We finally finished watching Season 1 of The Chosen, and I still highly recommend it. If you haven’t seen it, just download the app for your tablet and phone and start watching! Here’s a good description:

The filmmaker was intent on creating The Chosen to be faithful to Scripture. In fact, three biblical consultants…a Catholic, a Jew, and an Evangelical…were engaged in the development and production process. The result is what the show’s Catholic consultant, Holy Cross Father David Guffey, described as an Ignatian meditation on the Gospels. – From a church’s website

“An Ignatian meditation on the Gospels:” Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, believed, as do I, in putting yourself into the Gospel stories, trying to imagine what the people (real people in real places) were thinking and feeling.

The Chosen does this very well and sometimes with subtle humor that makes the lesson stick. For example, we might brush right over Jesus’ calling Matthew, the tax collector. The Chosen spends seven episodes showing us Matthew in his work as a wealthy tax collector that everyone hated. Here’s the succinct biblical description of his calling:

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. (Matthew 9.9, ESV)

The Chosen captures the disciples’ dumbfounded reactions, culminating in this exchange with Simon Peter:

Simon: “I don’t get it.”
Jesus: “You didn’t get it when I chose you either.”
Simon: “That was different. I’m not a tax collector.”
Jesus: “Get used to different.” (Text from The Chosen, Volume 1 by Jerry Jenkins, the novelized version of the video series)

Get used to different. That’ll preach. I’ll share another vignette on this theme tomorrow.

The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, “Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (Luke 7.34, ESV)

Then the disciples of John came to Him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse. Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matthew 9.14 – 17, NKJV)