Joy, joy, joy,” I wrote across the top of the page. It was almost intermission at the Broadway staging of Godspell and my notebook was still empty. “Too enchanted to take notes,” I wrote next.
I came to Godspell as an unbeliever. In my first 20 years of life I divided much of my time between the theatre and the church, yet I somehow never encountered the show, which translates Jesus’ teachings in the Gospel of Matthew directly onto the stage complete with parables, archaic language, lots of symbolism and hippie disciples with a level of enthusiasm to rival children’s TV hosts. When I did see the 1973 David Greene movie at age 21, I thought, “Wow, the ‘70s were weird,” and left it at that.
So when I was asked to write an article about Godspell I felt pretty bemused. Was the show even relevant anymore? Sure, a Broadway revival had begun in fall 2011, but what could its audience be? Surely not secular society. And I doubted the church still needed to hear the message of a flower child Jesus—that controversy has long since faded into familiarity. And yet plenty of people were going to see the show. So I went, too.
The Circle in the Square is an aptly named theatre, consisting of a round stage surrounded by seats in a small, square room. The setup allows you to watch the faces of the audience members opposite you, and I took full advantage. “Do they get it?” I asked myself. “Does this show make any sense if you don’t already know the gospel back to front?” But either the audience was filled with Bible study members or the show was doing its job. Every face looked—well—joyful.
I’m sure mine did, too. I don’t think I stopped smiling from the time John the Baptist’s hand hit the stream of water that poured from the ceiling during the first song until the audience started shuffling to the stage for communion-like cups of grape juice at intermission. When I had watched the movie version, I felt like I was encountering the disjointed, context-deprived, 2,000-year-old New Testament for the first time with no one to explain it to me. This time, sitting in an intimate theatre watching real people act and sing those same parables and lyrics (though updated harmonies make the songs sound more like Glee), it made sense. It wasn’t about the archaic language, or St. Matthew’s unlikely chronology. It was about the intimacy, and the audience participation, and the community, and the joy.
Does the church still need Godspell? Absolutely. We try and try to communicate the joy of the gospel in our own worship services, but we don’t always succeed. Godspell, in its overly-cheery, wide-eyed way, shouts and laughs and sings again and again that we have been given grace, and isn’t that wonderful?
So let’s all give a big, cheesy Godspell cheer: Be joyful. God loves us.
