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By Clair McPherson

The word "mission" is a version of the Latin word for "send." Whenever there is a "mission," someone has been sent. Christians have always understood that the first someone to be sent was Jesus, and the latter someone to be themselves.

Venturing far from home in mission, Christians come into contact not only with different theologies, but also with strange and curious cultures. And to this they have reacted in diametrically different ways. One affirms the local culture, assuming that God has not simply ignored some tribe or nation for all the eons in the past, and admitting the strong possibility that the Holy Spirit had already been there. The other assumes that the local religion has been essentially a mode of Satan worship and that the local culture is wicked to the core.

Roland Joffe’s 1986 film, The Mission, explores the clash of these two attitudes in high relief. Jeremy Irons portrays Father Gabriel, a Spanish Jesuit of the quietly fervent sort, who is determined to do three things for the Guaraní people of South America: make disciples of them, baptize them, and teach them about Jesus. He has no interest in making them Europeans, just Christians. He works with their language, he eats their food, he lives among them: in short he affirms the culture.

Into this context comes Robert De Niro as Rodrigo Mendoza, a mercenary and slave-trader who has slain his own brother in a jealous rage, and is seeking atonement. He begins this personal quest auspiciously, living among the Guaraní at Gabriel’s direction, and eventually becoming a priest, himself. But then the Portuguese, who have been handed the territory by Spain, determine to enslave the Guaraní, and the Vatican orders the Jesuits out.

Rodrigo struggles with the implications of the Church’s decision and wants to help the Guaraní fight back. Gabriel’s response is unequivocal: "If you die with blood on your hands, Rodrigo, you betray everything we’ve done. You promised your life to God — and God is love."

Gabriel’s mode of resistance, to the end, is the nonviolent style of Gandhi, St. Francis, and Martin Luther King, Jr.; Rodrigo’s is the fire-meets-fire mode of Robin Hood. But they are both up against the full force of European Christian firepower, which subjugated the Third World for centuries in the name of Christ and Civilization. They cannot win, in any kind of earthly sense.

The film is artistically excellent — it has to be for something so emotionally charged to work. Irons and De Niro are an ideal set of foils; the Guaraní are played (a number of them anyway) by South American tribespeople. Joffe’s direction is almost without fault. Besides being visually gorgeous (which heightens the weirdness of what is going on), he makes frequent effective use of the parallel cut — actually I’d call it an "antithetical cut"-to bring various antitheses into contrast: Irons and De Niro, Irons and Guaraní, Portuguese and Spanish, Vatican and militia, and so forth. The music, composed by Ennio Morricone, is haunting.

The Mission ends in a state of shock: Gabriel, Rodrigo, and the defiant Jesuits who occupied the Guaraní mission are dead. The Guaraní are either dead or enslaved. It is a heartbreaking ending and one that leaves the viewer with questions. Were the Guaraní better off before Gabriel came to live among them? What kind of Christian community could the Mission have become if the Church, ironically, had protected it rather than handing it over to the Spanish and Portuguese? With whom do we most identify: Gabriel or Rodrigo?

Although the events The Mission is based on happened almost 400 years ago, many of the questions it raises are the same ones modern-day Christians are asking themselves about how to (and how not to) go about responding to God’s mission in the world. It’s a beautiful, but sobering look at the extraordinary capacity for good that the Church can foster — Gabriel’s ministry, Rodrigo’s redemption; and the appalling evil the Church has enabled at times in its history.

The Rev. Dr. Clair McPherson has taught spirituality, history, and theology at colleges and universities for 30 years. He is a regular contributor to Trinity News.