Selle Berg het Belche gheiße

Das Röttler Schloss bei Lörrach

Der russische Dichter Turgenew (1813 - 1883), der sehr gut Deutsch sprach, hat noch einmal Unterricht genommen, um auch Alemannisch lesen zu können. Er wollte die in diesem Dialekt verfassten Gedichte von Johann Peter Hebel (1760 -1826) verstehen lernen. Von diesen Gedichten möchte ich heute eines vorstellen.

Es hat den Titel „Die Vergänglichkeit“ und spielt des Nachts auf der Landstraße, die aus dem Schwarzwald hinaus in Richtung Basel führt. Dort sind zwei Bauern unterwegs, Vater und Sohn, und sprechen angesichts des gespenstisch über ihnen stehenden Röttler Schlossruine über die Zukunftsperspektiven ihres eigenen Hauses und schließlich über die Perspektiven der ganzen Welt.

Alles wird eines Tages vergehen, sagte der Vater, wird als Ruine dastehen, wie die auch heute noch vorhandenen Reste des  Röttler Schlosses. Durch das Gespräch im alemannischen Dialekt und die Tatsache, dass die beiden auf einem Ochsenkarren sitzen und ihre Tiere mit lauten Rufen lenken müssen, erscheinen die finsteren Perspektiven in einem gewissermaßen abgemilderten Licht.

Am Ende erklärt der Vater dem Sohn, dass auch dieser eines Tages alt sein wird und von der Erde weg muss und dass er dann auf sie zurücksehen wird von einem fremden Stern. Er schaut von dort herab auf die verbrannte und unbewohnte Erde und sagt

Lueg, dört isch 'd’Erde gsi, und selle Berg
het Belche gheiße! Nit gar wit dervo
isch Wisleth gsi, dört hani au scho glebt

Schau, dort ist die Erde gewesen und dort der Berg
hieß Belchen! Nicht weit davon
ist Wieslet gewesen, dort habe ich auch schon gelebt

Und dann

und Stiere g’wettet, Holz go Basel g’füehrt,
und broochet, Matte g’raust, und Liecht-Spöh’ g’macht,

und Stiere eingespannt, Holz nach Basel gefahren,
und gepflügt, Wassergräben gezogen und Holzspäne gemacht 

und sagt am Schluss, dass er auf der Erde allerhand Spiele getrieben hat („g’vätterlet")

und g’vätterlet, bis an mi selig End,
und möcht iez nümme hi.

Dieses Loslassen der Erde, dieser letzte Abschied "und möchte jetzt nicht mehr hin“ ist für einen älteren Menschen wie mich ergreifend. Ja, so möchte ich auch auf einmal auf mein Leben zurückschauen können, froh über die guten Erinnerungen, aber auch entfernt genug, um nicht zurück zu wollen.

Das letzte Wort gilt dann den Ochsen, die den Wagen ziehen: nach links, Laubi, März!

Hüst, Laubi, März!

Noch sind wir hier auf der Erde beschäftigt.

Das ganze Gedicht kann man im Internet nachlesen. Eine Übersetzung und die Schilderung eines Besuches auf dem Röttler Schloss ist in einem Buch von Arnold Stadler zu finden „Johann Peter Hebel, Die Vergänglichkeit“.

Meine Lehmpfuhl-Familie

August Lehmpfuhl
(1852 bis 1931)

Bei dem großen Familientreffen waren erstaunlich viele Leute aus der Sippe Bohle vertreten. Zwei der Töchter des Stammvaters August Lehmpfuhl hatten zwei Brüder, Friedrich und Erwin Bohle, geheiratet, so dass man in der zweiten Generation überwiegend weiterhin  Lehmpfuhl hieß oder aber Bohle, wie meine Großmutter. Eine weitere Tochter hatte einen Ostfriesen namens Harm Buttjes geheiratet, den Namen Buttjes gab es also als Drittes auch noch.

Die auf dem Familientreffen versammelten Verwandten waren überwiegend aus der vierten, fünften und sechsten Generation nach August Lehmpfuhl. Von der dritten Generation, der Generation meiner Mutter, lebt niemand mehr.

Wir trafen uns in der Baptistengemeinde im Berliner Ortsteil Weißensee, deren Kapelle 1910 noch unter der Ältestenschaft von August Lehmpfuhl gebaut worden war. Am Abend saßen wir in der „Brotfabrik“, in der August tatsächlich Brot gebacken, aber auch in einer Sonntagschule die örtlichen Kinder im christlichen Glauben unterrichtet hatte. Weil auch der nachfolgende Besitzer des Gebäudes viel für die Kinder des Viertels getan hatte, wurde das Gebäude erhalten und schon zu DDR-Zeiten in ein Kulturzentrum umgewandelt.

