"Get the Papyrus!"
EPISODE 178
Talk About Jesus
The next two weeks, we’re kicking off the Bible Geeks A.V. Club — our chance to watch films and shows and talk about them — with a conversation about the first two episodes of The Chosen. If (somehow) you haven’t heard of it, The Chosen is a historical drama about Jesus’ life that has caught people’s attention in a big way, with reportedly over 100 million viewers generating lots of conversations about — our favorite subject — Jesus. So this week we go Finding Jesus in a passage quoted throughout this episode, Isaiah 43:1. And after recapping the story, we share a few of our Favorite Things and discuss the place of media like this in our modern religious landscape. If you haven’t watched the show, you can check it out on the free The Chosen app, or almost any major streaming platform (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Peacock).
Takeaways
The Big Idea: When Jesus becomes part of our story, he changes us.
This Week's Challenge: Find a way to start a conversation about Jesus.
Episode Transcription
Get the Papyrus, Simon met a guy! Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Bible Geeks Podcast. This is episode 178. I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. And thanks so much everyone for tuning in on the heels of what I think was a pretty cool guided study that we just got done doing, that Talking to Yourself series. We are going to continue on with talking about something that I think has been in the cultural, as I said last week, the cultural zeitgeist for quite a long time. A lot of people have been talking about this show and I think it just stands to reason that two of us geeks nerd out about this show as well for a little while and that is The Chosen. Can you actually believe that we're doing this? I think it does make sense. It was a little bit of a hard sell from you to me to be honest about. We're going to talk about a show, but we love talking about movies and stuff. And we especially love talking about the Bible together. So it just makes sense whenever there's a show about the Bible that has such a powerful effect, like you said, on a lot of people, including on us, as we've watched it with our families, that we just get into it. It's the kind of thing that makes you want to just talk about some of these episodes with your friends. And so that's what this show is about. So let's do it. - Exactly. I think it really does sum up so much of what we do on this show, talking about cool things we're excited about with our friends, especially related to the Bible. And so we are proud to announce here the very first installment in the Bible Geeks AV Club. - Welcome to the Bible Geeks AV Club, The Chosen, season one, episode one. I have called you by name. - All right. So that's what we're talking about on this one. We are talking about The Chosen, S1E1, it is on, man, bring it on. So let's kick this thing off with an icebreaker question as we like to do something to lighten the mood ever so slightly. And so watching S1E1 of The Chosen, what would you say about being stranded on a desert island with one of these characters here? Who would it be and why? - Such an interesting different take because we're not talking about the biblical person exactly. We sort of are, but sort of aren't. from a biblical perspective, I'd say Peter's my guy. - I could see that, yeah. - But in the show, I was surprised to be drawn to Nicodemus. The actor who plays him, you recognize him from different things too, and he's so good in this. And for all his political angling and hypocrisy, this character shows a different side in his intimate moments with just himself and his wife, kind of like an intimate moment that the real life Nicodemus had with Jesus. He's searching. He's actually wise in those scenes. There's that scene of him looking in that cheap mirror, trying to understand God through a glass darkly, as the King James would put it. He's looking at it and saying, you know, what if there's something far more beautiful and strange, something we're not getting to all of this that the Old Testament is trying to say that who God is, there's more to it. And maybe a hint at the Messiah and who Jesus is going to show God to be. But he betrays this kind of humility, this secret kind of, you don't see this side of me, this humble searching side of me, whenever I'm out, the man with all the answers in front of the religious people. But you could see how a prestigious guy like him that's supposed to have all the answers could come to Jesus, this itinerant rabbi by night and ask him questions whenever you see this kind of quiet searching, like there is an honesty and authenticity to his quest for God as he contemplates the scriptures. - I could totally see that. I love Nicodemus and his portrayal. Like you're saying, you almost wonder if it's the portrayal of the actor or the actual person of Nicodemus who you'd be attracted to more, but I do love his character here in this episode. I was particularly drawn to Andrew. Obviously you kind of want to be drawn to Simon Peter, like I think you were explaining there, but Peter is really not the kind of character in this first episode that you want to be spending a lot of time with. And as Andrew is really practical and level-headed here, he is so dedicated to following his brother and really putting up with his brother in a lot of ways. And listen, if I was stuck on a desert island with someone, I would definitely want Andrew, who seems to be super patient and super practical to be there, he has this response when he's talking to Simon in the bar, where he says they are our