The Trial - Luke 22:63 - 23:25

The Trial - Luke 22:63 - 23:25

Jesus accepted the arrest, the beatings, the   mockery, the insults, the accusations, the questions, and the miscarriage of   justice that were all heaped upon him. He did not try to defend himself, did   not try to remove himself from the situation, did not try to lessen the   humiliation in any way. He took what he knew was coming to him, willingly,   though he did not deserve any of it. In the previous passage Jesus said that   he would be “numbered amongst the transgressors”, quoting Isa 53, and this is   happening in this passage. Jesus identified utterly here with sinful humanity   and took upon himself the consequence of sin, though he himself had never   sinned.

 

After the story of Jesus’ arrest and Peter’s denial,   we catch a glimpse of the mockery and physical punishment Jesus had to   endure. The soldiers blindfolded and beat Jesus in order to make it clear   they did not accept him as a prophet.    This was all part of the rejection of Jesus’ identity that would   happen throughout the trial and execution. What Jesus experienced here was in   a way totally unique, but in another way it connects him to all those who   have suffered at the hands of violence. Anyone who has ever been beaten or   abused or falsely convicted by those in authority can say that Jesus, the Son   of God, has also been unjustly beaten and abused and falsely convicted.   Anyone who has ever been mocked, ridiculed and rejected can say that Jesus,   the Son of God, has also been mocked, ridiculed and rejected. Anyone who has   ever faced imprisonment, torture and execution at the hands of the state can   say that Jesus, the Son of God, also faced imprisonment, torture and   execution at the hands of the state.

 

Jesus was taken before the Sanhedrin, composed   of the chief priests, the elders and the teachers of the law. There he was   questioned about being the Messiah. Jesus could not answer no to this   question, but also knew that his questioners’ understanding of what the Messiah was and   his own were very, very different. So he answered in a way that pushed the   inquiry in a new direction. In calling himself the “Son of Man”, and speaking   of being seated at the right hand of God, he directed the Sanhedrin towards   the realisation that he was claiming not just to be the Messiah, but to be   the Son of God. The right hand is a place of honour and glory, and it   indicated a much higher position than just that of Messiah. To claim to be   the Messiah was one thing; you might be wrong, but you would not be   blasphemous. But to claim to be the Son of God was certainly blasphemous, and   it signalled the end of the Sanhedrin’s questions. They did not need any more   evidence to find Jesus guilty.

 

So Jesus was taken to Pilate, because Rome had not   given subjected people (as the Jews were in Judea) the right to execute   criminals. Only the Roman authority could have someone put to death. But the   Roman authority would not see blasphemy in the Jewish religion as the kind of   offence that should lead to execution, so Jesus was accused of subversion and   refusing to pay taxes to Caesar, charges that would weigh more heavily in the   Roman court. But Pilate could not apply these charged to Jesus, and thus did   not want to find him guilty. So he passed the buck to Herod, in whose   territory (Galilee) Jesus had begun his ministry (this was acceptable to do   under Roman law, but Herod could not give an order to have Jesus executed).

 

Herod (one of the grown children of the King Herod   who featured in Jesus’ birth story), was known as a frivolous man, not a   serious-minded ruler. He was happy to meet Jesus because Jesus was famous,   and he wanted to see a miracle. When Jesus would not answer his questions,   let alone produce a miracle for him, Herod became disinterested. He was only   interested in Jesus for the novelty factor, for something exotic or unusual   that he could show him. Many people today are still only interested in Jesus   for the miraculous that might occur, or for the benefit they might get, not   for the actual Kingdom he brings. In the presence of true royalty, in the   presence of the Son of God, Herod could only make jokes and mockery.

 

So Jesus is returned once again to Pilate, who still does not wish to find Jesus guilty. This is not because Pilate was some kind and enlightened ruler, or that the Romans were more humane. Pilate proves his character later by agreeing to torture and execute a man whom he believes to be innocent, in order to make life easier on himself by giving the angry crowd what they wanted. But Pilate did not want to execute Jesus because the charges laid against him, those of subversion and undermining Rome, clearly did not fit. Those charges did, however, fit when applied to a man like Barabbas, who was facing execution for insurrection and murder. Here was a man who deserved to die, according to the law. And yet when given the choice, the crowd in the square asked for Barabbas to be released, not Jesus. (This was due to the influence of a small number of people in authority who had chosen against the Kingdom of God and who therefore wanted Jesus to be killed, no matter what). Barabbas, a guilty man whose name means “son of the father”, was therefore released, and Jesus, an innocent man who really was the Son of the Father, was sentenced to death. Barabbas was, in a way, saved from the consequences of his sins by the presence of Jesus. This can be seen as a symbol for the greater salvation Jesus was about to effect upon the cross.