Die Brotfabrik in Berlin-Weißensee

Über den Urgroßvater, an den hier mit Bild und Gedenktafel erinnert wird, wurde viel Lobendes
berichtet. Er muss ein großzügiger und gastfreundlicher Mensch gewesen sein, ein Ältester seiner Gemeinde, ein community leader. Nach meinem Geschmack wurde seine Wirksamkeit ein wenig zu sehr auf die Vermittlung von schulischem  Wissen gelegt (Lesen und Schreiben soll er den Kindern beigebracht haben) und weniger auf seine Bemühungen, den Kindern den Glauben an Jesus Christus näher zu bringen.

Schön war auf jeden Fall die Erinnerung an seine fromme Mutter, die mit einem dem Alkohol verfallenen Schuster aus Köpenick neun Kinder in die Welt gesetzt hatte, als dieser Mann auf ungeklärte Weise allzu früh verstarb. Meine Großmutter Lina, jüngste Tochter des August Lehmpfuhl, hat uns erzählt, ihr Großvater sei im Suff vom Weg abgekommen und ertrunken oder erfroren, irgendwie.

Die mittellose Witwe war die erste in meiner Ahnenreihe, die sich einer Baptistengemeinde anschloss. Sie hat dort sicherlich auch materielle Unterstützung für sich und ihre unversorgten Kinder erfahren. Ihr Sohn August war beim Tod des Vaters erst sechs Jahre alt. Er wird die Christengemeinde als einen Sicherheit und Wärme bietenden Ort erlebt haben.

Viel später habe ich bei Charles Taylor gelesen, dass die großen christlichen Veränderungen, die "Revivals" in den angelsächsischen Ländern oft gerade von den Menschen getragen wurden, die dem wirtschaftlichen Untergang entkommen waren, weil sie eine dramatische Lebenswende vollzogen hatten. Sie lebten nach dieser Wende besonders streng, das betraf nicht nur den Umgang mit Alkohol, sondern auch das Kartenspielen, Tanzen und andere Vergnügungen.

Wenn diese Wende vollzogen war, konnte die nächste Generation mit viel weniger dramatischen Vorschriften ein ruhiges und sicheres Leben führen. Man konnte sich ab und zu ein Gläschen Wein leisten und auch gelegentlich einmal den sonntäglichen Kirchgang ausfallen lassen.

So war es auch mit den Nachkommen von August Lehmpfuhl. An diesem Wochenende waren Christen in den unterschiedlichsten Schattierungen vertreten. Baptisten waren weiterhin vorhanden, einige Verwandte hatten sich der großen evangelischen Kirche zugewandt, weil sie dort eine bessere Liberalität zu finden hofften, andere waren ganz ohne Glauben.

Allen war gemeinsam, dass sie offenbar weit von dem gefährlichen Leben entfernt waren, das der Schuster aus Köpenick, August Lehmpfuhls Vater, geführt hatte. Der radikale Schritt der Mutter in ein bewusst christliches Leben hinein hatte die Nachkommenschaft geschützt.

Christopher Lehmpfuhl

Ganz zum Schluss des Treffens konnte man sich an dem frischen Glanz erfreuen, den einer aus der vierten Generation dem Namen Lehmpfuhl verliehen hatte, Christopher Lehmpfuhl. Er ist 1972 geboren, ein weit über die Grenzen Deutschlands bekannter Maler mit einem gewaltigen Talent, die Bilder einzufangen, welche das Licht aus Städten und Landschaften hervorzaubert. In seinem Atelier klang das Treffen schließlich aus, und besonders die Kinder der sechsten und siebten Generation hatten Freude daran, in Christophers Werkstätten nun ihrerseits die schönsten bunten Bilder zu malen.

Naive Bibelleser

Ross Douthat

Hier möchte ich gerne in verkürzter Form die Gedanken wiedergeben, die der Kolumnist der New York Times, Ross Douthat, am Gründonnerstag veröffentlicht hat. 

