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Along with other folks at the Christian Century, I saw The Passion of the Christ at a special screening hosted by the Chicago branch of the American Jewish Committee, whose offices are in the building next to ours in Chicago. In light of the profound concerns about the film being expressed by the Jewish community, it was important to see it with our Jewish neighbors, both groups, insofar as possible, seeing and feeling what the other saw and felt.

The Buddha once remarked that understanding his instruction is like “trying to catch a poisonous snake in the wild”: it’s all too easy to get bitten. Among Christian teachings, none are more treacherous than those about Jesus’ Passion (from the Latin passio, “suffering”). Theological ideas have teeth. In The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson ventures out into the wild and gets bitten.

In the 1927 silent version of The King of Kings, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, Christ is first seen from the point of view of a blind man regaining his sight. It is a masterful touch that adds grandeur to the story. Over the decades, scores of films have been made about Jesus of Nazareth. Many of these productions dripped with Hollywood glitz, while others tackled serious issues of faith. All of them understood that no story about Jesus is complete without addressing the holy trilogy of events: the mystery of his life, the agony of his death and the miracle of his resurrection.

A good friend of mine dropped out of seminary, entered the business world, became a successful executive recruiter and migrated finally to management consulting, at which he is an expert. Big corporations retain him to help them think imaginatively about their businesses. One of his activities is assisting business leaders in writing mission statements that enable everyone, from CEO to maintenance worker, to understand the primary purpose of the enterprise.

Moviegoers who see The Passion of the Christ may go home confident they know who killed Jesus and why. If only the experts could feel so sure.

This much biblical scholars know: Jesus died on the cross at the hands of Roman prefect Pontius Pilate. But what led Romans to crucify an unarmed wanderer with a nonviolent following? The role of Jewish authorities continues to stir disagreement in scholarly circles, as does the question of how much to trust the four biblical versions that give filmmakers storytelling options.

The Passion of Jesus, more than other parts of the gospel story, cries out for a theological commentary. While the uninitiated can easily appreciate scenes of Jesus’ ministry, in which he appears as a compassionate healer and teacher, they will be less clear about what to make of a gruesome execution. The crucifixion made no sense to Jesus’ own followers, who had to start rereading their scriptures in an effort to discover why the mighty prophet of God, the one God raised from the dead, died an ignominious death.