Alright, that’s a little confusing. Next thing you know The Revealer will be going on about mustard seeds and seven seals and Moshiach‘s grave in the great borough of Queens.
When what we are really talking about, of course, is the martyr Peggy Law Scott, who diedwhile viewing the crucifixion scene of The Passion in Wichita, Kansas, as reported by Denise Neil and Dana Strongin of The Wichita Eagle.
The mind races, The Revealer recalls one of Mel’s earlier revelations, and we are restrained from crying foul only by the knowledge, given unto us by Mel, that all things have a purpose — in celebrating the triumph in death of Christianity over Judaism, could the Good Lord have chosen a better lamb than a woman named “Law”?
He does work in mysterious ways, as noted in The Dallas Morning News, which reports that “The start of Lent may have given the movie’s marketers the boost they wanted.” Funny, we always thought Lent had something to do with sacrifice. Ah well, it’s time for new wineskins all around. Another informant tells the News that The Passion “redefines what the Crucifixion means for me. It’s Hollywood, but it’s reality.” Who knew The Passion was down with the pomo wizards of Radical Orthodoxy, the Anglican theological movement that’s been saying something along those lines for years?
At this juncture, brethren, The Revealer must confess to you that no one directly associated with the production of this website has yet seen The Passion. We will, and we may even find it moving, inspirational, hopeful — a revelation.
Last night, though, instead of watching blood flow on the silver screen, we sat beneath flourescent lights in a little bookstore in Raleigh, North Carolina, listening to a different kind of Jesus story, this one told by the novelist Haven Kimmel, as revealed to her by a host of angels speaking in first person plural:
…poor mortals! every day pricked by the quills of Our monstrous encouragement! That magician, for instance, wandering through Palestine, performing his feats and rattling the bones of all who looked upon him. He was great! He was fantastic and doomed and he took it on the chin, We could hardly have loved A Man more. But every time he spoke or raised his hand, sometimes even when he blinked the veil grew more sheer; sometimes a corner grew tattered and lifted off the earth like a circus tent in an electrical storm, the carnival of that man! All around him people were puzzling over yeast or no yeast, cloven hooves (not good, they were right), what to do about beards and tattoos, The Law, The Law, The Law, and here He is, a sudden Baal Shem, and everywhere He steps the world flips! upside down. The sky becomes a bowl that men may fish in; love grows sharp as a sword; the unseen radiates up and outward and no one can tell anymore the difference between speaking and singing, what they dream or what they hold. You like, We think it’s safe to say, for inheritance to have mass, but He says No. You may not keep your treasure, even from one moment to the next. The blind will see, yes, and the dead sit up in the stained chair, but what, bear with Us now, is the point of all that? Because the blind man, the soldier’s daughter, the hemorrhaging woman, crusty Lazarus himself, where are they now? Dead and gone as if He’d never touched them at all! Trickster! Look what He buried in the heart of His argument! Your own (at least We think he was yours) Emerson said that prayer for any commodity is vicious. Sight, health, wealth, a harvest, a son-in-law: vicious. But if that’s how you want it, He said, shrugging His shoulders. If that will get your attention, okey-doke. And He used His magic in the service of Our message, that song shaken off the wing: The Kingdom of Heaven is Before You.
Not enough! shouted the fan club. Who could say such a thing? rumbled the gathered throng. Only the Messiah, was the decision; only some mess of finitude and eternity. “For Pete’s sake,” We said, rolling Our eyes. Fully Human and Fully Divine, like a cookie recipe. (You didn’t understand about Him at all then, You understand less now. He was an impatient man, driven. Imagine Him boarding a train right now, a train you are on, the sinister cut of his suit, the look in his eyes. Maybe he is dangerous, or maybe he is just a man to share a dry martini with: He passes you, you cannot say which He is, and then He’s gone. A sexy, impossible, impertinent man not prone to suffering fools.) But He listened to Us, in a way He was One of Us, and We said, “Fine, fine, stop trying to explain. Blend.” You know where that ended up. Sort of Our mistake. We might have pushed the envelope, as you say. We might have allowed Him to rumble the oversoul too much, too soon. Never in the history of You Know What have people grieved so mightily, and for so long. You’re grieving still, aren’t you?
You wouldn’t know Him if He tipped His hat to you on the street. He would terrify you.
Thank you, Sister Haven. As we (just the lowercase “we” of The Revealer now) said, we have not yet seen The Passion, but we wish we could believe it’ll be something like that. Maybe, for Peggy Law Scott, it was.