|
View as Webpage
Morning Devotion for the Season after Lent
March 6, 2024
Invitatory
Thus says the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy, “I dwell in the high and holy place and also with the one who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.
The History of Oberammergau's Passion Play:
Devastated by the Bubonic Plague in 1633, the people of Oberammergau made an oath to God, hoping to spare the village. They vowed that if saved, they would forever perform a "Play of the Suffering, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ" every ten years. According to the church's records from that year, plague-related deaths stopped soon after the villagers swore the oath. The following year, at Pentecost 1634, the villagers fulfilled the pledge for the first time performing on a stage built in the cemetery above the graves of plague victims. The village's Passion Play is a large production held in Oberammergau, Germany, that tells the story of the Passion of Jesus, from his visit to Jerusalem to his crucifixion. The actors share the message of his suffering, death, and resurrection with their powerful performances. The Passion Play is performed on the world's largest open-air stage. The play spans an entire day and can run from five to eight hours, with an intermission long enough for a nice meal. While the production is in German, audience members are provided the script in multiple languages. However, with the captivating storytelling and moving performances, most viewers find that language is hardly a barrier.
Meditation-Rebecca Northington
My first introduction to “Mystery Plays” and “Passion Plays” came with Shakespeare in college, and the influence that these plays had on his work and on the audiences that he addressed. Many of us do not hear or see the story of Holy Week unfold in its entirety each year, but these plays were common in medieval times and brought many of the biblical stories to life for villages and communities, regardless of literacy. Everyone could find a role in the process of developing, staging, and running these plays from music to costumes, set design to acting. While Mystery Plays could cover everything from Adam and Eve to Moses, the Passion Plays wrestled with the time between Jesus’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem to his crucifixion and resurrection.
These plays were at once moving and spiritual as well as entertaining and riotous-much like Shakespere generally. During the Reformation they became seen as Catholic-leaning and for much of our Anglican history, disappeared. They did have a revival in the mid 20th century and can be found once more, especially as Easter approaches, across Europe and in the US. Several movies have attempted the Passion Play model in the last 25-50 years, and as we watched Jesus Christ Superstar this past Sunday at RYG, I realized they too had used the model. A troupe of 70’s clad hippies roll into the desert around Jerusalem, loaded with everything that they would need to put on the production of Jesus’s betrayal and death.
The film is an over the top rock opera drama, with extreme and overt messaging, which instantly captivates the viewer, perhaps primarily because it is so over the top. Filmed in the early 1970’s with the subplot of Vietnam (a troubling war), the Civil Rights movement, race riots, controversial gender roles, and questionable political maneuvering, the movie wrestles with everything facing us in 2024-and much of what the Jews faced in the first century. Perhaps that is what makes the Passion Plays so compelling and timeless. We do not seem to change as a people. We desperately want someone to come in and save us. And as Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus angrily points out, we just don’t get it. “Neither you, Simon, nor the fifty thousand, Nor the Romans, nor the Jews, Nor Judas, nor the twelve, nor the Priests, nor the scribes, Nor doomed Jerusalem itself, Understand what power is, Understand what glory is, Understand at all, Understand at all”. After years of trying to explain the difference between God’s way and man’s way, the disciples still want Jesus to operate within the human construct that they can comprehend.
I have shown this movie every 5 years since I began to work with the youth group. It is not a perfect rendition-no one take on Jesus could be. The critics found Jesus to be too human, too angry and scared, too small. Some, especially amongst the Jewish communities, felt the Pharisees were evilly depicted and unfairly blamed. The evangelical church rejected it as blasphemous, probably because half the cast looks like the village people, scantily clad and over-sexed. Interestingly the Catholic church and Pope Paul the IV thought it was wonderful, and in a time of shrinking religious affiliation hoped it might help spread the story of Christ.
I have read the Gospels, many times now, and there is something about watching this painful story unfold that demands a more intimate participation in the story. We see the characters differently than we might want to. Judas for example, is cast intentionally as a black man, as one who would understand the struggle for racial change, and the fear of pushing too hard and too fast, potentially destroying any progress that has already been made. The adoring crowds look like something from a Taylor Swift concert, a little too hysterical-expecting what exactly? Mary Magdalene is depicted as one changing, discovering a new kind of love that baffles her. She describes what I would call conversion and exhibits a type of metanoia: the word for a complete change of heart, or a spiritual transformation. Perhaps it is the change we all hope to make that goes so deep it ultimately alters us to our core.
Jesus Christ Superstar is a wild Passion Play that has us take another look at this story. We cannot hide from our part in Christ’s abandonment. We cannot blame those who deny him. We must more deeply consider what his life and death means, for us and for the world. How does it transform each one of us? It is not about power as understood in earthly terms. It is not about finding a leader to deliver us from our struggles. Our freedom is within us, and in our own relationship with, and trust in, God. The Oberammergau Passion Play communicates extraordinary faith in God. After a community is devastated by the plague they make a covenant with God never to forget. Their faith in God and in their responsibility to remember and pass on this world changing story is their deliverance. As the legend goes, the deaths stopped the moment that they made their promise, and in an Old Testament kind of way they have stayed true to God-and God has stayed true to them.
* It should be noted that these plays have contributed to anti semitic attitudes in Germany over the centuries, and have been thoughtfully revised since WWII.
The Lord’s Prayer:
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
| 
