The Chosen Season 5 sneak peek – a few quick notes
Spoiler-ish thoughts re: a three-minute clip that played in theatres last Saturday.
A few quick notes about the three-minute clip from The Chosen Season 5 that played before the early-access screenings of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever last Saturday:
It’s the Last Supper, and Jesus and the disciples are sitting at tall, modern-style tables. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t how people ate their meals back then; most versions of John’s gospel say the beloved disciple “reclined” next to Jesus at this supper, and that he “leaned back” against Jesus to ask him a question (John 13:23, 25).1 But we’ve seen the disciples sit on the floor to eat before, so maybe there’ll be an in-universe explanation for why they’re sitting differently now.2
John is sitting at Jesus’ right hand—a fulfillment of his controversial request in Season 4 Episode 4! But his brother James is not sitting to Jesus’ immediate left; I assume this will be addressed in the episode somehow. (Luke 22:24 does say the disciples argued amongst themselves over who was the greatest even at the Last Supper, so there’d certainly be a basis for a scene like that here.)
Judas is missing in this clip; the seat to Jesus’ left is empty. So I assume this clip takes place after Judas has left the supper to betray Jesus. Interestingly, John’s gospel is the only one that says Judas left the supper while it was still happening; indeed, he appears to have left it right near the beginning (John 13:27-30). If you only had the other gospels to go by, you could imagine that Judas stayed to the end and then left the group while they were going to Gethsemane.
The clip begins with Jesus telling Andrew they should “close with a hymn”. So this scene apparently takes place near the end of the supper. This fits with Mark 14:26 and Matthew 26:30, which both say, “When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives,” implying that the hymn came at the end of the supper. (The other two gospels don’t mention any hymn-singing.)
Before they start singing, Jesus tells the disciples, “I am not alone, for the Father is with me,” etc. The dialogue here comes from John 16:32-33.
The disciples sing, “Oh Lord, open the gates to me of righteousness…” The hymn they sing comes from Psalm 118:19-23. Notably, this passage ends with the famous line about the stone the builders rejected becoming the cornerstone; Jesus quotes it and implicitly applies it to himself in Mark 12:10-11, Matthew 21:42, and Luke 20:17, and Peter quotes it in Acts 4:11 and I Peter 2:7.
As the disciples sing, Jesus looks up and asks God to “glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you,” etc. The dialogue here comes from John 17:1-4. (Jesus said a prayer very similar to this at the beginning of Season 1 Episode 3.)
As Jesus prays, John turns to look at him, and I got the impression he was the only disciple who noticed Jesus was praying. This is fascinating, on two levels:
First, it fits with The Chosen’s recurring tendency to suggest that the apostles wrote the gospels based on their own notes and memories. John’s gospel is the only one that records this prayer, therefore John might have been the only person who noticed Jesus was praying it, seems to be the thinking here.
And second, it suggests that Jesus wasn’t trying to make an impression on his disciples when he said this prayer; he may have been asking God to glorify him, but he wasn’t trying to glorify himself. It would be very easy for a prayer like this to come across as vain or manipulative,3 but The Chosen, by having Jesus deliver the prayer while most of the disciples are focused on their singing—and by having John notice the prayer almost incidentally—makes the prayer seem more private and intimate, and thus more genuine.4 And because of the emotion Jonathan Roumie brings to the prayer, it plays like a precursor to the even more private prayers that Jesus will presumably pray in Gethsemane.5
Basically, I just think it’s really interesting how this scene combines the hymn-singing in Mark/Matthew with the prayer in John. It’s a clever bit of harmonization.
Also, the fact that Jesus says his prayer while the disciples are singing reminds me of how, in the Orthodox liturgy, there are times when the priest says certain prayers while the choir and the congregation are singing. I have no idea if the filmmakers were aware of that parallel, but it does give the clip a liturgical vibe, of sorts.
So, those are my first impressions of the three-minute clip that played in theatres this weekend. Maybe things will seem different to me on a re-watch, but series creator Dallas Jenkins has said the clip won’t be seen again until Season 5 comes out, which will apparently be in April 2025, so I’ll have to wait until then to find out.
In the meantime, for those who missed the clip, summaries like this will have to do; and for those who saw the clip, I hope this memory jog was useful.
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The Chosen interviews:
Season 1: Dallas Jenkins, co-writer/director (Dec 2019)
Season 2: Dallas Jenkins, co-writer/director (May 2021) | Derral Eves, producer, on Christmas with The Chosen: The Messengers (Nov 2021) | Dallas Jenkins on the ‘The Chosen Is Not Good’ marketing campaign (Apr 2022)
Season 3: Jordan Walker Ross, Little James (Oct 2022) | Vanessa Benavente, Mother Mary (Nov 2022) | Kirk B.R. Woller, Gaius (Nov 2022)
Season 4: Dallas Jenkins, Jonathan Roumie, Abe Bueno-Jallad, Vanessa Benavente, Yasmine Al-Bustami, and Brandon Potter at the press junket; Reza Diako, Alaa Safi, and Elijah Alexander on the teal carpet (Feb 2024) | Paras Patel and Noah James at the press junket; producers Chad Gundersen and Chris Juen on the teal carpet (Feb 2024)
The Chosen recaps:
Season 1: review | scripture index
Episode recaps: The Shepherd | one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eightSeason 2: The Messengers review | scripture index
Episode recaps: one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | The MessengersSeason 3: Episodes 1 & 2 notes | Episodes 7 & 8 notes | scripture index
Episode recaps: one | episodes two to eight are still in the worksSeason 4: Episodes 1-3 notes
Episode round-ups: S4E1 | S4E2 | S4E3 | S4E4 | S4E5 | S4E6 | S4E7 | S4E8
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The Chosen can be streamed via the show’s official app (Android | Apple).
The Passion of the Christ actually has a scene that pokes fun at the fact that tables like this weren’t exactly common back then: Jesus tells his mother he’s making a tall table for “a rich man”, and she replies, “This will never catch on!”
I haven’t paid much attention to how the Chosen characters sat for their meals in the past, but the first few scenes I checked just now—the Sabbath dinner in S1E2, the wedding at Cana in S1E5, the Sukkoth meal in S2E4—all show the disciples using shorter tables.
If you’ve ever been in a situation where someone leading a group in prayer was pretending to address God while really addressing the people around them, you know what I mean.
I believe the camera also moves in on Jesus’ face in a way that isolates him visually from the disciples, which adds to the feeling that this is basically a private prayer—and not being done for show—even though there are other people in the room.
I say “presumably” because I haven’t seen the rest of the episode yet! But also because Jesus doesn’t pray in Gethsemane at all in John’s gospel, so there would certainly be a biblical precedent for skipping those prayers, if the filmmakers were so inclined.