In meinen Worten: er sieht die traditionelle Bibelleser aufgeteilt in die Kritischen (Typus Rudolf Bultmann) und die Gläubigen (Typus Billy Graham). Er setzt sie aber nicht gegeneinander, sondern fasst sie beide unter der Kategorie  zusammen "in der Kirche aufgewachsen“. Er kontrastiert sie mit einer neuen Kategorie von Menschen, welche die biblischen Berichte ganz ohne kirchliche Vorbildung wie Fremde lesen. 

Diese neuen Leser werden selbst Antworten auf die traditionellen Fragen finden, ob die Evangelien wörtlich wahr sind, ob sie auf Berichten von Augenzeugen beruhen oder ob sie eine spätere Konstruktion sind, die von bereits fest in einer frühen Kirche verwurzelten Theologen geschrieben wurden. Vielleicht kommen sie ja sogar noch zu einem ganz anderen Urteil.

Was werden sie aus dem Gelesenen machen? Douthat lässt das offen, sagt aber immerhin am Ende: sie werden erkennen, dass die Evangelien the strangest story ever told sind. 

Für mich bleibt die Frage, auf welchem Weg diese neue Generation denn an die Evangelien herangeführt werden kann. Meine Antwort vorläufige Antwort ist: etwa indem sie Filme wie The Chosen sehen. 

Ich füge den Artikel von Ross Douthat unten an, damit ihn auch die lesen können, für die er in der New York Times hinter der Paywall versteckt ist.

 

 

 

 

ROSS DOUTHAT

A Naïve Reading of the Gospels May Be Just What Christianity Needs

In the not-so-distant past when 90 or 95 percent of Americans identified as Christian, it was hard for almost anyone in that vast majority to read the Christian Gospels naïvely — to come to them without preconceptions, in the way of their original intended audience, a person hearing the “good news” about Jesus of Nazareth for the first time.

Instead, almost everyone encountered them first through either the structures of organized Christianity — as a text for Sunday school and Bible study, the experience of the scripture inseparable from the experience of church — or with the expectations set up by Christianity’s overwhelming cultural influence.

In that world, even the work of skeptical critique and academic deconstruction was mostly carried out by people who had experienced the pious reading first and organized their own interpretations against religious doctrines or cultural norms that they had rejected or abandoned.

These dynamics persist for the millions of people still raised within some form of Christian faith. But with the rapid decline of institutional Christianity, the younger generations in America now include large numbers of people who have only vague and secondhand ideas about Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. So a more naïve encounter with the New Testament may become more normal, on a much larger scale than in the past. At both the popular and the academic level, more people will experience the Gospels first as a form of testimony and storytelling that precedes any fully realized set of doctrines or vision of the church.

As someone raised within Christianity, I can’t tell you directly what that experience is like. But Lent and especially Holy Week in my own Catholic Christianity provide a strong encounter with the Gospel narrative, the raw text overshadowing the liturgical and doctrinal elements more than usual. So it’s an appropriate time to speculate about how the return of a more naïve reading might influence the wider culture, its possible effects on the long debate between Christian believers and would-be academic debunkers of the faith.

From its 18th- and 19th-century origins, the project of skeptically deconstructing the New Testament, in search of a “Historical Jesus” distinct from the Christ of faith, has often combined two distinct arguments. First, it has attacked the pious assumption that the Gospels must be factually inerrant, perfectly historical, accurate in every detail and pellucid in the doctrines they imply. Second, it has moved from identifying specific problems in the texts, tensions and apparent contradictions and arguable mistakes, to arguing that all the problems are evidence that the Gospels must have been mostly composed long after the fact, as theological texts rather than historical records, with relatively thin connections to the events that they describe.

My speculation is that a naïve reading of the Gospels tends to break these two arguments apart. The naïve reader, going through the evangelists in order, will notice immediately much of what the skeptics emphasize about the seeming imperfections of the texts. That Jesus is given different genealogies in Luke and Matthew. That timelines and details differ among the authors. That Jesus drives the money changers out of the temple early in his ministry in the Gospel of John and just before his crucifixion in the others. That Jesus in John’s Gospel talks differently, with his long theological discourses, from Jesus in the other narratives.

Whether or not it’s possible to resolve some of these issues, they present themselves directly to the reader, and they don’t require any special training to pick up. And the naïve reader will also intuitively understand, without needing to be historically aware of the details, the debates about Jesus’ identity that consumed the early church. The Gospels all present him as a messiah, clearly — but the question of what that actually means is not completely or consistently answered in an initial reading of the texts.

But the larger deconstructionist argument — that the immediate issues with the Gospels indicate that they’re long-after-the-fact creations, driven by agendas more than memories — is very different: It’s a reading against the naïve reader experience.