March Movie Reviews: Horror, Documentaries, Viking Stuff, Critiques of Capitalism and Indian National Mythology (with Dancing)!

 Here are the movies I was able to watch in March:

Ikiru (1952): Ikiru, which means “to live”, is a Kurosawa masterpiece about a man who learns to live in the face of soulless bureaucracy, civil politics, officious functionality (or rather, dysfunctionality). The movie begins with the information that a senior civil worker - Public Works Section Chief Mr Watanabe - is about to discover the stomach cancer that will kill him. We witness him at his desk, slowly, methodically stamping paperwork with his seal, changing nothing, accomplishing nothing, keeping his position secure by allowing for no alteration. (One of his younger workers has nicknamed him The Mummy.) Meanwhile, a group of mothers demand a park to be built and the removal of open sewage in their neighbourhood. They are promptly given the runaround through all of the city works departments, in a kafkaesque labyrinth nightmare of public irresponsibility. It is the same theme we see explored decades later in the Tojo movie Shin Gojira, in which Japanese politics and bureaucracy prevent actual, essential decisions and actions from being made. The focus in this movie, however, is less on a giant rubber monster bent on destroying Tokyo, and more on an elderly man who comes to experience life for the first time in a long time. At his funeral, which is interspersed with scenes of Watanabe pressuring the local city government officials to get the impossible park built, politicians argue over who should really get the credit for the accomplishment. It is only the group of mothers from the beginning, for whom Mr Watanabe expended his last energy, who come in and grieve his death, shaming his workmates and family. None of them can understand the sudden change that came over Watanabe - some attribute it to a love affair (he does spend time with a young woman who is full of life, but it is not a romance). The change occurs after Watanabe discovers he will die, to which the writer who takes him out for a night of debauchery proclaims: “How tragic that man can never realise how beautiful life is until he is face to face with death.” But the change is truly crystallised when Watanabe decides to spend himself on behalf of others, not to serve the bureaucratic system, but to serve instead the women and their families who were suffering. Eventually some of the civil servants at the funeral discern that Watanabe changed and lived because he knew he was going to die, and they proclaim that they would do the same thing. But one of them says: “But any of us could die at any moment.” So what is stopping them from living, and from living for others? This is a vital and beautiful message for our day and age. 

Memory: The Origins of Alien (2019): On the 40th anniversary of the release of the iconic space horror, this documentary looks back at its creation. It follows the inspiration of the writer, Dan O’Bannon, the director, Ridley Scott, and the primary artist, H.R. Giger. Alien is presented as an amalgam of myths, drawn from the cultural “cauldron of stories”. So we have the Furies and the Oracle at Delphi; Egyptian mythology; mediaeval demons; Lovecraft’s weird fiction; comic books and 1950s-60s space movies; the horrors of nature such as parasitic wasps; and the guilt of a misogynistic culture all coming together to create a monstrous threat that we all felt deep in our subconscious. They focus quite a bit on the chest-buster scene, naturally, as it was a huge transformation point not just in the movie, but in movies in general. There was a lot of background info that I hadn’t known before, so this was a really fun watch.

Gilbert (2017): Wow. A behind-the-scenes look at one of the strangest, most unique, funniest and in some ways saddest comics ever. Gilbert Gottfried, who died in 2022, was very improbably married with two children. The documentary looks at this strange family life, alongside Gilbert’s birth family, the start of his career, his cheapness, the trouble he got in with certain jokes and tweets, and the universal love and esteem he received from other comedians. Lots of dirty jokes in the movie, as is to be expected.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014): My favourite Persian black and white vampire movie of all time. I had seen this one before when it was in theatre, and I remember it being incredibly cool, a little gory, and featuring one entirely bloodless scene that was amongst the scariest I had ever seen. The movie holds up. It is a mix of 1950’s American cool, Spaghetti Western,1980’s pop/skater culture, modern Iranian life, female empowerment, tense love story and Vampire chic, with the perfect soundtrack. The central image is of a youngish girl, wearing a hijab (which is a remarkable replacement for the traditional vampiric cape), out on the streets at night. This is normally a time of incredible vulnerability and danger for women and girls in all cultures, modern Iran included. This vulnerability is highlighted by the juxtaposition of the Girl with an abused, cheated, and depressed prostituted woman. The juxtaposition is so powerful because the Girl is not at all vulnerable; she is the danger in the night, and she stalks mainly those who have been preying upon women, and who believe her to be an easy target. An excellent reversal and subversion of the genre, and well worth the time if you are into that kind of thing. Directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, starring Sheila Vand, and executive produced in part by Elijah Wood (Frodo).

