24 April 2019
Holy Week, Unholy Deeds
China and Sri Lanka.
By Neil Tidmarsh
This week the History Channel announced a new eight-part drama series – Jesus: His Life. It’s the latest in the plethora of movies and TV dramas which have retold the Gospel story in the last fifty years – the huge number of them suggests that the story may well be The Greatest Story Ever Told, as claimed by the 1965 movie of that name (yes, that’s the one where the director urged John Wayne, playing the centurion, to give his single line ‘more awe’; Big John obliged with “Aw, surely he was the son of God!”).
Christians would argue that the greatness of the story comes from its truth, and its metaphorical truth is evident to many who are not Christians. Either way, many people involved or interested in the art or craft of story-telling have recognised its narrative power and have tried to harness it, less overtly, for more mundane purposes. Most famously, the movie ET the Extra-Terrestrial told the story of an innocent, peaceful but superior being descending from heaven, suffering persecution, dying and coming back to life and finally returning triumphantly to heaven. Most recently, the story of the second Blade Runner movie revolved round an impossible birth, the miraculous birth of someone destined to become the saviour of his (or – spoiler alert – her) people.
Whether the power of the Gospel story comes from its literal truth or from its philosophical truth or simply from the story-telling skills of its writers (the Evangelists were clearly very familiar with classical Greek drama, which reminds me – the makers of that new Blade Runner movie nicked the Oedipus story as well), it continues to resonate in the real world in all kinds of ways.
Last year, Isis claimed a string of atrocities (ten people killed in an attack on a church in Egypt, forty-one students killed in an attack on a community centre in Afghanistan, fourteen shoppers injured by a bomb in a supermarket in Russia) between Christmas and New Year, just happening to coincide with Holy Innocents Day which commemorates the Slaughter of the Innocents, the infanticide unleashed by Herod’s attempt to murder the newborn Jesus.
Two weeks ago, just in time for Easter, reports from China announced that the authorities in the city of Guangzhou are offering financial rewards to anyone who denounces / betrays / informs on members and organisers of ‘underground churches’, i.e. religious groups or meetings not authorised by the state. Rewards vary from 100 yuan to 10,000 yuan (two month’s average salary) depending on the type of information (evidence of foreign involvement is the most valuable) and the level of cooperation with subsequent police investigations. Different reports have confusingly converted these sums of yuan to differing sterling or dollar values, but – whatever the sum – they all convert into the thirty pieces of silver which the Greatest Story tells us were paid to Judas Iscariot by the authorities for betraying Jesus to them on the eve of Good Friday. The authorities in Guangzhou might not be aware of the irony or coincidence of their timing, but members of those underground churches are sure to know that Judas came to regret it, throwing those thirty pieces back at the authorities after the crucifixion and then hanging himself.
And this week, of course, in Sri Lanka, on Easter Day itself, the day when Christians commemorate the ultimate sacrifice, the death of the innocent son of God, at least three hundred and twenty one people were murdered in attacks on churches full of worshippers and on hotels full of innocent holiday-makers.
What can one say when the Greatest Story Ever Told comes so terribly alive? Can one say anything, apart from noting that evil is as present now as it was two thousand years ago (the Greatest Story’s “greater love has no man than to lay down his life so that others may live” being horribly perverted by the suicide bomber’s tactic of laying down his life so that others may die)? Can the story’s argument of resurrection following death, of disaster following triumph, continue to convince in the face of such shocking reality?
Its survival over two thousand years suggests that it can. It’s almost a Darwinian thing. There would be no underground churches in China, no one would risk the dangers, if faith and belief didn’t work in some very practical way. Whatever the spiritual or theological truth behind the Greatest Story, an objective look at history shows that it does work, on a real and temporal level, in helping human beings to build and sustain a functioning society in the here and now (never mind the hereafter) in the face of those forces – anger, hatred, violence, etc. – which threaten them with chaos.
Many Christians would say that that’s not exactly the point, but either way let’s hope that the Greatest Story will indeed help to comfort the survivors and the families and friends of the victims of those attacks in Sri Lanka this Easter.
