[Gottesblog] The Disruption – Larry Beane

The Disruption

There is an online TV series called The Chosen that is about the life of our Lord and His disciples. I decided to watch it and write not so much a formal review as a response of my impression of it. I fully expected it to be bad, given Hollywood and Christian filmmaking in general. But I was pleasantly surprised.

Most confessional Lutherans probably won’t like it - at least not at first glance - but I actually do. I’m well beyond the age of trying to fit in. It is one of the few benefits of getting old.

We Lutherans are often sticklers for historical accuracy, and in many ways, this series accurately conveys the first century Greco-Roman world: the geography, level of technology, the various groups of people and stations in life, etc. Some of my friends who are experts in military uniforms and period fabrics might disagree with me, but from my perspective as a lay observer, the screenplay is convincing and humanizes our typical mental view of the Roman world of marble statues with broken off arms and no irises in the eyes. The ancient Roman world was, in fact, colorful and vibrant, and first century urban life featured roads, shopping complexes, apartments and houses, sports arenas, schools, theaters, marketplaces, brothels, soldiers, government bureaucrats, and families with children. Some people even had running water thanks to Roman technology. Video is a medium that can “colorize” our distant, sanitized, bloodless, and dehumanized mental picture of the ancient world.

But there are non-historical details as well: Jews being portrayed as a multi-racial people (from northern-European-looking whites to African blacks), and women serving in social roles that they would not have had in the first century. While the Roman Empire was certainly multicultural, it is certainly being overplayed in The Chosen. Some of this may be a concession to the modern “woke” sensibilities - a common reality in modern filmmaking that is certainly annoying to me. However, to put a better construction on it, it may also be simple artistic license to appeal to modern viewers who come from a more multicultural way of life than Judea and Samaria of the first century - not to mention being biblically and culturally illiterate.

And this is key to understanding the series. It is not a documentary. It is not a bio-pic. It is, rather, art - and art does not always deal in literalism.

For example, the oldest icon that we have of Jesus is shown above. It is Christ the Pantocrator from St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai. It dates back to the mid sixth century, and is likely a copy of earlier icons that are no longer extant. This particular icon is, like the depiction of our Lord and his environs in The Chosen, both a matter of historical accuracy and of artistic license.

Upon first glance, the icon looks like a photograph. It depicts Jesus in a way that has become common in attempts at realism in illustrating our Lord: a youngish middle-eastern man with dark skin and eyes, bearded, and with a full head of hair. The details of this icon - and others like it - bear a similarity to the man on the Shroud of Turin.

But there is also an artistic deviation from the actual Jesus of history, namely the asymmetrical facial features of our Lord. This is an artistic rendering of the two natures of Christ. Nobody looking at this icon is going to believe that Jesus literally had two different sets of facial features. Moreover, He has a halo over His head, and is holding a book - anachronistically not a scroll, but rather a codex: a modern book with covers and leaves. The icon is an artist’s attempt to convey something about Jesus through the visual arts.

Christian art often makes use of such license, be it iconography or statuary, paintings or stained glass windows. Even passion plays from the middle ages that are still performed today may or may not reflect exact details. The Stations of the Cross that adorn both Roman Catholic churches and very old Lutheran churches take such artistic license in both depiction and narrative. The keys in St. Peter’s hands in medieval statuary are not made to look like first century implements.

When I say that Lutherans are sticklers for historical accuracy, that’s not always true. We tend to like anachronistic woodcuts of biblical illustrations from the 1500s and 1600s showing biblical characters dressed like German nobles and peasants, looking out over medieval castles that bear no resemblance to the clothing and the domiciles of first century Jews.

Some dour Lutherans - of which there are more than a few among the confessional and liturgical crowd - even prefer the old black and white Luther movie with its wooden, melodramatic acting than the more human and colorful Luther film of more recent vintage - even though we all know that the world did not suddenly become colorized in the late 1960s.