people, when he's talking about selling them out or spying on them to the Romans. And it's like, yeah, this guy's super committed to his people. So if I want to be on a desert island with somebody, it's that kind of person. - I love it. You're thinking survival, and I'm thinking, who do I want to talk to about the Bible? - Yeah, that's true. I guess I do have a survival bent to it. So that's pretty funny. All right, so let's move into our first segment here, the actual serious segment of the show, and that is finding Jesus. As we watch this episode, there is a verse that continues to come up over and over again. If you've watched season one, episode one, you know what this verse is, and it's from Isaiah chapter 43, verse one, and we're going to find Jesus here. - Yeah, what a great verse. and it has such power throughout the episode as we'll talk about, but the verse says, "But now thus says the Lord, "he who created you, O Jacob, "he who formed you, O Israel, "fear not, for I have redeemed you, "I have called you by name, you are mine." So I don't wanna really go into it too much because the verse just stands alone so powerfully, but where do you find Jesus in this verse? - Yeah, it's pretty clear, obviously Jesus in the dramatization of this episode is the one who says this verse at the very end. Obviously, this whole AV club thing is full of spoilers, so if you haven't watched The Chosen, you probably wanna hit pause on your podcast player right now and go take a watch over this thing. - Yeah, that's a good warning. - Definitely something you might wanna do, 'cause we're just gonna blow the spoilers out of the water, but it's been four or five years since this show had first come out, So I think we can talk about it without spoiling too much, but he says God is near to us. That is really the whole focus of this verse in the Bible. Isaiah 43 verse one is a picture of God being close. It's not a God who's so distant or so unwilling to hear us that he's far away from us. And we see here that Jesus is near to us too. He knows us by name. And this is actually what Jesus would say of himself as he talked about himself in John 10 verse 14 and 15, being the good shepherd. He is the good shepherd who knows his own and his own know him, just as the father knows me. And I know the father, he said, and I lay down my life for the sheep. Jesus was invested in his people. And this verse says that God is invested in us. He says, "I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine." And it's just such a cool picture to know that the Lord knows those who are His. Paul talks about that in 2 Timothy chapter 2, how the Lord knows those who are His. He's not unfamiliar with us. He's not so far away. And Jesus knew His disciples. And really, if we're going to talk about this whole series, the chosen, of course, as Jesus was calling all of these people to Himself to follow Him, to come learn of Him, He knew them. He wanted to know them. And what a cool picture of Jesus reaching out and God really reaching out to us all, to buy us back, wanting to save us, and wanting this deep connected relationship with us. Well, and I appreciate that you went to John 10 there, that as you're thinking about God calling His people by name, and then we go straight to the Good Shepherd who knows us, we know His voice, He knows us, He knows our names, and He knows each of His sheep, and He's leading them, like He said. And just diving into this passage in Isaiah 43, just a little bit, the verse before this speaks of God pouring the fire of His wrath on Israel, which is kind of a totally different take on what He's saying. Different tone, right? His wrath is going to come down on them, and it's pictured as a fire. But the verse after this one speaks of fire that won't burn them because God is with them. That's that famous passage about you'll go through the flood, but you won't drown. You'll go through the fire, but the fire won't burn you because I'm with you and I'll be with you in the fire as you go through it. And so this verse, our verse here, transitions from their past sins and the suffering that they've gone through in the exile and everything to the heart of their identity that should give them courage now. Whatever was in the past, Listen, you can now take comfort and know you belong to the Lord. That's the source of your strength. That's who you are. You are mine and they are his first by creation. I formed you and second by redemption. He made them as individuals and he formed them as a nation and he redeemed them. And we belong to Christ first by creation. He made us all and second by redemption. He has bought us as first Corinthians 3 23 says you are christ or a few chapters later Paul says in chapter 6 19 to 20 you are not your own for you were bought with a price so glorify God with your body so going back to Isaiah 43 1 then the reassurance Israel found in God's words fear not you are mine now belongs to us and it really makes me think of so many passages, honestly, but it's hard not to go to Romans eight and the love of God passage there about who we belong to. If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? If we belong to the Lord and he's with us, there is nothing to fear. And so those words that in the show, Mary Magdalene is holding on to, we can hold on to also. I think that's so powerful. And I think it was about the time when I started seeing this verse getting repeated over and over again in this first episode, the very first time I ever watched it. I knew that this was a different show, that it wasn't just a fluffy, cuddly picture of Jesus or some really strange off the base kind of