The Prince of Peace... gets angry

Blazing Reader,

In one of the most controversial chapters of the Bible, often called "The Woes of Matthew 23," the Prince of Peace gets angry with the hypocritical behaviour of the "teachers of the law."

Jesus calls them all sorts of nasty things (brood of vipers is my favourite) and doesn't let up for three minutes straight.

In the 1993 film The Gospel According to Matthew, actor Bruce Marchiano performs these lines with what I have always admired as an almost divine expression of anger. Indeed, the actor claims in his biography that when it came time to shoot this scene, he couldn't remember the lines. Spontaneous amnesia. The crew were going through a lot of film shooting false starts. Then Marciano stepped back and said he prayed to Jesus to "make him a puppet on his strings." Instantly, he claims he had an out-of-body experience, looking down upon himself as he performed the lines with such emotion you might call Jesus the Prince of Righteous Anger.

But, at the same time, you can hear such sadness in his voice.

The full film is available on YouTube. It has to be one of the most human and emotional portrayals of Jesus ever recorded.

John C.A. Manley

PS In Bruce Marchiano biography, In the Footsteps of Jesus, he tells a shocking story about the effect the above scene had on one of the actors playing one of the high priests being yelled at by Jesus.

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story, the forthcoming All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of speculative fiction. Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber at: https://blazingpinecone.com/subscribe/