“Not As I Will, But As You Will: A Historical Novel of the Passion of Gethsemane,” by Kathleen Goto, takes a new slant on the Jesus' last twelve hours.
Any telling of the story of the Christ is bound to be controversial in its own way, and hopefully this telling will spur further fruitful discussion about Jesus: who he was, and what he was meant to do.
The Mel Gibson film “The Passion of The Christ” about His last twelve hours, has caused an uproar among movie goers as well as Christians—and Jews—not only because of its pre-Vatican II theology, which has blamed the Jews for Christ’s death, but even more, because of its extreme, almost sadistic violence. While the cinematography is ravishingly beautiful, even affecting, the central person of the work, Jesus the Christ himself, seems to be more a passive victim of cruel circumstances rather than the savior of all mankind.
Unlike Gibson’s “Passion,” this telling of the passion is much more sensitive to the issues that have divided Jews and Christians for nearly twenty centuries, and ultimately climaxed in the catastrophe of the Holocaust. Ms. Goto consulted at length with the Reverend Paulina Dennis, a Congregational minister, a student of Jewish studies and a scholar of Jewish-Christian relations for a number of years. Reverend Dennis has served in both an editorial and theological/historical capacity.
This is, essentially, a story about the heart of Jesus. While using fiction to flesh out a human picture from the limited historical knowledge of the actual events of the time, the image that emerges of unconditional love and sacrifice is absolutely real.
This version of the “greatest story ever told” is centered solely in the prayer of Jesus while in the Garden of Gethsemane, as he asks God the Father to spare his life. In a deeply emotional tribute to what perhaps has been until now the true veiled majesty of this complex and extraordinary figure, it brings to this event a new and fresh perspective. Was he afraid of death, or was he afraid of having failed his mission?
This question is answered in a recasting of the circumstances of the story, during these fateful few hours just prior to Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion. Jesus—or Yeshua, the traditional Hebrew pronunciation of his name—is visited by Gabriel, who serves as both sounding board and advocate. Yeshua reexamines his life and purpose through “visions”: flashbacks that tell the story of his life, his ministry, and his purpose. These flashbacks for the most part are taken from Biblical passages with Yeshua’s perspective of these situations related in his heart-rending colloquy with the angel. Besides Biblical passages, several unconventional sources are used for information to expand further the life and thought of Jesus.
Why use a fictional backdrop to teach about Jesus? Haven’t a number of writers tried, with various success, to do just that? Why is this telling different?
To paraphrase Aristotle: history teaches “how things are”; fiction teaches “how things could (and sometimes should) be.” The impact of this story of how things could have been should cause us to rethink our own purpose as well as Jesus’s. This is an unusually rounded, supra-human, and original view of this greatest man who ever lived.