thing. Like you can really imagine people holding in their hearts verses like this in the first century when Jesus was around. And you could imagine Jesus saying a verse like this to somebody and just the power that it would have had. These are the kinds of things that were always pointing us to the Messiah who would, like you said, buy us back so that we could be possessed or owned by the Lord. That's such a cool picture. - It is. That's, as I guess we'll come across in this episode and these episodes about this, I think what we appreciate about this show and why we're thinking it's worth taking a couple episodes talk about is there is some underlying integrity to it with all the poetic license and everything else that goes on throughout it they are trying to grab on to some things that could have been true that come from at least some sense of research and thought and then trying to honor what we do know about Jesus they're not getting it perfect and they themselves give a disclaimer at the beginning, but there's a lot to love, like you said, whenever you see the scriptures have this prominent place throughout the storyline. Exactly, and I think that probably leads us perfectly into our next segment here, which is here's the story. So we're gonna do basically a quick recap, really quick recap of this first episode, and before we really get into that, I think it's worth noting that the show was launched in 2019. And this is a, it's called a historical drama. So it is definitely dramatized, but it's not word for word verbatim. But this was created by Dallas Jenkins. And of course there's plenty of media online. You can go to YouTube and all sorts of places to see interviews with him. But this is one of the first, very first multi-season series of the life and ministry of Jesus. This is one of the first times where Jesus life and work was really focused on for multiple TV seasons. And so, like you said, there is a disclaimer in the beginning of this first episode. And I think maybe it's important just to note it really quickly here so everyone understands what this show is claiming to be and not claiming to be. It says, "The Chosen is based on the true stories of the Gospels of Jesus Christ. Some locations and timelines have been combined or condensed. Backstories and some characters or dialogue have been added." They say, "However, all biblical and historical context and any artistic imagination are designed to support the truth and intention of the scriptures. Viewers are encouraged to read the gospels." I love that. Yes, please read the gospels. The original names, locations, and phrases have been transliterated into English for anything spoken. So right off the bat, I think they're really setting the show up for what it is. It's not entirely 100% accurate. It is a dramatization, but there's a lot of thought given into what they put into each episode. And I don't think they always do it perfectly, but I think it does get our juices flowing and things to think about here. So let's go through the story ever so quickly. And what does this first episode start off with? - Well, the series opens all the way back in 2 BC. So before you're gonna meet a grown Jesus with a young Mary Magdalene finding comfort from her father. And her dad points out to her that passage we talked about earlier, Isaiah 43 and verse one. And so that becomes a thread through the episode right from the beginning. And she's afraid and so he's trying to give her comfort. He also mentions the new star and it shows the shot of this bright shining star referencing the star the wise men followed and Matthew too. And then we cut to her 28 years later, now a demon oppressed woman. And of course this is Mary Magdalene, Luke 8 verse two, tells us she was healed by Jesus of seven demons, seven unclean spirits, spoiler alert. And so this scene, this cut from her as a child, innocent and fearful to now her really overcome and having this descent into darkness shows us right from the beginning, what Jesus came to eventually reverse. - And then as many TV shows do, the entire scene just totally flips to something else. and we go to now Nicodemus. Yes, that Nicodemus, the Nicodemus from John chapter three. Nicodemus is heading to Capernaum and his wife is with him. They're going for this visit to the synagogue there. And that's where we meet a Roman magistrate of Galilee named Quintus. Not a dude that you really have a lot of affinity for here in this episode, but he is basically demanding that Nicodemus help him figure out the tax situation. Apparently there's a lot of work happening. people aren't paying their taxes, and the work that's happening is actually happening on the Sabbath. And so he's trying to get Nicodemus to help him figure out how to get people to pay their taxes. And of course, all of this is nowhere in the scripture, but it's an interesting thought to think about, the Pharisees being asked to help the Roman government in some way. - Yeah, I love that line that closes that scene as he says, Quintus says something like, what can be underwater, have their heads underwater and not drown and it's just like a cut right after that. That's just an illustration of the kind of, just pretty good screenwriting throughout this show. But it goes from there to an ostracized tax collector. We're introduced to Matthew. - Matthew. - Who is so hated by his own people that he has to pay somebody to sneak him to the tax booth. And there's a Roman guard, a centurion that's gonna stand there and protect him so that nobody kills him or beats him up. And scripture, of course, attests throughout the gospels to how despised tax collectors