The Northman (2022): The Swedish/Icelandic viking story at the heart of both Hamlet and The Lion King, but with a lot more blood. Directed by Robert Eggers, who has previously helmed excellent, fantastical and dark movies such as The Lighthouse and The Witch, this movie combines real life violence with the raw elements of Norse religion - seers, Norns, Valkyries, the World Tree, and Valhalla. It is the well-versed but still fresh-seeming story of a young boy whose father, the king, is killed by the king’s half-brother. The new king takes his brother’s wife for his Queen, and tries to kill the boy, who escapes. The boy’s life is now bent upon revenge, and he gains an awful lot of muscle and fighting ferocity in order to accomplish it several years later. Egger’s best talent may be creating an atmosphere that melds myth, confusion and realistic humanity. To the end, Bjork plays a seer.

Triangle of Sadness (2022): A crazy movie. Begins with a scathing take down of the male modelling industry, moves into an awkward set of conversations about money and gender roles, then changes the setting to a luxury yacht where horrible people play out class system dynamics until everyone starts vomiting. We then end up on what seems to be an abandoned island with part of the shipwrecked yacht passengers, and where the class dynamics are overturned by one of the unseen crew who actually knows how to do stuff to survive. But then class and power dynamics are subverted one final time. It is a trip, a little disjointed, but definitely with something to say. Warning - an awful lot of vomit.

RRR (2022): I’m not completely sure what I just watched. I know it was my first Telugu-language movie (dubbed into Hindi and with English subtitles). I know it was over three hours long, and included at least two huge, long dance scenes and several very long and massive fight sequences. I also know it was an over the top, gloriously absurd action movie based (very loosely) upon real-life revolutionaries against British Imperial rule in India. It also seemed to be a pretty blatant piece of Hindu-nationalist propaganda, much of which I would have missed had I not been watching with an Indian friend who was able to pick up on the worrying elements with ease. The English characters and dialogue were, frankly, ridiculous and utterly one dimensional, but this perhaps makes up for decades of English writers creating frankly ridiculous and one dimensional Indian characters. It is certainly watchable and entertaining, but you should go in with your eyes open, aware that it’s extremely violent, and ends with as nationalistic a song as you could imagine.

Kubrick by Kubrick (2020): Based upon an extremely rare taped interview of the notoriously reclusive master-director, Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick speaks about his films, his process, his actors, his themes, and art in general, and his words are accompanied by scenes from his oeuvre of movies. Having seen most of Kubrick’s films, this was a fascinating glimpse into the mind of the perfectionistic auteur.

March Book Reviews: Theology, Fantasy, Sci-fi, Prayer, and Kafka!

 Here are the books I managed to read in the month of March:

The Life of Moses, Gregory of Nyssa: The classic narrative and interpretation of Moses’ life, taught by the Nyssan for the development of virtue. Gregory relates Moses’ history in the first part, and in the second devotes his considerable learning and intuition to explaining, through analogy, how the events of Moses’ life speak to us today. In particular he describes how the various symbols and actions are forms that point to Christ, and to the way we are to walk with Christ.

The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman: The Graveyard Book might actually be my favourite Gaiman story, and that is really saying something. I read it first as a graphic novel, and have read it a number of times now as the full novel, and each time I am transported into a dark but loving world on the boundaries of life and death. Gaiman has a way of subverting expectation, of taking the ones we perceive as monsters (and who ARE monsters) and revealing them to be capable of great kindness and good, while also showing the evil that can lurk in the recesses of the human heart. Gaiman does not shy away from this human darkness, be it the organised, millenia-long evil of the Jacks of all Trades (a delicious and absurd invention), or the very real evil of school bullies (reminiscent of Stephen King's IT), or the pettiness of graveyard ghosts who still want to be proved right and important. Bod Owens is a wonderful character, the straight man to the ghosts, ghouls, and guardians at play around him. Miss Lupescu, and even more, Silas, are the real standouts here, though, as part of the Honour Guard (a Vampire and a Hound of Heaven). I'm not sure I have ever read another work in which the potential nobility of these characters has been so beautifully depicted. 

Binti, Nnedi Okorafor: The story of a young Himba girl, from Earth, who is the first of her people to be admitted to Oomza Uni, an off-planet, multi-race university. She is a genius in maths, currents and harmonizing, but her people do not like outsiders and do not leave the planet, so her journey is a risk. On her way to the university her ship is attacked by the Meduse, a gaseous, jelly-fish-like species that hates humans. There has been a truce between the races, but someone at Oomza Uni took their chief’s stinger and put it in their museum. Binti is the only survivor of the attack, because of her strange edan (and unknown piece of seemingly dead tech) and her otjize, the clay and oil from her land with which she covers her skin and hair. These two things protect her and enable her to communicate with the Meduse, and hopefully to resolve the tense situation once they arrive at the University. I really like Okorafor’s work, and I know there are more in this series which I will read. My only issue is that the murders of all of Binti’s fellow student passengers seems to go unremarked and unresolved in the final analysis, which seems an oversight. 

