Last Supper or Bacchanalia?

There are lessons from the Olympic ceremonies either way

Whenever something culturally divisive or shocking emerges, it’s always good to step back and let the dust settle. Or the feathers from the boas drift to the stage, as it were. Social media gives us the unfortunate option to instantly comment on anything and everything but I have found, thanks to prior embarrassment, that I need to simply watch and wait for at least a day or two.

So it is with the opening ceremonies for the Paris Olympics.

Many Christians around the world who watched the festivities were shocked to see what they believed was a mockery of Leonardo Da Vinci’s, “The Last Supper.”

Da Vinci’s work is widely recognized around the world. Completed around 1495-1498, the work depicts Jesus and his disciples dining together on the night before his trial, scourging, crucifixion and death, as described in the Gospels. That is, it depicts the most important and impactful person, and and one of the most important events, in all of human history. (You need not believe in the deity of Jesus to recognize his importance to civilization. Even Richard Dawkins now calls himself a cultural Christian.)

Subsequently the International Olympic Committee was met with a lot of anger over the depiction. There are something like 2.3 billion Christians in the world; obviously of greater and lesser degrees of devotion and practice. That’s a pretty big demographic.

Many have countered that the image was meant to represent a Bacchanalia, which was an ancient mystery cult in the Greek and later Roman world. The secret gatherings of the cult were historically dedicated to the gods Dionysis, known to the Romans as the ‘wine god’ Bacchus and later the Roman god Liber. The original Dionysian cult was very mysterious, complex and apparently included only women.

The modern mind who knows a bit about it believes that those were simply good times devoted to drinks, laughter and lascivious behavior. Kind of like tail-gating at the WVU/Pitt game; plenty of food, booze and later, nausea, headaches, deep shame and regret. Keggers from antiquity! Here’s a link on the topic.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zeus

Maybe that’s true. Certainly the push-back from many proper moderns has been ‘geesh you old Puritans! Read a book! Everyone knows that this was all about having a grand time!”

Indeed, we seem to live in a time when we’re rushing headlong to recover our pagan roots. It would not surprise me if the organizers thought that such a celebration would fit nicely, especially given that the games are Greek in origin and Paris has ever been on the bleeding edge of food, fashion, frolic, philosophy and freedom. (And the occasional guillotine.)

However, there are a couple of problems. One is simply the optics. How many modern people know what a Bacchanalia was? I knew the term, but I’m an amateur history nerd who regrets spending insufficient time on Latin and never learning ancient Greek.

(That’s right, my wife thought all of this was sexy…)

I actually learned a bit more about the Dionysian cult yesterday, listening to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast, as he described Philip the II of Macedonia. https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-71-mania-for-subjugation/

Philip’s wife, Olympias, mother of his son Alexander the Great, was apparently a devotee of the Dionysian mysteries. History does not suggest that this was a good thing, by the way. The historian Plutarch took an especially dim view of her and of the cult. There were accusations of dark magic, murder and political intrigue as well as sexual depravity. Ultimately the cult was outlawed. Our ancestors weren’t idiots as much as we may be guilty of what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery.” And cults aren’t viewed with great favor these days either.

Of course, I digress. My point is, regular people on average didn’t look at the stage (despite the blue fellow meant to represent Bacchus), and think “wow, a Bachanalia! How cool is that?”

They saw the arrangement of the characters, horizontally on a long table, around a central figure, all posing dramatically, and they saw “The Last Supper.” Any French PR or marketing person with a proper education, and worth their salary, should have looked at that and said, “quelle horreur!” And then would have started from scratch, thankful that they didn’t offend all of Christendom in one fell-swoop. That assumes that offending all of Christendom wasn’t a goal from the start.

Artistic director Thomas Jolly stated “our idea was inclusion.” Fair enough. But that inclusion seems to have resulted in no small amount of exclusion.

The thing is, in this modern age of internet, social media and satellite communications, perceptions are paramount. And offense is a dark sacrament that grants the offended powers not unlike an ancient, angry god. Witness the fact that three teens face up to a decade in prison in Spokane, Washington, for leaving scooter skid marks on a rainbow mural on the road.

https://scnr.com/article/washington-teens-face-ten-years-in-prison-for-leaving-skid-marks-on-lgbtq-rainbow-road-mural-with-scooters_16cce63827c011ef9c930242ac1c0002

This was perceived as sufficiently disrespectful and insulting to the LGBTQ community that rather than community service or fines, the heinous perpetrators may get real jail time. Defacing a pride symbol in Washington state is a felony. (Defacing American flags is not, ironically, a crime but is an expression of free speech according to the Supreme Court.)

I’m certainly willing to accept that the image was not meant to be the Last Supper. And I suppose it was time Papa Smurf got some work.

But it was handled poorly. And if it was a Bacchanalia, the layout of the tableau was at least reminiscent of Da Vinci’s work. Modern Christians, especially in France, would easily have identified the geometry of the image.

So, a couple of lessons.

Sometimes we Christians are too quickly and too easily offended. Worse, we are surprised when we are offended or insulted even though that is exactly what Jesus promised.

“If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of it, the world hates you.” John 15: 18-19

Of course, an offensive image is a light bit of “suffering” indeed when our brothers and sisters are routinely tortured and killed in places like Pakistan and North Korea.

So when we are offended, or actually suffer, we might rather say, “well, looks like things are on track just like Jesus said!” It’s as much validation as condemnation, unless we mistakenly believe that following Jesus means to be loved and accepted by the world at large. (Which it doesn’t.)

Next:

Traditional culture and deeply held religion matter to people. And they have as much claim to respect as gender and sexuality. Actually more since they are the things that hold us together in a time when our societies threaten to fly out of orbit into the dark, cold space of chaos. It’s fine to like the idea of cultural anarchy. It’s less fun when it ends up like Haiti, ruled by violence. Our faiths and cultures help keep us safe.

Also:

Most people watching the games are poor and are struggling to get by day to day. So the celebrations of athleticism are inspirations, and escapes, from difficult day to day lives. A “Hunger Games” Capital City image doesn’t resonate, whatever it was meant to show. Call them hicks or hayseeds, but millions, billions, just can’t relate.

This is particularly galling for many viewers since the games are funded by ever increasing tax dollars which could have been spent on helping those who are struggling to raise families.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/26/economy/olympics-economics-paris-2024/index.html

Finally:

Christians will continue to hold forth on this issue. Many sermons will be preached on the Olympics today. Many will stop viewing the games, which is really a bit unfair to the competitors who had nothing to do with it. But this is the magnificent truth: people won’t be murdered over this issue. Car bombs won’t echo through the streets of Paris, set off by angry believers.

It is the very teaching of Jesus, “love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you” that makes Christendom a place where free expression is so much more common than in the rest of the world. Even in Europe, which is steadily fading from Christian practice, the stone and mortar of the faith remain. And the social/ethical teachings of the faith, expressed less in expressly spiritual terms still slip in under the guise of love and equality, care for the poor and immigrant and acceptance of the outsider. These were not urgent considerations for the ancients, despite their celebrations and the perceived freedom of expression they had (at least those who weren’t enslaved).

Maybe the image was of a Bacchanalia. Given the age, I’m not surprised.

But if we have any hope for the future of our civilization, we should perhaps focus once more on the image of the suffering servant in The Last Supper rather than on the the self-indulgent children that make up so much of our political and cultural leadership.

God speed the competitors. We should pray that all are safe from illness and injury, that they compete well and that the city of Paris is free of any disaster.