were. You think of places like Matthew 9, 11, Jesus' parable of the publican and the Pharisee. But this is a really striking look at it that really helps you, I think, feel some sympathy for this very unusual, but strangely likable character of Matthew. - 100%. Yeah, and then of course, we switch right back to Nicodemus And we find out that he is called the teacher of teachers by a lot of people. You can imagine the Pharisees really appreciating that kind of title, but he gives a sermon that really seems to oddly incorporate a lot of the Roman magistrate Quintus's questions and encouragements. He's calling out the sinfulness of the city's fishermen as they're gambling and fishing on Shabbat on the Sabbath. And so he says that the Messiah is not going to come until this wickedness is purged. So we see on one hand, he's focused on the Messiah, but on the other hand, he's in the Roman's pocket, which is a little strange. We also meet Shmuel, which he is one of my favorite characters in these first few episodes, but also Yousef, who are Nicodemus' students. So they have this conversation with each other that gets interrupted as a bunch of Romans are trying to get Nicodemus to come out and help this woman in the red quarter who's demon possessed. And so they're causing a disturbance. They want Nicodemus to come out and help. And that's where the story cuts back to the other guys. - Yeah, the other guys being Simon who fights and gambles. This is Peter, but he loses both, by the way, his fight and his gambling. And then he decides to go fishing on the Sabbath. And the New Testament mentions several places that Simon Peter was married. like for instance, Mark 1.30, where Jesus healed his wife's mother. And here we also meet his wife Eden. And I think that's just a little charming part of the story so far, their relationship, and that's going to become rocky over time. - As anything having to do with Peter, you can imagine it being rocky, for sure. - Yeah, right. Oh, I see what you did there. - Ba-dump-dump, yep. So we get back to Nicodemus, who is in the red quarter, and he is trying to perform an exorcism on this woman named Lilith, but he fails because his demon possession of Lilith is too strong and she turns around and snaps back at him and it really bothers him that he can't cast out this woman's demon. He talks to his wife about what happened and he said he's really introspective. He's really at this moment being very thoughtful about what is happening at this time. And so Lilith quote unquote wakes up and she's holding this piece of paper that has Isaiah 43 verse one written on it. And so now you're making the connection about who this woman is versus who that child was at the very beginning. She is holding the paper though at a local bar. And that's where she is at the end of this scene in the episode. - Yeah, so then cut back to the other guys, as you said, to the brothers, Andrew and Simon. And Andrew goes to the tax booth to settle his accounts where Matthew very matter of factly tells him just how deeply in debt he is. He's about to lose everything when Simon swoops in with a claim that he has an arrangement with that Roman authority that we met, Quintus. And we later find out Simon is going to inform on Jews fishing on the Sabbath. - Tattletale. - Which Andrew is not cool with. - Nope. - Yeah, all of this, by the way, is completely poetic license. We don't find any of this in any of the accounts we have, but they're establishing their characters. Of course, we do know that they were fishermen and that Matthew was a tax collector. But one of my favorite lines in the episode comes right when they're walking away, the two brothers are walking away from the tax booth when Simon explains the arrangement by saying he met a guy. And Andrew says, "Get the papyrus, Simon met a guy." - That was at that point where I wanted to be on a desert island with Andrew. I think that was pretty much it for me. - I get it, I get it. - Oh man, all right, so then we get to a heavy scene. And this is really the scene at the end of the episode where you realize what the Chosen is all about. Lilith, she wants to commit suicide. She's at the edge of this cliff and she's about to jump off and she sees this dove flying in the air and she's distracted by it. She turns around and she starts going back toward where she saw this dove flying around. And she goes back to the bar where she was before. She goes in, she encounters Jesus and this is the first time we see Jesus in the Chosen. All the way at the very end of the first episode, He calls her by name and he calls her Mary Magdalene. She turns around as she is just distraught and things are not working out well for her. And then he recites the words of Isaiah 43 verse one to her. You see this moment, the swelling music and everything. And yeah, it's just one of the coolest ways to end the first episode of this series that I could think of. So that's where we sort of end with the story of the first episode. Let's talk maybe here for a little bit about some of our favorite things here in the episode. ♪ These are a few of my favorite things ♪ All right, I don't know. I guess I can kick this off with one of my favorite things. We talked about him, Matthew. Matthew is my favorite thing in this first episode. I never would have expected that I would have loved a portrayal of Matthew that was like this. The character, it's totally living up to that pre-show disclaimer that was given that all the things that they're choosing to do are giving artistic license to really supporting what would have or could have been happening in the gospels. And so you see Matthew, he