Before Jesus Begins his Ministry
Judas wants Jesus to start his mission, but Jesus just wants to keep making crosses for the Roman Empire (because carpenter) ((more so because he wants to walk a covenant path of least resistance))
Mary Magdalene spits on Jesus for making crosses, but soon after smiles at him for being friends from childhood. She punishes Jesus for refusing to admit he is the same as all the men she settles for as a prostitute. She rails against his sense of exceptionalism—his mania of thinking he is chosen
“Lucifer is inside me.”
Lucifer might be who’s fueling Jesus’ sense of divine sonship.
Jesus’s visions, and voices he alone hears, may all just be mental illness.
“I see men and I feel sorry for them,” says Jesus to a mystic who believes in him.
Jesus and Judas have a tumultuous bromance—the line between fist-fighting and cuddling is very thin.
Jesus Begins his Preaching
Jesus’s sermons are improv soup. No drafts and rehearsal, and no ghost writers. Whose beatitude is it anyway?
Jesus has the intuition of a fortune teller when he talks Zebedee out of stoning Mary for sexual sin, which is to say, no superpowers needed.
Judas wants to fix the body. Jesus wants to fix the soul. They argue, then they cuddle. It’s not their fault if that makes you uncomfortable. They are preparing to see something to the brutal end.
“Baptize me.” “No, you baptize me.”
Once they are on the same page, John the Baptist kisses Jesus on the lips. It’s not their fault if that makes you uncomfortable. They are preparing to see something to the brutal end.
Jesus’s temptation is wanting to skip out on being the Messiah so he can have a wife and family. He wants a humble life but his heart lacks humility.
Trouble is Brewing for Jesus and his Disciples
Religion relies on rumor and speculation to propagate itself.
The heart becomes the axe.
Miracles are marketing.
Jesus is inclusive. If that makes you uncomfortable…
Jesus joins in the dancing. If that makes you uncomfortable…
You want an army? Here’s Jesus’s army:
- the poor
- the blind
- the crippled
“I’m the saint of blasphemy,” says Jesus to the keepers of the temple. “You think you’re special?! God is not an Israelite!”
“You are the strongest, aren’t you? Of all my friends…” says Jesus to Judas.
“I have to die on the cross AND I have to die willingly.”
(adapted for Gen-Z readers) Jesus says this into an iPhone camera. Judas posts it to TikTok and Instagram. By this point, Jesus is going viral daily. Peter sets up a Patreon account. After cancelling the risen Lazarus, Paul uses his Droid phone’s screen recorder app to capture Jesus’s best reels, reposting them to his account. He’s soon scoring sponsorships. If all that makes you uncomfortable…
The Passion Story, Scorsese-style
Judas… a bit of bagman in the end. Jesus wanted it that way. Jesus had a knack for choosing the right closers.
Jesus was jealous of Noah and Elijah. He felt they had better gigs in the Plan of Salvation.
Skip ahead to the 21st century. It’s General Conference time for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Picture one of today’s progressive apostles saying something brave from the pulpit, bleeding profusely as he reads from the teleprompter. Then he turns around and notices the entire First Presidency sleeping through his talk.
Pontius Pilate was so polite about the business. So matter of fact. All in a day’s work for him. Though, to his credit, Pilate could see the forest for the trees.
“Mother, I’m sorry for being a bad son.”
Between Two Thieves sounds like a good idea for a YouTube show. It’s Rome’s algorithm; they can do what they want.
Jesus Faces the Last Temptation
If Jesus was up on the cross for any amount of time, and he was truly human, authentically a man, he definitely imagined having sex before he died. Fantasizing that sex occurring with the woman he saved from stoning makes all the sense in the world. If that makes you uncomfortable…
“Come in.” “Come here.”
Being on the same page ain’t all that. Sometimes people come together to procrastinate the day of their repentance.
Paul’s kind of a jerk. Bit of a snake oil salesman. But he sure understood the assignment.
“You started all this, now you can’t stop it.”—the lesson zealots keep trying to teach their messiahs.
It’s a wonderful life, Jesus. If that makes you uncomfortable…
Judas saves Jesus in the end.
Go Ye Therefore…
Struggle in the discomfort. Embrace the discomfort. Be a message that can outlive empires.
Notes and Questions for Discussion:
While stumbling, halfheartedly at times, through Lent, I decided to rewatch one of my favorite adaptions of the life of Jesus: Martin Scorsese’s controversial (and excellent) ((and very R-rated)) film The Last Temptation of Christ. I wrote the above hot takes while the movie played.
Here is one of my favorite clips from the movie, with David Bowie providing a delightfully conversational performance as Pilate. Below the video, there are questions I encourage you to respond to in the comments section.
Even if you have not seen The Last Temptation of Christ, which hot takes in this post struck you? Why? How do they compare to your own sense of Jesus and the key players in his ministry and execution.
If you have seen the movie, what was your reaction to it? What cinematic adaptations of Jesus have you most/least enjoyed? Why?
Wheat & Tares 
A long time ago, I saw the movie. Before it was a movie, it was a book, by Nikos Kazantzakis. I haven’t read the book, but a long time ago I did read his Zorba the Greek and my sense was that the author was more of a pagan (or maybe a hedonist, a happy pagan) than a Christian — or at least that was the approach to life that the book seemed to endorse.
I’m curious how much liberty the Last Temptation movie took as compared to the book. I suspect Kazantzakis probably had a rather different take on the whole story than did Scorsese.
I read the Nikos Kazantzakis novel once upon a time, after watching the Scorsese movie. Similar to The Godfather, this is a rare case wherein the film is definitely better than the book; aside from the twist at the end wherein Christ gets to live out a fantasy of long-life and marriage (the one definite carry-over from the page to the screen), the Kazantzakis novel is a rather straight-forward and unmemorable retelling of the life of Christ. Scorsese takes a lot more creative risks than Kazantzakis, and there is a reason why the film is better known today than the novel, IMO.
As far as BAD movie takes on Jesus’s life goes, I would nominate Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of The Christ’, which is utterly unwatchable unless you enjoy seeing a helpless person flogged for 20 minutes nonstop. I couldn’t take it.
Very glad I watched the Passion of the Christ. I don’t love seeing people flogged for 20 minutes, but it sure helps me appreciate how awful it was. No need to see it twice though. And that shot of the raindrop failing in the garden . . . so good.
I loved the way it portrayed Paul. Paul was the real founder of Christianity as it is believed today, not Jesus. Jesus would be shocked if he came back to see what they have done.
Thank you to each of you for chiming in with perspectives and insights! I’ll spare everyone my review of The Passion of the Christ. Suffice it to say, I’m actually more enthusiastic about Mel Gibson’s next film: Apocalypto. I would also recommend, if you can find it, an essay Stephen King wrote from Entertainment Weekly magazine about seeing the film, which focuses on his interactions with Christians in attendance.
By way of background, the person who turned me on to giving a chance to The Last Temptation of Christ was a man we street contacted in Maine on my mission. He may have been in his late 20s or early 30s. I remember him being bearded and seeming hippie-ish. He was very earnest about his religiosity, mentioning how he often hiked out into the woods of Maine to engage in fervent prayer. At some point, unprompted, he plugged the movie. As so many of us who like the film feel the need to do, he acknowledged the controversies surrounding the film, and went on to explain how the movie is actually very pro-Jesus. It is, unmistakably, a story of Jesus overcoming substantial obstacles to complete his mission on behalf of those in need