Born in 1964, I am part of the first generation of American Christians to grow up in the full shadow of C.S. Lewis and his legacy — and I am the better for it. Lewis’s Mere Christianity helped all Christ followers, whatever their denomination or background, to come together around those key doctrines — the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection — that define orthodox belief in Christ and the gospel.
Without minimizing the differences between Catholic and Orthodox, Lutheran and Episcopalian, Presbyterian and Methodist, Baptist and Charismatic, Lewis helped shine a needed light on the true, biblical nature of God, man, and the universe, of the person and ministry of Christ, of the sacred narrative that God has been working out in the world since creation and fall, and of the kind of transformed life Jesus desires his followers to lead. And he did it all with wonder, gratitude, humor, and hospitality.
Lewis’s vision, approach, and attitude have energized countless authors, evangelists, apologists, theologians, professors, and fantasy writers, but his influence has by no means been confined to the written word. Though Lewis, sadly, had little sympathy for film, Christians in every media have taken his mere Christian warmth and generosity to heart and used it to build visual bridges, both between various Christian groups and between believers, seekers, and non-believers.
Chief among this new generation of artists is Dallas Jenkins. His projected seven-season mini series of the life of Christ, The Chosen, has gifted the world with a Jesus who, while being fully man and fully God, speaks to people from all cultural and religious backgrounds. While Jenkins is evangelical and Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus, is Catholic, the actors who play Simon Peter and Nicodemus are non-Christians from Israel and India, respectively. To increase its wide reach, The Chosen includes actors from a variety of different ethnicities, even portraying one of its main characters, Matthew, as being on the autism spectrum.
To be honest, if all I knew about The Chosen is what I wrote in the previous paragraph, I would have been tempted to dismiss it as a “woke” series, more interested in checking off DEI boxes than being faithful to the gospels or even entertaining its audience. Thankfully, that is not the case at all. The diversity one encounters in The Chosen is not politically enforced, nor does it represent virtue signaling on the part of its creators. It embodies, rather, the multiethnic vision of heaven captured so powerfully in Revelation 7:9: “After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands.”1
Jenkins and his crew achieve the right kind of diversity by remembering that the gospels are set in the Middle East during the Roman Empire when Jerusalem marked a crossroad between Europe, Asia, and Africa: think of Pentecost, when the gospel went out on a day when there “were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.”2 By reminding us of that historical diversity, The Chosen reminds us that Jesus is the Savior of the World, as well as the Jewish Messiah.
Roumie, born to an Irish mother and an Egyptian father of Syro-Lebanese origin, plays Jesus as a real, encultured first-century ethnic Jew, who is yet the eternal Son of God who came into the world to take upon himself the sins of all people in all countries at all times. How do Roumie and Jenkins carry off this challenging program? Here are some of the ways they have done so over the course of the first two seasons.
Throughout the episodes, we see how faithfully Jesus lives out his Jewish identity and heritage. He, like his disciples, is saturated in the stories, the prayers, the promises, and the worldview of the Hebrew scriptures. In the morning, in the evening, and at meals, Jesus prays the prescribed prayers, taking seriously the regulations laid down by God. He criticizes those who have corrupted the Law or have used it to harm others, but he never attacks the Law itself. Yet all the while, he reaches out to Gentiles who do not know the Law, and even to Jews, like Matthew, who have given up on it.
In one of the most beautiful episodes from season one, Jesus spends time with a group of local children. He plays with them and lets them help him in his daily chores, but he also instructs them to say the prayers they have memorized. He jokes and laughs with them, and then is moved to tears by their simple recitation of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4). He teaches them to respect their teachers, while also gently correcting things they have been taught that do not accurately reflect the will and nature of God. Here is a Messiah who takes time with young people who have no power or influence, whose ultimate worth is overlooked, even by their own parents.
In another episode, he meets a woman from Africa and greets her in the Egyptian (Coptic) language. No “political correctness” here, just an attempt on Jesus’ part to bridge a divide and show hospitality to an outsider. Indeed, when he meets with the ultimate outsider, the five-time-married Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), he speaks directly to her deepest personal needs, reviewing for her the sorrows and agonies she has known in her life. He does not “affirm” her sinful choices; rather, he calls her to come out of them and drink of the living water he offers. He does not cancel her for her past sins; instead, he frees her to live a new life of freedom and purity. The Samaritans were despised by the Jews — as some of Jesus’ disciples tell him in no uncertain terms — but Jesus, whose Jewish bona fides are beyond reproach, reaches out to her nevertheless.
In fact, in the beginning of season two, Jesus reprimands James and John for their continued animosity toward the Samaritans, culminating in their request that fire be rained down on the ethnic half-breeds they so despise (see Luke 9:51-55). Jenkins’s handling of this episode is masterful in its portrayal of a savior who rebukes and loves, not because he loves to rebuke but because he uses rebuke to lovingly mold us into the people he created us to be.
