Mark 11:18 (ESV)-"And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching."
The movie Silence by Martin Scorcese is a project almost thirty years in the making. Based on the 1966 novel, Silence by Shūsaku Endō, it tells the story of the Jesuits attempt to bring Catholicism to Japan in the Seventeenth Century. It opens with a Jesuit official informing two young priests that their beloved teacher Father Cristóvão Ferreira had renounced the faith while undergoing torture. The young men are broken-hearted and incredulous. This scene serves as the beginning of their cruel "coming-of-age" story. Father Rodrigues and Father Garupe are determined to clear Father Ferreira's name, and in the process give support to the beleaguered Japanese Catholic population at the time. They are warned that this is a highly dangerous endeavor as Catholicism is outlawed in the island nation.
They need to get a guide, and in a sign of just how impossible their mission will be; they apparently can't do better than an alcoholic fisherman named Kichijiro. He is drunk and dirty sleeping in the back of a bar. When he is introduced as a Christian, he objects. As time goes by, we learn that he renounced Catholicism in order to save his life. He struggles to reconcile this with the fact that his whole family died rather than renounce their faith and therein lies the eternal struggle that he must face. He is stuck in a varietable revolving door of betrayal, sin, and confession in trying to cope with the impossible odds of remaining Catholic in Imperial Japan.
The priests then are transported and meet a group of underground Christians who are thrilled and welcoming to the young priests. The scenes of Church life in caves seem to be reminiscent of ancient catacombs and meant to draw comparisons. Yet, the heavy and pressing message is; this will not have the same outcome as it did for ancient Roman believers. The Japanese Catholics protect and feed the priests. The priests are given an update of the persecution of the Church and provided with plans for evading the Japanese authorities. This plan reduces them to living like frightened little mice who can only come out at night.
Under these circumstances, the first stresses and tests of faith begin to appear. They will only increase as the local authorities begin a persecution of those suspected of being Christians. The scenes depicting torture and death for the Catholic populations are both brutal and intense. With each wave of villagers dying, we see that the main desire of the authorities is to neutralize the priests in order to destroy the plant by first destroying the roots feeding it. They are ready, willing and able to culturally go toe to toe with the would be religious contender and win that battle of the faiths by convincing two out of three of the priests to renounce their faith.
The messages of this movie, at its' worst, is that : 1. a well-thought out plan to stamp-out Christianity can certainly succeed, 2. who or why would anyone stand up to the torture or, 3. that faith is a fantasy. But, I could not help comparing the torture experienced by these fictious believers to the actual brutal torture of Christians in the Middle East today. The systematic plan to annihilate the Christian faith in the Middle East has taken a horrific turn within the past eight years that many of us can still hardly fathom. When the first images of beheadings, and torture made their way to news headlines, people were shocked. The heavily anti-Christian governments of Europe and the Obama Administrations did nothing to help these true victims of the out-of-control conflicts that broke out all over Africa and the Middle East.
For many comfortable Christians worldwide, it was their first awakening to the possibility of persecution in their own lifetime. The lessons in the Bible regarding the persecution of believers became less distant and more relatable. I wonder what these persecutions mean to the worldwide churches of today? While I assume they must be against it, their responses have been underwhelming. What are some of the reasons for this? Lack of unity between Christian denominations? Churches not wanting to bring in unpleasantries? Where were the marches, the appeals to government agencies of the various countries that we live in? We should have made the headlines everyday. Are we in a crisis of faith? Ashamed of our beliefs? The story of Peter, so close to Jesus yet unable to stand up to his first persecution might serve as a humbling lesson for us. (Luke 22:54-62). The audience at the theater where I saw this movie, went into absolute hysterics when confronted with Kichijiro struggling to stay true to his faith. Are we living in such a rarefied environment that we can no longer even relate with the suffering of others?
This movie has as its premise the crisis of faith. It examines the harsh realities of a world, a lot like the world of today, where the practice of your Christian faith is deeply threatening to those around you. Just like in Imperial Japan, we find ourselves in an era where values of the Christian faith have. been outlawed. We live in a virtual cave ourselves, practicing our beliefs in secret, like those in the movie. An image at the end of Silence suggests that one of the priests thought to have converted to Shinto still held on to his faith. One small voice. Who had he converted? The U.S. election results are a partial commentary on the frustrations of Christians living in America. In the 2016/2017 election cycle we see the long sleeping giant of practicing Christians awaken to vote. That vote has angered those who have long thought us vanquished. They, like the Japanese authorities in this movie, will fight on. We must to. At the end of the movie, we see that Silence correctly suggests that the battle between Christianity and the world will continue.
Revelation 6:9-"When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne."
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