By this I mean that you have to go into the Gospels with a skeptical framework already to come away from them feeling that the core narrative isn’t deeply rooted in eyewitness testimony, in things that either the authors or their immediate sources really experienced and saw. What C.S. Lewis once observed about the Gospel of John is true of all four Gospels: You can say that the narratives represent a form of memoir, or you can say that they’re an ingenious impersonation of personal testimony that would tax the skills of a brilliant 20th-century novelist. But the reader who thinks the narratives read like after-the-fact legend making, Lewis rightly insists, “has simply not learned to read.”

And many of the details that get cited as evidence against inerrancy, the difficulties and discrepancies, are actually part of this memoiristic reading experience. Yes, the theological discourses in John or the infancy narratives in Luke and Matthew might be read as the products of later piety. But the more minute distinctions among the Gospels, the differences in which day an event took place, on what timeline a series of miracles transpired, with which witnesses and so on, are exactly what you’d expect from testimonies that weren’t deliberately conformed to one another by later authorities, that came direct from the people who remembered the action, with all the variation that normal memory entails.

Likewise with all the deeds and words from Jesus that led to endless theological wrangling later on because of their ambiguities and uncertain implications. That wrangling happened (and still happens) precisely because there’s so little theological smoothing out within the Gospels, so few signs that the writers carefully imposed an ideologically driven clarity on the experiences they set out to relate.

Indeed the texts themselves self-advertise as having this imperfect, memoiristic quality. The Gospel of Luke, for instance, is quite explicit that it’s a collation of different testimonies “handed on” from eyewitnesses. The Gospel of Mark, by contrast, reads much more like what the earliest Christian traditions claim it was: the memories of the Apostle Peter dictated or transmitted to a younger scribe.

Read Mark together with the other Gospels, and note how often the same story includes a telling detail, like the literal Aramaic words Jesus uses while performing a healing — “talitha cum” (“little girl, get up”); “ephphatha” (“be opened”) — that you would expect Peter to remember but other recollections to neglect. Or read Mark’s Passion side by side with John’s Passion — Peter’s denials more detailed in Mark, more inside information and details about the scene around the cross in John — and note how naturally the two accounts read like the same events narrated from two distinct eyewitness perspectives.

Or, to take a different kind of example, read John’s account of the water-into-wine miracle at Cana or the raising of Lazarus. The miracles themselves fit with the Johannine author’s theological perspective, his elevated view of Jesus’s divinity. But the way Jesus performs the miracles is so human and un-godlike and complex — at once irritated by and responsive to his mother’s cajolement at Cana, deliberately delaying coming to Lazarus and then weeping at the tomb — that in each case the natural reading is that this is a real remembrance of strange events, the author’s or even Mary’s, the memory more potent than any theological program.

That a particular reading of the New Testament comes naturally doesn’t make that reading correct, of course — especially where miracles and other wild supernatural business are involved. But the natural reading in this case also has plenty of persuasive scholarship on its side. (The best recent place to start is the 2006 book “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses,” by the English biblical scholar Richard Bauckham.) Whereas the more unnatural reading, the one that insists that the Gospels were largely constructed later on, tends to lead to the constant problem of so much historical-Jesus scholarship, where the supposed “real Jesus” is merely reconstructed in the scholar’s own image, the memoirs of first-century Jews replaced by the spiritual autobiographies of 19th- and 20th-century academics.

Thus my speculative prediction: The decline of institutional Christianity and the return of more naïve readings of Christian Scripture will lead to the decline of the deconstructionist project, which has been propped up all these years by the felt need to strike the strongest possible blow against ecclesiastical power and tradition.

Take away that power, throw people into the texts without an anticlerical preoccupation, and you won’t immediately get a revival of Christian orthodoxy. But you may get much more acknowledgment of what’s obvious each and every Easter: That in their immediacy and mystery, their lapel-shaking urgency, their mixture of the mundane and the impossible, the Gospels are at least — at the very least — the strangest story ever told.

 

 

 aus der New York Times vom 2. April 23

 

He’s Not Jesus, but He Plays Him on TV

Tish Harrison Warren 

An Anglican priest reflects on matters of faith in private life and public discourse. 

I typically don’t like religious movies and TV shows. I find them corny or mawkish, the kind of thing that certain believers feel they are supposed to watch but that lack any real artistic merit or appeal. I truly hated Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” But about a year ago, a friend of mine, whose taste in art and culture I respect, recommended that I watch “The Chosen,” a multi-season television series about the life of Jesus and those around him. I watched it with my family. A couple of episodes in, we were hooked.

