The Role of Jesus
Although I had grown up in a Christian home, heard the much-loved stories of the Bible and learned such classic Bible songs as “Jesus loves me,” nothing prepared me for seeing His face on film. “Him,” as in Jesus!
Bruce Marchiano, author of In the Footsteps of Jesus, played the role of Jesus Christ in the movie Matthew, a film version of the Gospel account of the same name. I was a little cynical as I popped the video into my VCR. How many great books have been ruined by an attempt to put them on film? And how could any actor convincingly pull off playing perhaps the most famous person in history, when no-one living has seen His face?
I sat down with my popcorn. I would not be lying in saying I thought the video is better than the book, which for me, an avid reader, is a big call! At once the first book of the New Testament came to life, and I realised with great joy, the editing and writing team had not edited or written at all. Every word is straight from the book of Matthew; it was breathtaking.
And despite my reservations about Matthew, I have to admit I was changed by my viewing. I was seeing Jesus in a new light—laughing, crying, growing tired, impatient with injustice. I saw Him as a protector of the weak and a lover of children. Also—unlike so many pictures—He was not always wearing white! This was a Jesus I wanted to get to know.
I wondered what it was like for the actor who played Jesus, who walked in His footsteps and spoke His words: Did he come out of the experience changed? I guessed he would have. In the movie trailer, Marchiano says, “I had no relationship with God whatsoever—a little religion, yes, but relationship, no.”
He admits to being a churchgoer and he knew the Bible, but he certainly did not know the book of Matthew off by heart as he needed to.
How does one prepare to play the role of Jesus? “I stopped shaving, cancelled my haircut, and hunkered down for what would be the seven most intense weeks of my life,” Marchiano recalls, “during which I would pray like never before, and memorise every word of Christ as recorded by Matthew.”
Marchiano talks of the realities of playing Jesus Christ in his book: “Jesus was a real person living a real life, and everything around Him was real as well.” However he remarks about the image most people have of Christ as being that of “a serene, mystical figure: manicured hands, perfectly combed hair, cascading white robes, rosy cheeks, gaze fixed heavenward, baritone-voiced and divinely aloof.” Marchiano loves to point out that this is the only movie about Jesus where His hair actually moves in the wind.
While watching the film, I was amazed at how real Jesus became. I forgot I was watching a mere film and an actor. Instead, I became immersed in a story that I’d never have thought was so watchable. In this experience I’m not alone, apparently. “If I’ve heard the comment once, I’ve heard it a million times—and I don’t ever want to stop hearing it!” says Marchiano. “It usually goes something like this: ‘I never knew Jesus was so alive, so passionate, so exciting, so full of joy!’”
If there is a part of the film that is hard to watch, it is the crucifixion scenes. So what must it have been like to act it? Marchiano says he found it the hardest and devotes a whole chapter in his book to it. Perhaps the most profound part is the scene in which Jesus, as He slumps dying on the cross, looks down at His beloved friend and disciple, John, and His mother, Mary, and says, “Here is your mother”; then to His mother, sitting at the foot of the cross watching her precious Son, He says, “Dear mother, here is your son. . .” Marchiano describes it this way: “There, in the middle of all the horror, in the middle of all the swelling and gasping and dying, He [Jesus] musters up enough strength to look down and essentially say: ‘Take care of My mama.’ . . . If there ever was a stunning display of the man Jesus was 2000 years ago, that’s it—in His final moments, through the blood in His teeth, ‘take care of My mama.’ Like I said, what a guy.”
To say the movie changed Bruce would be, I think, an understatement. He now tours the world talking of the experiences he had filming.* He’s written two books about it and, of course, knows Jesus’ words in Matthew by heart. But that isn’t where the really big changes occurred. In living, breathing and walking like Jesus, his personal life was transformed.
He recounts the time when he went with the film’s director to “Golgotha,” the place they’d erected the crosses for the crucifixion scene. It was “a breathtaking sight,” he says. “It rose a mound of barren black rock, ominously peaked with the three wooden crosses the art department had already erected. They were visible all over the countryside. . . . We began to scale the slope. . . . Finally we came over the crest, and what we saw stopped us in our tracks. Local villagers, young and old. Tens of them, sitting on rocks and in the dirt—sitting beneath the three crosses. . . . Every so often one of them would walk over and touch the crosses or just look up at them.
“What this sight spoke to both our hearts was beyond words. The director Regardt finally whispered, ‘They’re gathering at the cross.’”
Moments like these would, I think, change anyone’s life! Most actors tire of takes and can’t wait for a shoot to end. But not so Marchiano. He wished it would not end. He felt so close to Jesus that he wrote: “You know, when the whole adventure was done, I remember sitting with my journal, searching for some profound way to sum up how I felt about the whole experience. I sat for a long time, and finally the only thing I could come up with was this: I will miss You.”
I suppose once you’ve watched the movie, you realise you don’t have to miss Him; He’s still here with us today. And in Jesus’ own words, words that still ring true, He says—in Matthew 11:28—“Come to me. . . . I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
In the Footsteps of Jesus: One Man’s Journey Through the Life of Christ, by Bruce Marchiano, is available in most Christian bookstores.
Bruce Marchiano is touring New Zealand and Australia in April. For information regarding specific locations and times, check his website at www.brucemarchiano.com
Australia, www.tryjesus.com.au New Zealand, www.tryjesus.co.nz
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