is awkward, like super awkward, and you feel so bad for him. I don't know, like you were talking about earlier, how when we see him getting snuck into his tax booth, how you just feel so bad for the guy. You connect with him on a level that I'm not sure I would have ever connected with a tax collector, seeing how much they're hated, seeing the kinds of insults and stuff that are thrown at them all the time, how terrible it would have been to be in the Romans pocket, but also be so hated by other people, even if you aren't skimming off the top and taking money for yourself. People are not gonna have a great opinion of you. And I don't know, Matthew is definitely a really relatable character. There's no reason though, like you said, to ever suspect that some of these events would have happened like, did Matthew? actually know Simon Peter before they came to know Jesus or before Jesus called them? I don't know, but wouldn't it have been interesting to know Matthew's relationship with Peter prior to them coming to Jesus? And what was that relationship really? A guy who is very clearly hated by everybody and a guy who, like Peter, is probably loved by a lot of people. Yeah, I mean, I think I saw my kids relating to him in a different way. The actor, like said, make some really interesting choices. The way they portray him, he's almost, he comes across like a neurologically atypical kind of a character, like maybe he's on the spectrum or something, the way he just, he's into the numbers. He gets numbers in a different way, but he almost has this kind of childlike innocence in the way he deals with people. This naivete that's really kind of beautiful. Like you said, it's relatable for a guy that is on the other hand, betraying his people and turning his back on them in a way that makes his own family hate him. But, but yeah, he's definitely one of the highlights of these first episodes for me also. My first favorite thing is Mary clutching the papyrus. As a Bible lover, I just love the way God's word weaves through anybody's life. The way certain passages, certain moments are affected by the way scriptures, you know, affect us. And so the subtle backstory of this one quotation from scripture that we keep talking about, Isaiah 43, one, from Mary's father teaching her as a girl to her clutching it as a woman in crisis really forms, I think, the backbone of this whole episode. She's doing what our challenge on the last episode was to write a verse on a slip of paper and repeat it over and over again. That's exactly what this is. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly what she's doing. We didn't know we were setting up this episode. - Here you go. - Like, what do you tell your kids when they're afraid? And this Jewish dad did exactly what we all should be doing. He gave her a passage that was intended in context to combat our fear, to let God's promise and the special place and provision of God give her strength, give his people strength. And I love that it's stuffed into her doll. And the scripture starts to feel to her like something that she should let go of along with the doll. Like when I was a child, I dealt with childish things, but now I've got to throw those childish things away. You know, like, oh, just a belief that didn't help me. Because when she repeated it to herself, as the demons had a grip on her, she had nothing else. So she was just holding onto that verse and that was her connection with God. And I think probably we felt that way. This is how we're going to hold on to the Lord. And that is actually true. But it seemed to her that it did nothing at the moment. And then Jesus shows up and Jesus speaks the words and Jesus gives the scriptures new life as he always does. He fulfills it in an unexpected kind of soul nourishing way. She understands it better than ever before. I guess she just sees it fully and settles into it. This is real because Jesus made it real for her. And Jesus is the embodiment of all of these scriptures. There's just a story of scripture, of what the Bible does in the lives of God's people and how Jesus comes to bring the ultimate fulfillment in them. I guess we get to my last favorite thing here, and it is the first of many tearjerker moments. I don't know. recently you've talked about how as you get older, you find yourself tearing up and crying a bit more. I find myself every single time I watch one of these episodes, every single time there's one moment in it where they they swell the music and the woman starts singing in the background or whatever and Jesus says something or does something and man I just start bawling and I'm sitting there in the house just crying my eyes out thinking about what it must have been like back then and There was obviously that moment here at the end of the episode where he repeats that Isaiah 43 verse 1 passage to Mary and you just see everything all come together and I don't know like I can't see These dramatic events. I can't see how they are not amazing Pictures of what it must have been like for somebody who had seven demons to have those demons released It would have been an incredibly powerful moment whether it was accompanied by singing and music in the background or whether it was like Jesus speaking some prophetic or powerful words to her. Like whatever that scenario must have been like in Luke chapter eight verse two or Mark 16 verse nine as they recount it, it's just these small little slivers explaining that Mary had these seven demons and Jesus cast them out. Like it doesn't explain it at all, but you have to totally believe that it was a tear-jerking moment when that occurred and if you had