It's been a fair number of years since I've been in a movie theater. A quiet night in Rehoboth, not much to do, and a group of us went to see the first of the James Bond films with Timothy Dalton as 007. Good stuff. But, left to my own devices, I'd probably not have seen it, and in the years since no movie review or teaser has prompted much more in me than a velleity, that lowest level of volition.



The screen is big, the room is dark and the sound is inescapable. And the characters and presentation: action so violent, motives so fierce, emotions and nerves so raw. Perhaps I've not wanted to know how deep is their resonance in my own self and life.



Comes now what is, from the almost unanimous testimony of those who've seen and experienced it, the not-to-be-missed film by Mel Gibson: the searing narrative and depiction of The Passion of the Christ.



A mighty work of testimony and evangelization almost certainly, and welcome for that, but I feel also a kind of dread. And rightly so, knowing my guilt. The deep resonance in my own life and works of the violence of His story can't be avoided or denied. Complicit in His torture and death. A self spattered and smeared with the blood of the Lord Jesus.



But, praise God, that's not the end. By His mercy, washed in it as well.