The Vorrh, Brian Catling: The Vorrh is the ancient forest - essentially Eden - that inhabits the heart of Africa in this magical realistic fantasy novel. This book is very, very strange, wonderfully written, with a vast host of characters engaged in seemingly disparate adventures, but all of which relate in some way or another to the Vorrh. The forest cannot be accessed for too long or it takes one’s memory, as the price of entry. There are other strange attributes of the forest, including the Erstwhile: angels tasked with defending the forest, but who have largely forgotten their purpose. This book is also populated by cyclopses, magicians, healers, hunters, a zombie workforce, the Orm, and the French. The first in a trilogy. 

The World We Make, N.K. Jemisin: Sermons, be they political, economic, social or religious, rarely make for great novels. There are a few notable exceptions; this book is not one of them. It’s still good, and I love the idea of the Duology (paired with The City We Became, and also one of the short stories from How Long Until Black Future Month?). New York City comes to life, with a primary avatar and other secondary avatars representing the various boroughs. The one hold out, and then traitor, is Staten Island, who teams up with R'lyeh, an interdimensional being working for the Ur, whose job it is to destroy human cities because they create new multidimensional realities that cause the Ur serious problems. That groundwork was laid in the first book, and this book carries the narrative forward through an NYC mayoral race, a huge City Summit of awakened cities, and some mathematical discussion of the multiversal tree of existence which NYC is about to slide off. As in the first book, while R’lyeh - the Woman in White - is the primary villain who has taken over Staten Island, the other villains are, essentially, Republicans. The sermon of this book could be titled: “Why New York is Better Than You - But Only Cool, Progressive New York.” Even where I agree with the issues Jemisin is raising, and I often do, I guess I am tired of the world’s current state of self-righteous posturing and polarising. And there seems to be an awful lot of it in this book. The book is also very rushed - the series was meant to be a trilogy, but Jemisin explains in the postscript that real world events derailed that plan. She seems to have taken a lot of current socio-political issues and worked them into the narrative, but sacrificed in-depth characterisation to do so. Some of the boroughs/avatars are barely mentioned in this book, contributing to the real flattening of the New York character (though State Island does get at least a little redemption at the end). So this is not, obviously, my favourite N.K. Jemisin novel, (and I have really loved her other work.) 

The Furthest Station, Ben Aaronovitch: I had read this one before - it was actually the first in the Rivers of London series I read - but wanted to revisit it after reading the rest of the series. It is about a series of ghostly apparitions appearing on the London Underground, all seemingly trying to get a message across to weary commuters. Peter, Nightingale, Abigail and Jaget work tirelessly to discern the message and rescue the real life victim involved. Really fun and engaging writing and ideas by Aaronovitch, as is true of the entire series.

In the Shelter, Finding a Home in the World, Padraig O Tuama: A gently wild, wide-ranging and poetic account of a life seeking story and shelter and hope and welcome. O Tuama tells of his childhood, his fears, his realization that he is gay and how that will affect his engagement with his religion, his work in reconciliation, and much more. But it is not a biography or any kind of straightforward account of a life. It is far more interested in saying “hello” to the tensions of our existence, which contain both peril and possibility. This is a beautifully offered book, and it has much to teach about prayer, faith, life and love. 

Young Hellboy: The Hidden Land, Mignola, Sniegoski, Rousseau: A story of Hellboy’s youth, when he, his adoptive father, and a female pilot who can turn herself into a giant ape have to deal with an ancient undead queen in a hidden jungle. Rollicking good fun, reminiscent of 1940’s detective serials, and that’s on purpose. 

Give It Up! And Other Short Stories, Franz Kafka and Peter Kuper: An illustrated compendium of some of Kafka’s absurd, darkly humorous short stories, most of which have to do with the frustrating futility of modern life and impossible interactions with bureaucratic authority. The illustrations are excellent, and I remember the short story of The Hunger Artist from my Grade 12 year. 

Proverbs, Robert Alter translation and notes: I have read Proverbs a number of times, but this was the first time I read it directly after engaging with the provocative poetry of Job (and just before the also provocative poetry of Ecclesiastes). The dictums in Proverbs therefore seemed, well, more idealistic, less philosophical, less nuanced. Wisdom is still viewed in its practical lens, but many of the sayings take the form of aspirational truths, rather than descriptions of reality. Chapter 30 brings things more into line with God as the author and only true holder of wisdom, but the rest of the book feels more folksy, more proverbial, to make an obvious point.