Well, that happened.
All of Jerusalem might’ve thought that after Jesus stormed into the temple grounds—with a whip, no less—turned over tables and challenged the Sanhedrin itself.
Religious leaders are horrified. Jesus’ own followers are confused and unsettled. And the people—most of them, anyway—are still shouting their hosannas to the Man from Galilee.
Judas is particularly horrified. “What have you done?” he whispers to himself at the end of The Chosen: Last Supper—Part One. It’s almost like Jesus is spoiling for a fight. Practically begging to be arrested.
But, of course, Jesus need not beg. He knows. He’s seen the chessboard and knows how each knight, rook and pawn will move. Jesus has prepared Himself for what is to come—and now must prepare those around Him.
It’s not easy, this preparation. His disciples are so full of love and good intentions, but they simply can’t—or willfully don’t want to—believe what their Rabbi is telling them. Jesus is just speaking in metaphors, some say. Maybe He’s just wrong this time, others wonder. Or maybe Jesus will be arrested, and convicted, and sent to be crucified, but He’ll be saved at the last minute. Or, better yet, Jesus will save Himself—saving His most spectacular miracle for this most dire of moments.
But as the disciples dither and wonder and worry, forces outside begin moving, like chess pieces, jockeying for position, sliding toward their imagined checkmate.
Pharisees prepare a gauntlet of questions for this Jesus of Nazareth, hoping that His own faultless honesty will prove His undoing. Sanhedrin leader Caiaphas begins to plot Jesus’ arrest. Roman agent Atticus Aemilius—believing that Jesus might indeed be a grievous threat to Roman authority—tries to strengthen the spine of Judean governor Pontius Pilate for what’s inevitably to come.
And in Jesus’ own camp, one lone pawn begins to wonder whether Jesus is the Messiah he imagined—and whether the smart move might be to switch to the other side.
The disciples scratch their heads plenty in The Chosen: Last Supper—Part Two. Their beloved, love-filled Rabbi is cursing fig trees! Calling religious leaders vipers and hypocrites! One or two think that He’s messing up everything.
But Jesus isn’t messing everything up (a truth we can see more clearly with more than 2,000 years of perspective). He’s fixing what needs to be fixed. Sure, it’s confusing and painful, but change often is. And the sort of change Jesus is pushing? Well, yeah, that’s going to upset a lot of folks. But even amid all the chaos Jesus triggers, He remains an incredibly loving, patient presence in His disciples’ lives.
Jesus does His best to show them why He cursed that poor ol’ fig tree. He tries to prepare His followers for what’s to come. And in some cases, He tries to protect them: Jesus insists that the women in His entourage keep their distance from Him in Jerusalem, for instance. Jesus shares some especially tender moments with John (whom you’d expect) and Judas (whom you might not), encouraging the latter to think seriously about the choices he’s making.
The disciples follow his example. They may not quite get what’s going on, but they know two things: They love their master, and they love each other. After a particularly disturbing conversation with Jesus, the disciples gather and comfort each other, weeping openly.
But perhaps the most tender moment—one that, it must be said, has no reference in Scripture—takes place when Jesus shares dinner with the women in his life: His mother, Mary Magdalene, Tamar and the rest. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the women express such love and gratitude for their Savior that it will surely bring some viewers to tears. And in a narrative traditionally dominated by men, it’s a strong reminder that Jesus came for us all: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
As was the case in Last Supper—Part One (and, really, any story about Jesus that takes its cues from Scripture), the entire movie is inherently spiritual. Every moment here points, in its own way, to who Jesus is and what’s to come. Even those who don’t get Jesus at all play their parts. So we’ll not detail every spiritual element we find here. But it’s worth noting that every segment of the movie (which is, you’ll remember, three television episodes stitched together) begins with Jesus and His disciples at the Last Supper. Jesus offers prophetic warnings. We see Jesus teach (and, in one case, his disciples enact) a couple of parables, and we hear as the Pharisees try to trip up the Rabbi with their questions—all elements deeply rooted in the Bible.
But one of those questions is significantly expanded. When someone asks Jesus about whether Jews should pay taxes, Jesus asks to see a Roman denarius and notes not just Caesar’s image on the coin, but the words inscribed therein: “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, Son of the Divine.” This, the movie tells us, is one reason why that Pharisee question was so prickly: It wasn’t just that the Jews didn’t want to pay taxes; it was that they were paying taxes to a man who claimed pagan godhood. Jesus argues that the Jews shouldn’t overthink such things; that these taxes aren’t propping up a god-pretender as much as they pay for necessary infrastructure. Oh, and by the way, this truly is God’s world; Tiberius is just living in it. “The coin belongs to Caesar,” Jesus concludes. “You belong to [God].”
Last Supper—Part Two uses this narrative approach at times, extrapolating extra meaning from Biblical accounts. That certainly might be discomfiting for some viewers, but it really isn’t that far removed from the extra context many a pastor brings to the pulpit on Sunday mornings.
The city’s religious leaders show their own zeal for faith. At times, that zeal seems to simply overlay or excuse political or personal ambitions. When Caiaphas offers a prayer during an assembly of religious leaders, he lists Jesus’ supposed transgressions in a fairly transparent attempt to rally the leaders to his way of thinking. He talks about how their faithful followers are being “deceived by a sorcerer, a necromancer who as declared himself higher than God.” (He winds up his prayer a bit ironically by saying, “Blessed by our God, blessed by our Lord, blessed be our King, our Savior.”)
