I recently travelled to Stratford, Ont., to see Jesus Christ Superstar for the first time in my life. The rock musical hit the stage in 1971, the same year as Godspell. Between them, they seriously rocked the church world.
I think I was perhaps 11 or 12 when the ripple effect created some waves in the small Nova Scotia town where I was living.
A troupe wanted to stage one of these shows in town. Several classmates were very keen. A number of them had recently “found religion” in a new and very lively church.
Many church stalwarts in town were not so keen, however. Although I really knew nothing about the proposed production, I defended the anti – show position.
Looking back some 40 years later, it struck me how often Christians end up in this defensive posture: a Sunday school understanding of faith railing in ignorance against a perceived evil.
Why does this happen?
Most pointedly, why do we settle for a Sunday school level of understanding of a belief as complex and subtle as Christianity? Those of us who are parents would be appalled if our children left school with such a primitive education. Shoddy, we’d call it.
But when it comes to faith, we are content to accept an elementary grasp of the principles and become upset when others challenge our immature perceptions and prejudices.
In nearly 15 years as a religion editor, I have seen dozens of letters angrily denouncing a published opinion that the writer had learned was wrong in Sunday school. Didn’t these PhDs ever go to Sunday school?
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.”
So wrote Paul in his first letter to the fledgling church in Corinth, an ancient Greek city about 80 km southwest of Athens.
The context of his observation is as important as the quotation. Paul is gently correcting a church community that had already begun to fissure over leaders (Peter, Paul, Apollos, Jesus) and the ranking of spiritual gifts.
Paul notes that all gifts are needed in the community for the common good and that the leaders all have a common goal: “We are God’s servants, working together.”
His point is that what are perceived as divisions on the ground fit together when you take a higher, more thoughtful view. Faith and its working out in the world has always been complex.
It is even more complex for 21st – century Christians who have accumulated two millennia of culture and prejudice between us and Jesus’ time. And our only stories about his life remain those coloured by the various communities who passed them on.
Partly as a result of this, Christians are still divided over which books exactly are authoritative for the faith. This is the subject of James Thomson’s Theology 101 article this month.
Theology 101, now in its third year, is one of the ways we hope will help people develop a deeper understanding of their faith. We are creating more website resources too and will be telling you about them as they are posted.
One of the most interesting ways to begin a deeper exploration of scripture is actually to try to sweep aside the accumulated clutter of our culture and imagine what it might have been like in Roman – occupied Palestine at the time Jesus was born.
It is this aspect of Jesus Christ Superstar that I find most compelling. It imagines how Jesus and his teachings might have been perceived first – hand by his friends—and himself.
Christmas will soon be upon us. We will sing about Mary and Joseph and shepherds. But what was it really like for them? How much—or little—did they grasp about who this baby would grow up to be?
“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully…”
Until then, perhaps the least we can do is polish that mirror and reflect a little more deeply on our faith and ourselves.
