days. He has had some bad years lately. He has come so far from the days that he was on the screen playing Benjamin Martin in the Patriot, William Wallace in Brave heart, Martin Riggs in the Lethal Weapon series, or even Mad Max Rockatansky in Beyond Thunder dome.

     You would be justified if you did not like him for his behavior, for the domestic abuse charge or the anti Semitic screed that have plagued his later life. It would be easy to discount the whole body of his work based on these incidents alone. However, even if you do not like him and would not see him in another film, every Christian owes him a debt of gratitude for his work on the Passion of the Christ.

     Watching this film has become a yearly event around Easter. The raw nature of the film can bring the audience to near rapture allowing the watcher an understanding of the crucifixion that most will never realize through their Christian life. Maybe it is a case of God using Balaam’s Ass again but he deserves credit for making one of the most important Christian movies since the Ten Commandments.    

    There is one scene that is the most impressive scene in the whole movie. It is not a scene that really stands out that much, it is not the scourging, it is not the betrayal in the Garden, it is not the trip up the Via Delarosa but because of the way that it was filmed it is the most important scene in the entire film. 

     In the scene we see Jim Caviezel playing Jesus being lowered onto the cross piece of the cross. The arm and hands of the centurions wrestle our Saviors hands into place as one set of hands come into view with the nails and hammer. We catch a glimpse of the hammer descending towards the nail and then cut away to the underside of the beam as the nail pierces through it.

     I do not want to concentrate on the brutal act of the crucifixion, we could fix our attention on the bloodied body, the ripped skin, the ravaged person of Jesus but it would not be the part that I am talking about. Do not get me wrong every second of the crucifixion is important, every lash of the whip, every drop of blood is necessary for us to realize exactly what Jesus did for us on the cross. What I want to concentrate on are those hands holding the nail and the hammer.

     Mel Gibson wanted to make a statement with this film; his statement, though veiled, was those hands. We never see the face of the people who play the centurions in that scene; the most important thing is the act that those hands performed, the actual crucifixion.  We are led to assume that those hands could belong to anyone. But the hands that we see are Mel’s own hands.

     The statement that he wanted to make was that he was responsible for Jesus’ Crucifixion and death. He wanted to say that it was his sins that nailed Jesus to the cross. Like him or not he is right, like him or not, it is a statement that each of us needs to take to heart. Each of us owns a part of the crucifixion, each of us nailed Him to the cross. We all should be on that cross, a righteous God demands it. We have all committed cosmic treason and are deserving of death. A loving God took our place dying for us. He paid the price we could not pay to receive the life we did not deserve. Our sins nailed him there, our hands held the hammer, our hands held the nail. 

Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Self Less

     Early in my Christian Walk, and when I say early I mean in the first few months of my conversion, I was faced with the very first real dilemma of my faith. It did not help that I was still very new to the Christian life; I was still trying to figure out what it meant to be a Christian. All I knew was that I wanted to be obedient to Christ. Christ had offered me a changed life, a life that held meaning and purpose, and I meant to have it.

     During one Sunday night service the pastor told us that one of our greatest needs as a Christian was to “Die to self.” Twelve years later these words still cause me to shiver. That night I was beside myself. On the one hand I knew that this was one of those habits that a Christian should know, but for me I had no idea of what it meant to die to self. I had been listening to the sermon; I knew that the Apostle Paul had admonished the Galatians to die to self. Paul had even given himself as the example by telling his audience that “I die daily.” But how was I going to add this to my spiritual repertoire, the spiritual novice that I was.

     By the end of the service I was in tears, literally in tears. My whole life had been lived with me on center stage. I had lived a life dedicated to fulfilling my own desires. Even when I did a “selfless act,” I did it with the thought, what’s in it for me. I was singing in the key of me. Me, Me, Me, Me… To die to myself was alien to me I had no idea even where you would start. After the service I made my way down to the front pew and waited to talk with the pastor. All I could say was, “I don’t know how.”

     He did not so much answer the question as he did pose a different one. His question is the same as the one that I pose to you,”How close do you want to be to God?”  There are two different types of Christian, well really three. The first is the cultural Christian; the I’m a Christian because my parents were Christians. The second is the kind I did not want to be, the Christian who goes through their Christian life as if it were something to check off of their list for the week or something that they do out of guilt. Then there is the one I want to be, a sold out, born again, son of the throne, Jesus freak. A real, “Honk if you love Jesus” follower of Christ.

     How far you want to go with Christ will determine how well you will be able to die to self.   Paul says I am dead, but yet I live, yet it is not I, but Christ that lives in me.  Allowing Christ to live in you is the process of dying to self. To live for Christ is to let his will be our will, conforming our desires to the desires of Christ to the point where nothing else matters, not our wants and not our desires.  

     It is in the Christians nature to desire the will of God in their lives. Do not fool yourself though. We are commanded to die to self; we are commanded to present ourselves as living sacrifices but the natural man cannot do either. As the Old preacher said; the problem with living sacrifices is that they keep getting off the alter. Our baser nature keeps us from doing what we want to do, that which we are supposed to do. Paul said that he also had a hard time with this also, He said; “I die daily.” It was not something that he did once and then never had to do again, it was a daily thing that he did. For us it may have to be an hourly thing but over time it will get easier. What God commands he will equips us with what we need to accomplish his will. As we grow as Christians and we grow closer to God, relying on Him, we learn to die to ourselves and to the world that preaches self above all else.