DJesus Uncrossed

While I did see “DJango Unchained,” I totally missed Saturday Night Live’s spoof, so I found this post by David R. Henson pretty interesting:

No doubt, a lot of people are upset, or are going to be upset, about Saturday Night Live’s recent skit “DJesus Uncrossed.” The two-minute sketch lampooned director Quentin Tarantino’s penchant for turning tragic history into gory revenge and imagined what Tarantino might do with the crucifixion and resurrection. (Have they been reading my blog?).

I’ve already heard some rumblings of anger at the skit’s treatment of Jesus, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned into a full-blown manufactured firestorm of outrage.

 

But you won’t hear any complaints about the sketch from me (and many others).

 

That’s because even though the sketch satirized Tarantino, it also said something quite profound and revealing, if unintentionally, about how Americans have remade Jesus in our own violent images.

Because, if truth be told, we’ve been trying to uncross Jesus for decades in this country, long before SNL got their pens into him.

We have tried to arm him with our military-industrial complex, drape him with our xenophobia, outfit him with our weapons, and adorn him with our nationalism. We’ve turned the cross into a flagpole for the Stars and Stripes. We have no need for Tarantino to reimagine the story of Jesus into a fantasy of violent revenge. We’ve done it for him. We’ve already uncrossed him, transforming him from a servant into a triumphalist who holds the causes and interests of our country on his back rather than brutal execution.

And this zing at megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll:

But this vengeful Jesus of Revelation is the one many of us prefer. The one who gets even. The one who finally settles the 2,000-year-old score. The one who, at last, gets to send the unbelieving, unrepentant masses off to an eternity of torment in hell. It’s the Jesus someone like Mark Driscoll seems to worship: “In Revelation, Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.” This, of course, sounds a great deal like a certain group of Roman soldiers who mocked Jesus, calling on him to man up and come down and uncross himself. It’s enough to make one wonder whether all this time, it has been DJesus that Driscoll has been worshipping rather than Jesus.

Ouch.I really do wish folks would stop remaking Christ in their own images and strive to follow Him, cross and all.