And what Lutheran is going to complain of an altarpiece depicting Luther and Melanchthon standing at the cross as our Lord bleeds into a chalice? This is the kind of artistic license The Chosen takes in its depiction of our Lord and His disciples.

So, we do have a tradition within Christianity and within Lutheranism for historical inaccuracy and anachronism for the sake of art.

All of that said, the dramatic portions of The Chosen that reflect actual events from the Gospels are portrayed accurately. Unlike some portrayals of Jesus (in movies and plays) there is no attempt to rewrite biblical text, nor any attempt to portray Jesus as a political figure or hippy libertine. The perspective of the screenwriters is that the Bible is true, that Jesus is both God and Man, and that the Gospels relate actual historical events that were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The main writer is Dallas Jenkins, a believing neo-Evangelical Christian. Jesus is portrayed by Jonathan Roumie, a believing Roman Catholic.

Some of our confessional brethren may grouse that the project wasn’t done by Lutherans, and I would encourage them to get going and start a film company. Unlike Jesus Christ Superstar, this production is done by people who actually believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

The pattern of the episodes is pretty standard. They begin with a flashback - whether to earlier in the character’s life, or to an episode in the Old Testament. Then the story begins in earnest. There are fictionalized backstories that are used to lead up to the biblical material. Obviously, these are not biblical narratives, but are actually quite believable as mini-narratives to fill in the gaps left by Scripture. There is a danger of people thinking that the fictional parts are biblical, which is why at the beginning of the series, the pilot episode explains this, and encourages people to read the Gospel accounts for themselves.

This approach to historical biblical fiction is taken by LCMS scholar and writer the Rev. Dr. Paul Meier - whose methodology is to write fiction that is plausible, and must not be contradictory of any biblical account. This fictionalized dialogue and made-up characters is a filmmaking device that was used in the great 1950s Cecil B. Demille biblical epics. These too were a double-edged sword, blending the Bible with speculation, but on the plus side, the great biblical narratives were in the public mind using the best movie-making technology of the time. I would argue that given the state of biblical illiteracy, we need to have biblical film - and there is no way to have a movie that doesn’t take some artistic liberties. Even Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ made ample use of fictionalized characters and plot to hold the biblical element together.

The Chosen is an introduction to Jesus for a generation that has not grown up attending Sunday School and VBS. It is a way to show people who Jesus is and what He did in His earthly sojourn - a visually pleasing artistic rendering that will hopefully interest people in learning more about the faith.

What I think is especially well done is showing Jesus as a disruptor.

”Disruption” is kind of a buzzword in the world of business and project management today. As technology rapidly changes, the way we work is constantly being disrupted - by things like the Internet, smartphones, and even the Covid pandemic. Rapidly shifting paradigms are foisted upon us quickly and in ways that are sometimes unpredictable. And in the world of business, it is sink or swim, change or be left behind.

The incarnation of our Lord was just such a disruption.

Jesus was not just one more apocalyptic preacher among many. Anyone and anyone who came into contact with Him had (and has) their lives turned upside down. This is, of course, revealed in the Gospels. But the true impact of this disruption is hard to visualize from reading the Gospel texts. We are constantly told that people are “amazed” and “marvel” at Him - but the impact of this amazement is hard to convey in simple Koine Greek words. The preaching, teaching, miracles, and ministry of Jesus were like bombs going off, sending shrapnel everywhere, completely turning everything upside down and inside out. And this impact was universally felt among His disciples, His detractors, the Pharisees, members of the Council, the Romans, the Jews, the Samaritans, the lepers, the multitudes gathered to hear Him speak, the angels, the demons, the sick and afflicted, the prideful, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the mothers and fathers, the children, the family members of everyone who witnessed our Lord’s signs and wonders, in the synagogue, in the temple, in the marketplace, at the dinner table - everyone and everywhere our Lord touched became indelibly changed.

