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Go Watch The Chosen
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August 4, 2021It’s summer so I will keep this short: you should watch The Chosen.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with The Chosen, it is a crowd-funded television series about the life of Jesus. Currently two seasons are available to watch for free at the show’s website, and the producers hope to raise an additional $100 million dollars to create five more seasons.
I will level with you: I am not a big fan of “Christian movies,” “Christian radio,” and the like. I would rather enjoy excellent works of art regardless of their explicit religious inspirations than suffer through the God is Not Deads of the world, which serve more as propaganda than art and further partition off Christians from the rest of society.
Occasionally, exceptions crop up. I think particularly of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, which regardless of its director’s foibles and errors is a truly anointed film.
The Chosen is another such exception to the rule of bad, moralizing “family films” and over-sentimentalized depictions of Christ. It is visually beautiful, the acting is excellent, and the artistic license taken by the director sheds real light on the person of Jesus while remaining deeply faithful to the Scripture accounts. Jesus is shown laughing with delight at the miraculous catch of fish, welling up with tears as he listens to a group of children recite the Shema, and dancing with his friends at the wedding at Cana. He is God, but he is also winsomely and irresistibly human.His disciples, too, are shown to be the ragtag assortment of outsiders and ne’er-do-wells that they must really have been. Matthew the tax collector is a socially awkward math whiz with borderline OCD; Simon Peter and his brother Andrew are gambling street fighters and workaholics who skip worship on the Sabbath to make an extra buck; Mary Magdalene is skittish and insecure. Watching the show, one is really struck by the strangeness of Jesus’ choice of followers - but perhaps that is the point; after all, you and I are just as strange, our personalities just as lopsided, our hearts just as wounded, yet we are The Chosen, too.There are unlimited reiterations of the perverse, gratuitous, and asinine available on other streaming services. This show, on the other hand, is really worth watching. It doesn’t feel like a “Christian” substitution for real entertainment - it is entertaining, as much as it is edifying and spiritually moving.
We all want to veg out and do nothing some nights. My recommendation for your next evening on the couch: cozy up with some of those mini peanut butter cups from Trader Joes and a glass of wine and press “Play” on The Chosen Season One. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself deep in prayer before the night is over.
Editor's Note: MSP Catholic and CEND are not affiliated with the production of The Chosen and are not paid to promote the show. We just think it is pretty cool.
Sarah Carter lives in St. Paul with her husband, Will, and her son, Elijah. She and her family attend the Church of St. Mark and are members of the St. Mark Young Adult community. Sarah graduated from the University of St. Thomas in 2014, spent two years serving as a campus missionary for Saint Paul’s Outreach in Columbus, Ohio, and returned to St. Paul in 2016 to begin study for her master’s in theology at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, which she completed in 2019. Now she teaches moral theology and Scripture at Hill-Murray School.