John and Jesus ponder a fresco depicting Clytemnestra waking the Furies (which we also saw in Part One), with the story unpacked in more detail this time around. (Jesus quips that the first commandment “never made it into this house.”) John suggests that the mythological tale actually stole elements from Scripture—specifically that of Jephthah sacrificing his daughter after making an unwise promise to God. (Jesus notes that His Father never asked him to make such a sacrifice.) The story of Clytemnestra cribs elements from the biblical account (John suggests) for its own bloody story, which features a similar sacrifice by Mycenean king Agamemnon—but to the goddess Artemis instead.
We see depictions of mythological entities. We hear references to heaven and hell, as well as allusions to various Jewish sects with opinions on the afterlife. We see bits of the traditional Passover meal and the rites associated with them, including a recitation of the Dayenu (where the Jewish faithful consider all the many blessings that God has given them, concluding after each one, “It would have been enough.”)
Jesus, alone on a hillside communing with His father, is amazed to see a vision of the biblical David, as a shepherd, strumming out a psalm to his sheep. After the song is done, David smiles at Jesus and vanishes. Pontius Pilate’s wife appears to have visions of what is to come.
One Sadducee (a Jewish sect that does not believe in an afterlife) quips that heaven, as some describe it, is without “marital indulgence,” which makes it undesirable anyway. A few statues of mythical half-woman, half-lion sphynxes depict the creatures as bare-breasted.
Pontius Pilate receives a massage, shirtless.
Roman soldiers break into a house and pound the residents into submission. (One hits a soldier but is quickly beaten down. Another has his arm nearly broken by an officer.)
Jesus tells a crowd about the parable of the vineyard, wherein a vineyard owner rents his plot to tenants and sends his servants (and ultimately his son) to inspect the property. The parable is pantomimed by Jesus’ disciples, so we see the characters in the story being comically beaten and stoned. The son, when he is sent, is held in place as one actor draws an invisible knife across the throat, killing him.
Several religious leaders believe that the only way to take care of Jesus is to kill Him, and they begin to plot how to make that happen. We hear references to human sacrifice, massacres and acts of terminal violence. We hear that people got hurt during Jesus’ demonstration at the Temple, though everyone agrees that Jesus did not actually hit anyone. Jesus talks about signs of the end times, including famines and earthquakes.
We hear the word “d–ned.” A favorite exclamatory phrase in the film is “Hades and Styx.”
An exasperated Judas says, “No one has been drinking that I know of—but is everybody drunk?” We hear another reference to drunkenness as well. During Passover, Jesus and the disciples dip their fingers in wine and let droplets fall on the table—one drop in memory for each plague recounted in Exodus.
Mary, mother of Jesus, recounts how often Jesus spit up on her shoulder as a baby. Caiaphas suggests that Lazarus’ resurrection was an “elaborately constructed hoax.”
Addressing Jerusalem’s religious leaders, Caiaphas thunders that they really need to cast their lots with whom, and with what, they follow. “Who believes in the Holy Scripture, and who believes in the Nazarene!”
From where we sit today, we know this to be a false choice. Because you can believe in both.
Belief has always been perhaps the core element of The Chosen, but it seems especially critical in The Chosen: Last Supper—Part Two. Sides are lining up. It’s not just Caiaphas asking people who and what they believe, but Jesus, too. And the choice, ultimately, isn’t so much about believing in Scripture or Jesus, but rather believing in Jesus or … placing our hope in ourselves.
We know that Judas is this story’s primary villain—a person so odious that, 1,300 years after Judas’ betrayal, Dante planted the guy right in the mouth of Satan himself (in his Inferno).
But Judas’ motives in Last Supper—Part Two are insidiously understandable. Judas knows that Jesus is remarkable; Judas seen His miracles and heard His words. Judas hopes that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. But for Jesus to be that Messiah, He needs to be the Messiah whom Judas’ expects: a Savior of Judas’ own making.
So often, we can be guilty of that, too. We imagine that our thoughts our God’s thoughts. His ways are our ways. We reverse Genesis: Instead of us being made in God’s image, we imagine that God is a mirror of our own.
Judas wanted to follow Jesus—as long as Jesus was pointed in what Judas thought was the right direction. But follow Jesus wherever He might go? That is the question facing Judas in Part Two. And most of us, I think, know how he ultimately answered.
The Chosen: Last Supper—Part Two is a slower and, in my opinion, stronger bit of filmmaking than Part One. The first chapter (made up of the first two episodes of Season Five of The Chosen) was anchored by two splashy biblical events: Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and His table-upending run in the Temple. Part Two (comprised of three episodes, and consequently a longer movie) doesn’t have those cinematic centerpieces to rely on, and so we sink more deeply into our characters’ emotions and the sociopolitical intrigue swirling around the scenes.
As we’ve come to expect, Part Two comes with a small handful of cautionary elements. And it features some departures from the original, biblical script—extrabiblical elements that don’t undercut Scripture but to tack on to it. This episode reminds us that the people who opposed Jesus weren’t, perhaps, all that bad, as the world would judge. But they lacked that all-important core: Belief. Trust. Faith.
Who we are and how we act is important, sure. But the main thing we need to concern ourselves with? Who we follow. And Part Two reminds us of who, exactly, is worthy of following—even when we don’t understand where and why He goes.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
