There’s been some about the TV show The Chosen, which depicts the life of Jesus starting with his Galilean ministry. Much of this contention is located within Protestant evangelical circles, which are suspicious of creating visible images of Jesus. If you can’t make a statue of him, then it’s likewise problematic to have a sinful human portray him in a television show. Some Christians are also uncomfortable with a TV show that imaginatively expands on the sometimes-sparse stories found in the Gospels.
The director of The Chosen has responded to these criticisms in a YouTube video, where he explains that the producers of the show have made their best efforts to stick close to the Gospels, while also taking judicious liberties in fleshing out certain characters and stories from Scripture. This means that there are scenes in which characters within the Bible are shown doing things that never appear in the Gospels but could very well be things they actually did in real life. Nicodemus, for instance, gets a lot of screen time, rather than a brief mention. Simon Peter has a wife named Eden. And Jesus is seen camping out in the woods outside Capernaum, making fires to keep warm at night, and even brushing his teeth.
If you ask me, based on the few episodes I have watched until this point, the somewhat imaginative portrayal of Jesus in The Chosen is consonant with a long line of Christian tradition. For centuries, until rationalism flattened any kind of personal, prayerful encounter with Christ in Scripture, Christians read the Bible through several different senses, rather than literally. There’s a venerable practice of reading between the lines in Scripture and of prayerfully placing oneself within the text. This means letting Jesus speak to you and me, right here, right now. This means hearing the sounds of a Galilean street, smelling those who crowded around Jesus as he taught, and looking into the eyes of the beggar pleading for healing.
But I do wonder if the controversy surrounding The Chosen is more than a simple fear of idolatry. It’s not surprising that some Christians are deeply wary of straying too far from the Biblical text in portraying the life of Jesus. There is a discernible risk involved in allowing a fallible human to portray the Son of God. But I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s more at work to the objections to The Chosen. And I think it has to do with Jesus becoming too close for comfort.
We’re used to what the Gospels show us about Jesus. We hear his words and glimpse some of his actions. But we don’t see him brushing his teeth or uttering a prayer to his Father before falling asleep at night, alone in a tent. We don’t see him playfully telling stories to local children who find him in the woods or creating funny sounds with his mouth to make them laugh. And when we do see Jesus doing these things, it probably disturbs us a bit, because Jesus begins to seem a bit too close for comfort. He’s like us in his full humanity, but unlike us in his divinity. He reminds us of who we’re called to be, and also of who we’re not.
It’s the same with those who mutter and complain about Jesus in John’s Gospel. Just as our bodies manifest hidden illnesses through visible signs, audible complaining is often a signal that there’s unrest and turmoil within the heart. And we would do well to probe such visible signs to befriend our uncomfortable emotions.
I would guess that those who murmur against Jesus when he says that he’s the bread come down from heaven are put off for the same reasons that some in our own day are put off by seeing Jesus portrayed in a television show. He’s too close for comfort. In John’s Gospel, those who murmur against Jesus know his mother and father. How can a divine claim be made by someone with flesh and blood parents? How can the bread of life be one of us? How can humanity be so tied up with divinity? And if he is, how does that convict our unholy alliances with power and privilege? We’re disconcerted by the human side of Jesus because his perfect humanity reminds us of who we’re called to be and of how much we’ve fallen short. And no one likes to be reminded of that.
This is the judgment in John’s Gospel. God himself has come terrifyingly close to us in the incarnate Word, Jesus, and yet we have pushed him away. We have refused to allow ourselves to be taught by God. God has made everything personal for us, and yet we long to go back to an impersonal relationship with God. Those who grumble against Jesus in John’s Gospel don’t seem to want a person; they’d prefer a thing. And maybe it’s also true with us. We like the idea of Jesus, not the person of Jesus. We prefer Jesus as a moral exemplar and not as one who lives within us, convicting us and challenging us. We like sanitized Gospel stories that point to God’s justice and yet leave our daily encounters with injustice untouched. We simply don’t want a Jesus who is too close for comfort. And this is how many Christians see salvation. They want a salvation that’s accomplished by Jesus but that requires no transformation or effort on their own part to realize it.
Perhaps more than anyone else, the Church’s martyrs give witness to a Jesus who’s too close for comfort. I was vividly reminded of this a few days ago when we commemorated Edith Stein, who converted from Judaism to Christianity when she was thirty years old. A gifted philosopher, she was forced out of a teaching position in Nazi Germany because of the pervasive anti-Semitism in the 1930s. She eventually entered a Carmelite community as a nun, and later moved to the Netherlands. After the Dutch Bishops Conference condemned Nazi racism, the Nazis retaliated and arrested 243 Dutch Christians of Jewish origin. Edith and her sister Rosa were in this group and eventually died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Before her death, Stein had already challenged the Roman Catholic Church, speaking out about its failure to stand against the Nazi regime. Her words judged a Church that ultimately couldn’t grapple with a Jesus who’s too close for comfort. She challenged a Church that was centered around the Eucharist, around Jesus as the living bread come down from heaven, where God brings himself closer to us than we could ever imagine. And yet that Church ignored Jesus in the gas chambers. Hear Stein’s words from a 1933 letter to the pope, which received no reply. “Is not this idolization of race and governmental power which is being pounded into the public consciousness by the radio open heresy? Isn’t the effort to destroy Jewish blood an abuse of the holiest humanity of our Savior, of the most blessed Virgin and the apostles?”[1]
Here's the rub of a Jesus who’s too close for comfort. In Christ, we see who we’re called to be and how we’ve fallen short. But we also see how the risen Christ is all around us, everywhere we turn. And we see that it’s impossible to be an honest Christian while putting Jesus into a hermetically-sealed box that we open on Sundays and close at the end of Mass. Christianity is currently in a state of crisis because some have pushed Jesus away to regain their comfort, because a Jesus that’s too close for comfort challenges our unholy alliances, whether with government or any sinful human system that, to use Edith Stein’s words, denies the holiness of humanity.
When we get close to Jesus, we must be changed. We can no longer plead innocence in knowing what Jesus wants us to do, because in him, we’re taught by God. We can no longer behave as if our neighbor’s need isn’t our own. We can no longer hide our spiritual gifts rather than use them. We can no longer take shelter from the world instead of living well in it. We can no longer say one thing and do another. Coming close to Jesus demands that we be integrated human beings, people who live in the world and yet are not of it, people who show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith.[2]
And this involves a death to many things, to our pride, to our safety, to our power, to our comfort, to our protective isolation. But in this death, we find eternal life. The Jesus who’s too close for comfort is also the true living bread come down from heaven, whom we take into our own bodies and digest and feed on. And the one who’s too close for comfort has promised us this good news: that if we let him into our lives and allow him to get close, we will never be hungry. And we will live forever.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 11, 2024
[1] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/11/Lesser-Feasts-and-Fasts-2022_final.pdf
[2] From the Collect for the Second Sunday of Easter, The Book of Common Prayer (1979)