Saturday, March 08, 2008

A visa for Jesus?

I'm meeting Jesus during Holy Week. Well, sort of. Unless I don't.

What's definitely happening is that I'm offering commentary after a screening of a new South African film based on the life of Jesus called "Son of Man" a week from Tuesday. It's for a church one of my colleagues at school goes to, and she apparently recommended me for this after a few other leads dried up. Fair enough: even without seeing it (I'm screening it tonight) I can think of at least three angles I could take (comparison to other Jesus movies, Global Christianity, and the eternal currency of the "what would Jesus do?" question).

Their Holy Week programming theme is "Jesus on the Edge: Radical, Revolutionary, Rabbi," a bit edgy for my tastes but I can live with it. The catch is that they've invited the actor who plays Jesus to come, too. So I may be sitting in a church during Holy Week with a South African Jesus!

Or not: they're encountering visa problems. It would be hard not to make something of that, should the problems prove insurmountable.