Spirit Matters: Better late than never to join ‘The Chosen’

Several months ago, my husband and I began watching “The Chosen,” a dramatization of the complex lives of Jesus’s disciples.

Neither one of us are big into television, so we are late catching up with the series that began airing in 2017. Although much of the series is based directly on the gospels, the producers acknowledge that they have taken creative liberties to flesh out scenes.

As the episodes unfold, we watch the men and women struggle with their own flaws and weaknesses while imperceptibly being transformed by Jesus’s ministry.

A good example is Matthew, the tax collector.

Matthew is an outcast before and after he begins to follow Jesus.

Before, he is publicly rejected because of his role as the one to whom taxes are paid. He is highly intelligent and detailed, and Paras Patel introduces his character as one with various physical tics, often twitching his head when interacting with people.

Once he is called by Jesus to follow him, he is an outcast to his fellow disciples. Peter, portrayed by Shahar Isaac, is a tough guy with little patience for Matthew’s quirks and a chip on his shoulder toward him for his role as tax collector. The other disciples resent him for that, as well.

As a tax collector, Matthew is a highly practical and analytical thinker. When Matthew sees Jesus performing his inexplicable healings, we see him wrestling with how to make sense of it. As time goes on, he appears to relax into a more natural physical state and uses his skills to further the ministry as only he can.

Jonathan Roumie puts in a solid performance as Jesus, portraying him in a deeply nuanced way. Roumie is a highly skilled voice actor, and his interpretation of Jesus’s teachings are highly believable and resonate in the heart. I once watched a YouTube video interview of him on “The View,” where Roumie acknowledged that being in public can be challenging, as viewers often behave as though he is actually Jesus.

One of the things Scott and I like most about the series is how it portrays Jesus’s humanity. This is a Jesus who laughs, teases his disciples, cries, plays field games with his friends, and has a deeply affectionate mother-son bond with Mary, portrayed by Vanessa Benavente.

This Jesus is infinitely patient with his wayward followers and deeply compassionate toward those who desperately seek him for healing. There is the woman with a yearslong hemorrhage who throws herself into a moving crowd of people to touch the tassel on Jesus’s cloak, believing that would heal her.

I found this scene deeply moving. When the woman touches his tassel, Jesus immediately stops and lurches forward, having felt energy leave his body. He turns to ask who touched him, and when the woman, fallen to the ground, nervously says it was her, he crouches down, looks her gently in the eyes and tells her it is her faith that has saved her. On his way to another healing, he tells some of his disciples to stay back and make sure she is OK.

This has long been one of my favorite passages in scripture for many reasons, not the least of which is the way Jesus interacts with women in a deeply patriarchal society. Then, and now for that matter, Jesus treats women not as second-class citizens but as equally made in the image of God, with gifts that are intended to be used for modeling the spiritual transformation that comes from emulating his way.

To me, her hemorrhage represents the ongoing spiritual depletion of the feminine life force in a world system that rejects it out of fear and tries to control and oppress it. When she reaches for his tassel, she is immediately restored. This is what the divine wants for women – to be restored to their full power.

Women will continue to use and flourish in their spiritual gifts, so long as they trust in their birthright and the divine power that comes directly from the dreator who gave them these gifts. They will find a way to use them, whether church or world officials approve or not. They will do so in public and in private, because no one, not even human authorities, can stop the power and wisdom of the holy spirit from achieving the divine will.

As Scott and I continue to make our way through past episodes of “The Chosen,” I expect the previous limitations we have placed on our understanding of God’s mercy and compassion will continue to dissolve.

We, along with millions of others, are profoundly grateful for this labor of love and all those involved in bringing it to us.

SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column by Jerrilyn Zavada Novak that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact her at jzblue33@yahoo.com.