Catholic protestant

The Chosen could be is one of the best shows ever made, if not THE best. I’m a giant fan (even though, I regretfully say, I’m only a few shows into the second season right now; I know, I have SO MUCH catching up to do!!!). One day, I’ll write a more comprehensive post on why I love this show so much (go out and watch it - for free - if you haven’t yet seen it - you won’t be disappointed, even if you’re not into religion and you can’t stand Jesus portrayals).

But for now, I want to focus on another show that has spun off of The Chosen. And that is the new show that just released on Amazon Prime called Jonathan and Jesus. It’s a docuseries about the actor who portrays Jesus in The Chosen, Jonathan Roumie, and his personal journey. It follows him around his day as he sweeps up the apartment building he’s long managed in Los Angeles to make ends meet as a struggling actor. It continues on to follow him as he soulfully embraces his newfound fame and chats with celebs like Alice Cooper and Brandon Flowers (lead singer of The Killers) about faith.

Another main character of the docuseries is Dallas Jenkins, the director, producer, and overall brainchild of The Chosen. It’s apparent that he and Roumie are close friends. But the dynamic that I find fascinating is their contrasting theological backgrounds. Roumie is a devout Roman Catholic and Jenkins is a Protestant. In several scenes, the two are in Rome. The camera follows Roumie around as he explores ancient churches and shrines and eventually meets the Pope (a hilariously tragic thing happens to Roumie the morning of his meeting with the Pope that I won’t spoil for you).

There’s one specific scene where they are at St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City and Roumie is clearly deep in the moment of being in this ancient place where so much Catholic history took place and Jenkins quips to Roumie, “So why is the spot holy and sacred anymore than any other spot where I’m praying to God, you knowwhatimean?” This seems to jar Roumie from his moment and he staggers to answer the question before handling it with a kind political rebuttal, “Yeah, that’s a big question and there are theologians that, I’m sure, have much better, deeper answers than I can ever give…”

Jenkins cracks me up here - HE’S SO PROTESTANT! And unabashedly so. He even flexes his protestantism when he and Roumie meet the Pope. The first thing Jenkins says to Pope Francis is, “I’m a protestant…”

The dynamic between Jenkins and Roumie shows the contrast between the Catholic and Protestant worldview. The Reformation broke open the doors of the church and made everything sacred. The protestant revolution placed God everywhere. God wasn’t just in the cathedral - God was in your bedroom!! Milking your cows was just as much a sacred act as receiving communion (which is generally why - and I know I’m simplifying here - a lot of protestant churches scrapped communion entirely). To the modern post-reformation protestant, priests hold no special status, Rome is just a place with a bunch of corrupt dudes traipsing around in fancy robes, and grape juice and crackers given to us once every few months by a pastor in skinny jeans and a flannel suffices just fine (not to hate on their style sense).

But Catholics need specificity. Roumie goes deeper into this with the interviewer later in the show… “All this stuff as Catholics that we do, whether it’s sacramentals or rosaries or bracelets or whatever it is - even the crucifix - I mean, all of that is meant to draw you deeper into a relationship with Jesus. That’s all it does. The way that I most connect to Jesus through my faith is sacramentally. A piece of bread essentially transformed into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ - that is available for me. It’s the opportunity for me to literally have communion with God himself… (Tearing up) And I don’t deserve it, but I get it anyway.”

What’s so fascinating as I watch this show is that I have both of these elements in me. Both Catholic and Protestant. I mean, literally. I was born and raised as a Roman Catholic and I came back to Christianity through the Lutheran church. But this is why I love being a Lutheran. We carry both the Protestant allergy to hierarchy as well as the Catholic sacramental theology. (To learn more about the deep Catholic roots in Lutheranism, check this out.)

I lean towards Roumie, no doubt. But I also don’t see priests or popes as any more sacred than anyone else. I don’t know for sure and I can’t speak for him, but I honestly don’t know if Roumie does either. Here’s how I see it…

Humans are weird. We assign significance and credibility to certain people after they show certain levels of proficiency and trustworthiness. Receiving communion from a priest or pastor who has been vetted by a community of people and shown unending passion and heartfulness about the Christian faith is different than receiving it from your uncle Dan who took up Taoism after he retired but is still kinda cool with Jesus. Someone who takes vows in front of a church and receives the apostolic succession in the laying on of hands - this stuff might be pomp and circumstance to the modern mind, but it carries deep human meaning. I’m not saying that God sees the priest as having one iota more sacredness than uncle Dan. But God does give us different gifts - spiritual ones too. For example, I am a Lutheran priest, but I am not a therapist. I can sit with you and pretend to be a therapist, but I haven’t done a therapist’s training and (more importantly), I don’t carry a therapist’s heart. God has not ordained me as a therapist (yes, I think that we’re all ordained into different things even if we don’t undergo a specific ‘ordination’; see, there’s the Protestant in me talking).

This post is really long now, but I want to land the plane on this point…

I used to carry a more Unitarian perspective in my spiritual-but-not religious days. But to say that “God is everywhere,” and, “God loves everyone and everything,” might be accurate, but it also sounds a lot like saying, “God is nowhere and loves no one.”

It’s cheap. Like, I know that God is everywhere, sure. Makes sense. But…

As a human, I need the specific to find my way into the universal.

The bread and wine might just be bread and wine to the modern thinker, but when I trust that Christ imbues this bread and wine, and I eat and drink of it, I experience a reality of being ontologically transformed. Yes, I can rob myself of this experience if I want. I can say that this is dumb and religion is dumb and it’s just bread and wine so please pass me another gin and tonic, thank you very much, because THAT has a REAL effect on me. (And then, after a few of them, the next morning, I realize the only effect it truly has is a shallow one that breaks down my body and spirit.)

Anyhow, I digress…

I need portals and icons to take me into the divine essence. Even if the icon is a tree that I sit down under and gaze up at. Or a shared meal of chicken nuggets with my daughter.

For now, I’m reveling in the both/and (thank you, Lutheranism, for that). I can be both Protestant and Catholic. I have a rosary hanging in my pickup and I love reading Luther. Both Jenkins and Roumie are incredible people.

I can say that I need the sacraments. And also, anything can be a portal or a sacrament if our ears are open.

See what I did there? :)

In Joy,
Jonas+