Drama

A sermon preached with the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California on the occasion of a special “Godspell Sunday.”

For those who may not be familiar with it, Godspell is an early 1970s musical based on the Gospel of Matthew. As it says in your bulletin, the score’s lyrics — many of which we are hearing this morning — come from hymns found in the Episcopal hymnal.

The score is by Stephen Schwartz, who has most recently received much attention because he also wrote the score for that little stage and film production: Wicked. Schwartz is Jewish, so you might wonder why he found his inspiration in this particular book [holds up hymnal[i]], or indeed on this particular subject.

For the answer to that wondering, you have to go back a step in the story. Because Godspell began its life as the master’s thesis of a Carnegie Mellon student named John-Michael Tebelak.[ii] At the time, Tebelak was having a hard time deciding between two potential professional paths. The first option being theatre writer and director. And, can you guess the second? Episcopal priest.[iii]

It seems in Godspell, Tebelak, who died at the young age of 36, found a balance between his two potential vocations in writing a sermon that has long outlived him, and continues to be preached on Broadway, in movie theatres, at churches like ours, and in scrappy regional theatres, high schools and colleges around the world

In 1975, Tebelak told Dramatics Magazine that in reading the Gospels straight through in one sitting, he had derived an enormous amount of joy and excitement. And in his excitement, he went to attend a sunrise Easter service. He described this experience as follows:

An old priest came out and mumbled into a microphone, and people mumbled things back, and then everyone got up and left. Instead of "healing" the burden, or resurrecting the Christ, it seems those people had pushed Him back into the tomb. They had refused to let Him come out that day … I went home and realized what I wanted to do with the Gospels.[iv]

It can be so tempting to stop paying attention to the Gospel message. To push Jesus back into the tomb, as Tebelak described it; tune his message out – a message of excitement and great challenge — and coast on through life.

And Jesus of Nazareth knew about this temptation.

This morning, he is moving through the countryside. And by now he has amassed a large crowd of followers. An audience, if you will. I bet it felt good to be among that crowd. I bet people had developed routines by that point. Maybe some of them had little pillows; blankets and snacks packed with them. Maybe they’d gotten … comfortable.

Started tuning Jesus’ message out – that message of excitement and great challenge — and started coasting on through life. And so, Jesus turned to drama.

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple,” he says. Got my attention!

Jesus is a master of hyperbole; telling followers to “tear out” their eyes and “cut off” their hands.  Saying “It would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”

Jesus uses this language to get our attention. To wake us up. To stop the kind of inattentive mumbling that so agitated the young student John-Michael Tebelack. He uses this language to convey the urgency of his message. And the passion behind it.

It is art; this hyperbolic language of Jesus of Nazareth. And, I daresay, it is drama. Worthy of stage and screen.

So. much. Harm. Has been done by taking certain words of Jesus, and indeed all of scripture, literally. So much harm. Needless, senseless harm.

Jesus’ message here is real. And it is true. What he is telling us this morning should make us listen up. Should make us take his gospel message seriously. Seriously but not literally. Jesus is a far more sophisticated speaker and teacher and indeed dramatist than he has been given credit for.

So no — Jesus is not telling us to hate those who brought us life; bring us comfort, nourishment, and love. He is saying, “Hello! Wake up!” He is saying, “I know you want to live a comfortable life if you are lucky enough to have that option. I know you want to spend your time with the family you love, chosen or otherwise; to celebrate, to take vacations, to make plans.

But if you are going to follow me, you cannot live entirely inside your own closed off safe reality. You must look around, and remember that in the reign of God, every single human being is your family. Every. Single. One.”

When we remember this – when I remember this — it can be painful. Because suddenly, the joy and suffering of all those around the world is the suffering of our father and mother,” our “wife and children,” our “brothers and sisters,” and “yes, and even [our] selves.”

Living this way – being a disciple — means we are expected to include all of humanity and all of creation in our own 10-year-plans. This is a hard message; a hard assignment. And it can be so tempting and so easy to tune it out. To become that mumbling Easter morning congregation.

And so, I am thankful for drama. For the drama that calls me back to attention, over and over and over. For the dramatic hyperbole of Jesus that makes us sit up in our pews when we hear it. I am thankful for John-Michael Tebelak, who saw that disconnect between the urgency of the gospel and the inattention of God’s people. And, I am thankful for all the centuries of Christian art and music and storytelling that has sought to close that divide; that has gotten our attention and, in the case of Godspell, gotten us moving.

That has called us back to this exciting, and joyful and challenging life of following Jesus.

[i] Note, technically this would have been the 1940 edition of the Hymnal in use before the 1982 version we have in our pews today, but there is overlap, including the recessional hymn we sang today.

[ii] See a video from Stephen Schwartz recalling Tebelack and the origin of Godspell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGfZ9eR4HXE

[iii] https://youtu.be/mGfZ9eR4HXE?feature=shared&t=26

[iv] Interview by Thomas A. Barker, originally published in Dramatics Magazine, January, 1975. Copyright 1975 by Dramatics Magazine. As reprinted by permission in The Godspell Experience: Inside a Transformative Musical by Carole de Giere. Yes friends, I went down a rabbit hole.