Below is an article that my hubbie, Greg, wrote on his reflections of being involved with the Passion Play.
Amazed and Bewildered by Jesus
Being in the Canadian Badlands Passion Play, gives one opportunity to look at the gospel with fresh eyes. As an actor, you want to get inside your character; to see what he sees and feel what he feels. You don’t really have to be a great actor to do this. You just need to master two responses. Amazement and bewilderment.
Imagine this. You and your friends are in a row boat in the middle of a large lake, when a life threatening storm comes up. You strain at the oars for hours, but can’t make headway. Then Jesus comes walking across the waves toward you. With a few words he tells the storm to stop and in an instant the wind and waves are still. We can read about it, but what would be your response if you were actually there? “Who is this man?” can hardly contain the emotions that you would feel! Do you know anyone who can do this? I don’t. At another time, the daughter of our friend Jairus lays dead. Through our tears we see her grey, stone cold face. Then Jesus speaks a few words, and her eyes open. She sits up. Soon she and her father are dancing. How do you respond? How do your tears turn to joy in that short of a time? By the time Bartamaes is healed of his blindness, we know what to expect and we laugh as we see Jesus at it again. Restoring life to the blind and health to all who ask. Yes, learn to show “amazement” and you are half the way there. Everything Jesus does is truly amazing.
Now work on bewilderment, for Jesus was truly bewildering. Cast and directors were constantly looking for alternatives to the word “What!!?” When we heard him say that the tax collector would enter the kingdom of heaven before the pharisee, our response was, “What!!?” Bewilderment was all we could feel when he told stories we didn’t understand, when he called our highest religious leaders serpents, when he said that all who were persecuted for his sake were blessed, when he said that he would rebuild a destroyed temple in three days, when he said that he and the Father were one, when he said that he must die and be raised in three days. We just didn’t understand. How could we? Everything he said was contrary to common sense! When he said for us to daily take up our cross and follow him, what did that mean? Remember, Jesus had not yet gone to the cross, and we certainly didn’t understand why he would. The cross wasn’t a decoration on a chain. It was our enemy’s weapon of execution and horror. It would be like saying to take up your noose, or your electric chair. What was that about? When he looked me in the eye and told me, “He who saves his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake will save it,” I was too stunned to speak. I played James, and I knew that within a year or two my character would be beheaded and he would lose his life for Jesus sake.
After a passion play experience, I usually find myself pondering some truths. This year those truths lead to questions. Would I lose my life for his sake today, as James did then? What does it mean to lose my life for his sake, when it isn’t actual martyrdom? How do I take up my cross daily? It also clarifies my thinking about who Jesus is. He is the master of creation. He can calm a storm with a word. He is the master of life. He can restore it at will. He can lay his life down and take it up again. If I do the same, he has promised that life giving power to me.
(As an end note, this year Greg is playing Jairus and I am his wife.)
If you wish to read more on the Passion Play, here is an article I wrote last year.