Jesus has set James and John the task of sowing a field as a form of hospitality for, so they think, future travelers. When they discover they are sowing the field to help a Samaritan, they get upset and Jesus must rebuke them for their hard hearts that would withhold the good news from people they do not like. They apologize, and Jesus forgives them . . . and then something wonderful happens. Jesus laughs and tells them how silly they were to think God would use his power to zap people who had insulted them. He then tells them that he will henceforth call them the sons of thunder, a personality trait that they have misused today but which they will, in time, use to serve God and others.
Rarely has the heart of our savior been so wonderfully captured. The God who rebukes is also the God who laughs. The God who admonishes us for our sins is the same God who lovingly assures us that he can still use our individual personalities to advance his kingdom. This is a savior who will be recognized, loved, and served by Catholics and Protestants alike, but it is also a savior who can speak to an unbelieving world that needs both correction and affirmation, justice and love, tears and laughter. Here is a savior who knows the difference, and can teach us the difference between righteous anger and unrighteous revenge.
At the end of the episode, when Jesus agrees to read the Torah scroll in the local Samaritan synagogue, he allows John to choose the reading, gently teasing him to make sure he only chooses a story from the Pentateuch, since the Samaritans do not accept the other books of the Old Testament. Jesus knows that the Samaritans are wrong in their view of scripture, but he is willing to be patient and meet them, for now, where they are.
Speaking of patience, one of the recurring themes in The Chosen is Jesus’s willingness to be led by the Father, even when he is not sure himself where he is being led. For example, in the fourth episode of season two, Jesus goes to Jerusalem, for he knows he must meet someone at the pool of Bethesda. As he slowly walks down the steps of the pool, Jesus surveys those crowded around the pool who hope to be healed when the waters are disturbed (see John 5:1-15). Jesus sees, and feels, the suffering of all these broken people, but he does not approach any of them until his eyes rest upon the paralytic he has been appointed to meet.
Jesus says shalom to the man, to whom the writers give the name Jesse. Jesse, who has by now despaired of ever being healed, expresses surprise that anyone should notice and speak to him. Jesus asks him if he wants to be healed, and Jesse responds that he has no one to carry him into the pool when the waters are moved. But that is not what Jesus means. He wants Jesse to stop putting his trust in a superstition and to turn instead to Jesus: to, as it were, take his eyes off the pagan waters of the pool and put them on the living water.
Jesus is gentle and patient with Jesse, but he will not let him rest in half-truths and false hopes. He keeps pressing him until Jesse says, clearly and without doubt, that he wants to be healed. Then, in the most matter-of-fact way, Jesus tells him to get up, pick up his mat, and walk. The Jesus of The Chosen has power and charisma, but he is no magician or showman; he has authority, and he speaks directly to whatever it is — disease, despair, demons — that is holding us back from being whole. Jesse’s response to his healing is to laugh and do a little dance; Jesus responds by kissing him.
Who is this Jesus whom we can laugh with, but whom we dare not trifle with? He does not hesitate, because he knows who he is, even as he knows what our most desperate needs are.
True to the gospel account, when Jesus tells Jesse to take up his mat and walk, it is the sabbath day. What the episode adds to this vital detail is that the sabbath is almost over when Jesus tells Jesse to take up his mat, and so violate the stricture against carrying things on the sabbath. At the end of the episode, Matthew asks Jesus why he did not wait thirty more minutes for the sun to go down so that there would be no sabbath violation. As a slow smile spreads across Jesus’s face, he tells Matthew that sometimes one must stir up the waters.
Neither a 1950s conformist nor a 1960s rebel, Jesus shatters the legalism of the Pharisees without endorsing the violent methods of the zealots. In fact, in the episode, Jesus does both at once. By healing Jesse and telling him to take up his mat just before sundown, Jesus throws down the gauntlet to all those religious leaders who would use God’s gift of the sabbath to suppress, bind, and crush. He also ensures that the newly mobile Jesse will be seen by his brother, soon-to-be disciple Simon the Zealot, thus preventing him from assassinating a Roman official.
The Bible does not say, or suggest, that Jesse and Simon were brothers; the link is a contrivance of Jenkins and his fellow writers. But what a contrivance! By means of this fictional connection, viewers get to see two sides of Jesus’ character converge in a single scene. On the one hand, we see Jesus the rebel urge a passive Jew to resist a false religious teaching (Torah does not proscribe carrying things on the sabbath). On the other hand, we see Jesus the conformist urge a zealot not to take up arms against a political leader who, though not altogether just, does not merit assassination by a true son of Israel.
This is the Jesus we need today to heal our increasingly fragmented and polarized world: one who speaks peace while bringing a sword; one who fights the status quo while calling his followers to moral purity; one who ministers to the weary and the outcast while upholding the traditional rites and rituals of his people; one who saves the world by turning it upside down.
Notes:
1 Rev. 7:9 (KJV).
2 Acts 2:5 (KJV).