Instead of a straight retelling of the Gospels, the series creates back stories and extrabiblical subplots for Jesus’s disciples and critics. It began as a small, crowdfunded project and has blossomed into a hit, soon heading into its fourth season. The Times reported in December that it has been viewed by 108 million people globally and “has become a bona fide phenomenon in many parts of Christian culture, attracting a fervent ecumenical fandom while remaining almost invisible to others.” It’s also gained a bit of a reputation for being liked by critics who, like me, don’t normally enjoy so-called Christian entertainment.

My family and I were drawn into the story — not an easy feat for a 2000-year-old plot that has been worn thin with familiarity. My 10- and 12-year-old daughters even asked if we could read the gospel stories again to compare them with the show. The actors make characters like Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Peter seem approachable and relatable, real people living complicated lives. It feels more like a smartly written drama that happens to have the incarnate God as a main character than a typical religious drama.

Jonathan Roumie plays Jesus in the series. Off the screen, he is a devoted Roman Catholic who says he views his faith as “the core” of who he is. This week, as Christians around the world celebrate Holy Week, which focuses on Jesus’ final days and culminates in Easter next Sunday, I wanted to talk with Roumie about how playing Christ has affected his life as both an actor and a Christian. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Tish Harrison Warren: There’s been an enormous positive response to “The Chosen.” How has that been for you? What’s it like for millions of people to look at you as Jesus?

Jonathan Roumie: When you’re walking in the street and somebody calls out to you as Jesus, the first reaction is like, That’s so bizarre. But, Oh, they must be fans, is the thought that follows. It becomes super humbling and strange. I’ve had to reconcile it with God and be like, “OK, you put me here. So I guess I just have to get used to this.”

The first thing they want to do is get a picture and acknowledge your work. But then it’s not just about the character you’re playing. It’s like, “Let me tell you what this has meant to my personal faith,” and that’s when it becomes bigger than I had ever imagined.

When people see celebrities, they may get excited. But fans associate you with God. That’s a unique burden. They watch you heal people on TV every week. There’s a different emotional response to that.

I’ll give you an example where it really affected me. I was promoting Jesus Revolution at an event at SoFi Stadium. Security came over to me and said, “Hey, there’s a woman outside and she has her son with her and he’s in a wheelchair. Do you want to meet them?” I said, “Yeah, of course.” So I went out and I introduced myself. We’re talking and she says to her son, “It’s Jesus from ‘The Chosen.’ ” He had cerebral palsy where he couldn’t speak, but he indicated that he recognized me. She said, “My son here has cerebral palsy. Our favorite episode of ‘The Chosen’ is when they lower the man with cerebral palsy through the roof to be healed by Jesus.” I noticed her choice of words. We hadn’t said “cerebral palsy” in the series and in the Bible, the man is only referred to as a “paralytic,” but she’d personalized the story in light of her son’s experience. And she said, “We knew you were going to be here, and I thought, wouldn’t it be great if God did that for my son?” And I kind of panicked inside. I thought, I can’t do that. I don’t have that power. I said, “It would be amazing if God healed your son. I, unfortunately, don’t have that gift as far as I know, but I would love to pray for you and your son if that’s OK.” And I prayed, thanked them, and hugged her son, and they seemed like they were so happy. I turned around and I broke down into tears. Because I couldn’t fulfill that expectation. There must have been, deep down, some kind of disappointment. That was one of the hardest encounters for me. It still chokes me up even thinking about it.

Very often, I don’t feel worthy of playing Jesus. I struggle with that a lot. But I also acknowledge what God has done for my life as a result of playing Christ and how God has changed my life.

On set in season one — it was the first time in the series where I actually started preaching directly from Scripture as Jesus — I was standing at a doorway looking onto a crowd of about 50 extras, dressed as people coming to hear the teacher. This overwhelming anxiety swept over me. I had to tell Dallas Jenkins, the creator of our show, “Hey, man, can we stop for a minute?” He said, “Why?” I said, “Because I don’t feel worthy to be saying these words right now.” He pulled me aside and said, “Listen, man, none of us are worthy to be here doing this, but God has chosen you and I and everyone else here to tell this story at this time. So know that you are meant to be here.”

Throughout the process of doing the series, my faith life has increased. I’ve found more ways to pray. I’m constantly trying to get closer to God, and to get a lot more of him into my life, and get rid of more of myself, to be as much of an open vessel as I can.