The Chosen does a magnificent job of this, humanizing the reactions of people who are seeing the miracle of the Incarnation in real time. The emotional responses of the people who are forgiven, healed, and brought into the kingdom are extremely believable and powerful.

The portrayal of our Lord is also well-done. He doesn’t come across as a 1970s stoner as in The Greatest Story Ever Told. He isn’t a confused and tragic figure like in Jesus Christ, Superstar. He isn’t wooden or aloof. But nor is he a buffoon or clown. He is deadly serious when teaching about the kingdom, but He also has a playful side, at ease with all kinds of people, and displaying a dry sense of humor. His compassion is not sappy or effeminate, but manly and entirely believable.

The disciples’ characters are delightfully complex - just as real people are. There is a backstory of Peter and Andrew resorting to desperate measures to raise money to pay the crippling Roman taxes - which leads to the Lord’s miracle of the massive catch of fish when Peter was about to lose everything. As part of this narrative, Matthew, the despised tax collector, who is portrayed as a bit autistic, with a bit of OCD - witnesses things that his logical mind cannot conceive, and he abruptly leaves his cushy job with the Romans - which also made Him hated by the Jews. Matthew is later seen with his old ledger, writing things down as He follows Jesus.

I do think the Mary Magdalene character is overplayed, as she is portrayed a little too closely to being one of the twelve, in my opinion. But season one has just ended, and at this point in the narrative, our Lord hasn’t even called all of His inner circle of disciples who will become apostles. We will have to see how her character is played out. In The Gospel of John, an otherwise well-done movie that uses the conversational NLT translation as the script itself, includes our Lord laying hands on Mary with the disciples after His resurrection.

One of the best characters is Nicodemus. His nighttime meeting with Jesus is beautifully portrayed, showing the complexity of Nicodemus’s position as “the teacher of Israel” who is so close to the kingdom. The John 3 dialogue is faithful to the text, while conveying the human element of the interplay between our Lord and the conflicted Nicodemus - whose life has been forever disrupted by Jesus.

This episode begins with a flashback to Moses and the bronze serpent, as our Lord refers back to this incident in His John 3 meeting with Nicodemus.

The incident of our Lord and the Samaritan woman at the well is also well-done. That episode begins with a fictionalized backstory of her life, and why she was alone at the well in the heat of the day and not in the morning with a group of other women to draw water. Again, it is a reasonable reconstruction of possible events.

As Christianity becomes further and further in the rear-view mirror in our culture and society, as the church is pressed to the margins and expelled from impolite society, as cancel culture spreads and the institutions of society become increasingly hostile to the Gospel, we do well to go on the counterattack, to place modern-day icons in the view of those who need to hear the Good News, indeed, those who need to come to know Jesus. The Chosen is one arrow in the quiver of the Church’s arsenal.

The first episode of season two was released on Easter Sunday. It begins with a flash-forward to John writing his Gospel and interviewing various disciples, as well as his adopted mother, Mary, as research for his Gospel. In this episode, we see a fictionalized account of John reflecting on the creation narrative and coming up with the prologue to his Gospel.

You can watch The Chosen free of charge by downloading the app. The project is being crowdsourced, and season two is underway. If you have the app and a streaming device, such as Roku, you can watch it on your TV. It is fitting that disruptive technology should play a part in the disruption of having our Lord Jesus Christ invade the living rooms and smart phones of those who don’t know Him.

And when you remember that you are not looking at a photograph, but rather an icon - you will avoid the temptation to become fixated on anachronisms while overlooking the core narrative.

Let us pray that this series will lead people to the Word and to gathering with the Church, to Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, to hearing the Gospel proclaimed in the Church! May this “moving icon” likewise show forth His two natures, His disruption of Satan and his doomed dominion over this fallen world, and may it show forth our Lord’s ministry of forgiveness, life, and salvation!

Here is a link to Season One’s trailer - with instructions for streaming to your television. And here is a link to Season Two’s trailer.