been witnessing that or if you had been Mary in that moment, like, wow, this would have been heavy and huge. And I love that about this show that it totally lets you feel something when it comes to even small verses in the Bible that are easy to glance over, but probably deserve a lot more attention. Definitely the reveal here of Jesus and the buildup and the fact that he's just in the background, he's going to show up. Yeah, but it's like the history of God's people. And is he going to come? And you hear somebody saying that at one point in an episode, like a beggar says something like, are you the Messiah as he come? Let me know when he comes, something like that. And it's like he's coming and then he shows up and it works. They earn it the moment with the way that they tell the story. And it's, it is really powerful. I, in spite of myself, the moment he appears in the doorway, the moment he calls her by name and quotes Isaiah, I, every time I see it, I feel that thing in the back of my throat too, and my breath is taken away. You too. It's really powerful. The silhouette of Mary's head bowing to Jesus when he puts his hand on her head to heal her. And it's just a really powerful moment because of what Jesus means to all of us. And so this actor is representing the most important person in all of our lives. And so this moment, that some part of us as stories work, is echoing something to us. Let's get into our last segment here on the episode and that is our reach out question. Reach out, reach out and touch someone. So as we like to do here, we're going to ask each other this question. And today's question is going to be what purpose do you think media like The Chosen serves in our modern religious landscape? That's a deep question maybe, but where does The Chosen fit into everything that's going on today? I like that it's deep, but it's not making me like get all gushy. We're giving ourselves a break from the last series that we did. Yeah, thank you. I requested that in the last episode. And here you go. So I'm teaching a class, this side class workshop, kind of a class on the art of bringing Bible imagery to life right now. It's a really different sort of a class than anything I've ever done. And we're doing art as we study through biblical imagery and we're trying to bring it to life through different forms of art so that we can serve and use our gifts. And we talked in the first class about the dangers and difficulties of creating art inspired by scripture and how on the one hand you can let art inspire or inform how you view scripture. Like we had them right at the beginning draw a picture of the devil and a picture of an angel and we've looked at the history of how those things have been illustrated through the years and how its art has influenced what we see whenever we read the scripture as opposed to the scriptures informing art, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, I do. So we talked about how there's a lot of caution and care to bring to it and we need to understand what the purpose and the value of it is because it's all commentary. Anything that isn't a direct quote from scripture in any art form, whether it's a sermon or a Bible commentary or a piece of a painting, the Sistine Chapel's, you know, ceiling, whatever it is, it's commentary, but it can serve people, can help us see the Word afresh to draw us into it. And this uses a different art form and it's by its own acknowledgement, it's adding details to make it a show as we've talked about. But I've talked to so many people who've walked away from this show excited to go back to the the Gospels and to see Jesus and generating conversations like this one. And if it's doing that and it's not claiming to be something it isn't, I think it really has value as a teaching tool, as a devotional tool, and as a conversation starter, which is something that we like to create. Yeah, I think that's really powerful in me connecting with this because what this show, what our show, The Bible Geeks, really is all focused on is a similar goal. We try to focus on scripture. We try to bring out the meaning and the meat of what we're reading. But everything that we're really saying here on this episode and all of our episodes is really, like you said, a commentary. We're not inspired people. We're not speaking directly from and just simply quoting the Bible. Everything we're saying, kind of like even a preacher would do, it's a sermon. A sermon is a commentary unless the sermon is just reading exactly from the Bible. It's a commentary. So I appreciate that they are trying in this art form to bring something that has meaning and depth, but also still points back to scripture. I think that's the whole purpose of what we're doing here today, just having these conversations and trying to get people, including ourselves, to think more seriously about the Bible. Yeah. And there's, we've pointed out before, I think one of our first favorite things episodes, I talked about the Gospel of John movie. Oh yeah. also a Gospel of Mark movie or something like that by the same creators that quote, "word for word," one of the English translations of the Gospel. And that has value too. It still has poetic license to it. They're still making decisions in the visuals and that kind of thing. But that's really great. That's not what this is, but there's all these different art forms and there is a caution and a care that we want to bring to any time. commenting on the scriptures to try to present things clearly and let people know what we're doing and to try to make sure that God is pleased with what we're saying about it, that it's true