In “The Chosen,” when Jesus heals people, his response is laughter and joy. I find that Jesus is often portrayed in art and film as kind of a stoic sufferer — aloof and silent. And you’re a warm, laughing Jesus. Was that something you decided with the director, or did that just happen naturally for you?

I think God, recognizing the joy of one of his children being healed and having a heart full of gratitude would be delighted. What father or mother upon seeing their child healed and now relieved of pain or suffering, does not take delight in that?

Jesus was fully divine and fully human. Just by the nature of a scripted television series and the breadth of the story that we’re attempting to tell, it is written very human. The show is about the relationships between Jesus and his disciples. Relationships are often little things — actions, laughs, winks, nudges. Specifically, with healing, the series allowed me to really step into my imagination and think about what God must feel like when he heals people. And my first instinct is to be delighted in their relief. I believe Jesus would have experienced the completeness of the emotional spectrum on an exponential level to an ordinary human. The fullness of suffering, the fullness of joy, the fullness of happiness, the fullness of pain.

You recently played a lead role as Lonnie Frisbee in the film “Jesus Revolution,” which hit theaters in February. Is it different to approach the role of a regular human being, like Lonnie Frisbee, versus Jesus? Christians claim that Christ was without sin. That seems very different than our experience of the world. Is it hard to play someone with no sin?

I can lend more of my own flawed humanity to a character like Lonnie Frisbee than I ever could for Jesus. Jesus’ humanity is the best and purest qualities of the emotional spectrum. Happiness, sadness, joy. If there’s anger, it’s righteous anger. If there’s wrath, it’s righteous wrath, because it’s God’s wrath, God’s sense of justice.

There’s a temperedness that has to exist when playing those stronger and harsher emotions, because it can never get out of control. Jesus is always in control. And if he’s angry, then he’s earned it. We know from Scripture when he flipped tables for the money changers, that was because there were thousands of visitors on the Passover that were being taken advantage of by the tax collectors and the money changers on temple grounds. That kind of anger is coming from such a pure place of righteousness and justice. It never devolves into anything that sacrifices the purity of his humanity.

With other characters, if a guy’s angry and wants vengeance, he says things he shouldn’t say. I’ve been in that position. I know what it’s like to be really annoyed with somebody and to say something that I shouldn’t have said and have to go and apologize. Jesus didn’t have that.

There has to be a lot more control when playing Jesus versus other characters. It’s actually more freeing to play human characters than it is to play Christ. The nature of the challenge to be like Christ is so much greater! At the end of the day, I prefer to spend more time being closer to Jesus, because my life just gets better when I try to emulate him more.

The show has received criticism for making up extrabiblical stories and embellishing the Bible. What do you think of that?

This is a television show. It’s inspired by the Gospels, and many scenes are direct translations from the Gospels.

That said, there are many instances in Scripture where some characters appear for a sentence or two, or some really dramatic things happen that are succinctly described with no unnecessary information, no description of people’s state of mind or emotions. It’s just the crux of what you need to know. That wouldn’t make for a very good television show.

We expand upon that in a creative way, just as any of the painters of the Renaissance created scenes of art. It would be like somebody saying to Michelangelo: “You can’t put that tree there. We don’t know that it was there.” We have to have a similar kind of approach to creative expression.

All of it is meant to act sort of as an icon to point us in the direction of God and the Holy Scriptures. It’s not meant to replace the Bible or replace Scripture. It’s a creative interpretation of the Scriptures that does, in my opinion, a very fine job of honoring them and their intention.

We take such great pains to that end, that we have a biblical consultation staff: a messianic rabbi, an evangelical theologian and a Catholic priest. I mean, they get the script before we even get the scripts! And if it seems like something is going to be a little too off the mark, then it comes out.

How has playing Jesus shaped and changed your own faith? Has playing the person that you see as God himself shaped how you approach God?

It does. It has made me consider him in a variety of contexts that make him more accessible to me. By playing him, getting to explore all of these scenarios, imagining what it must have been like to have been there with him, to be one of the disciples walking alongside him. What was it like when they camped out? When they had to get food? How did he eat? Considering all of these things forces you to examine day-to-day life and recognize that Christ can identify with my humanity because he accepted humanity as the God of the universe. And what kind of humility does that take? And how much more humility can I bring into my own life by following his example?

Tish Harrison Warren (@Tish_H_Warren) is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America and the author of “Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep.”