to His Word. But I think there's a place for both kinds of art. For sure, yeah. And I think the chosen, from my opinion, the chosen fits into the cultural and religious landscape in a way that I don't feel like there's a huge and high barrier to entry in getting into and watching this show. I I have known a lot of people who have introduced The Chosen and suggested it, recommended it to people who aren't believers, who don't know anything about the Bible really, and just said, "Here, watch this." Because I don't think it's overly cheesy. I don't think it's incredibly boring or dry. I don't think you have to know a lot. And the production quality is really good. I think maybe, like they said, everything isn't entirely 100% accurate, but I think the spirit of it is in keeping with what we see in the Bible, at least in these first handful of episodes that I've gotten a chance to see. But I don't think there's a lot of flagrant inaccuracies. So, you know, when you want to recommend it to somebody, I think it's really kind of an easy thing to do because you know, it's going to be easy to digest from somebody versus something that's like super cheese. I keep using the word cheesy, but I've seen so many things like this. That is, yeah, that are, I know what you're saying. That's not good. And from this standpoint, I think the cinematography, the story, all of the writing and everything that goes into it, I think is just really well done. And that serves for making something easily digestible by somebody who doesn't know the Bible at all. On the other hand, though, I think on the other side of it, then you get people who are really good Bible students who love the story of the Gospels, who see this and they go, "Oh." You know, and that's what's happened to me so often in these episodes where I've watched something and just said, "I did not make that connection before," or "I can imagine that's what it would have been like at that time. I never thought about it like that." Here I am an American middle-class white dude sitting in my house watching a show about Middle Eastern people who are probably poor and impoverished and all these things who are going through a very different cultural context than I ever have experienced in my life and seeing what they might have been going through just entirely helpful for me and for my own Bible study. And I guess there's a lot of that just tension between the Jews and the Romans and the Pharisees and all of the people around them and their pomp and circumstance. And you see like ostracized sinful people. Just all of the humanity, I think, in these first few episodes is really helpful in connecting me back to the story of the gospels that I love that this show can do. - I experienced the same thing you're talking about. It's like storytelling, good storytelling, is a really high resolution way of conveying data. There's so many different decisions that have been made to make a show like this, that you're taking in so many different things, so much more than if someone just told you a fact about life in the first century. Because there's so many facts that you're just showing up in the details of the background and in the way Matthew talks to the Romans, and in just all of these different pieces, it really goes a long way. And there's a lot in this first episode that takes the background facts of the context of the time Jesus comes into the world. Things like the oppression of Rome, the kind of suffocating presence of Rome in Palestine, and the influence of the religious leaders, and the expectancy for the Messiah, And all these things come to the foreground and help everyone really have a sense of this is the reality we're living in while we're in this story. And that really was the reality that the people of Jesus' time were living in. And so it really brings about a lot of aha moments for us. I think that's a really good way of summing that up. Episode one, season one, plenty of aha moments. In the next episode, we are going to do an AV club part do. We are doing the chosen season one episode two. So if in the next week you have not seen the chosen, at least you could watch season one episodes one and two to get caught up for that next conversation. The episode is called Shabbat. So you'll probably know what they're going to be talking about and doing in that episode. There are a lot of places to see this online. We'll throw some links in the show notes, but probably the most recommended place to to go watch these episodes is on The Chosen's app. They have an app for iPhone, for Android. You can go and download it and watch these shows there. Or you can Google search and find where they're hosted in a lot of other places. I know they're on Amazon Prime, on Peacock, but definitely check your local listings and see where you can check this thing out, probably for free in most cases. - Yeah, definitely the app is free. I know the first two episodes at least are on YouTube free. So you can find it if you want it. For sure. All right. And you know where you can find show notes for this episode? It's a BibleGeeks.fm/178. You can go there and get in touch with us. We'd love to hear from you. If you want to hear more AV club episodes in the future, if you have any questions or you'd like to submit feedback, please get in touch with us. We might do an ask the geek segment at some point. We're going to be gearing up for another guided study, not too far off in the future, but please get in touch with us. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in until next week. Thank you everyone, may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom. [MUSIC]