Friday, May 5, 2017

JCS to A.HAM - A Musical Oddesy

In the summer of 1973, I listened to a double album that "rocked" my world. At a church retreat, our youth leader played through the soundtrack to "Jesus Christ, Superstar", and went through the different scriptural references in each song. Up until that time, Broadway and Movie Musicals were basically the same; story lines built up to lead the characters into song. (One of the reasons many people don't like musicals, they will say "People don't just burst out into song!" Any musician and their significant other will realize the fallacy of that statement! But I digress.) JCS evened out the playing field by having everything in song, much like an opera.

This was an opera like no other, though. Guitars wailing, drums beating, Ted Neely and Carl Anderson screaming notes so high only dogs should have been able to hear. And the story Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber told became different in their hands. Never again would I hear the story in hushed monotones of Shakespearean English. They put PASSION into the Passion. I will still listen to the soundtrack around Easter each year, and the instrumental section on the crucifixion, led by Andre' Previn's magnificent direction, will still raise goosebumps on my arms.

Fast forward 44 years. Just this week, a friend loaned me a copy of Hamilton: An American Musical. And I was thirteen all over again. The mastery of music telling a true story, the obvious talent in the writing, arranging, and production. And the singers/actors themselves, bringing the story of Alexander Hamilton to life. But what made me go back was the true PASSION with which the story was told. So many times we look at history as only dates and body-less facts. History isn't about the thumb tacked dates on a time line, it's about the lives lived between those dates. The love, the hurt, the joy, the life. And Hamilton brings that out with exuberance.

In that same way, Religion isn't so much about do's and don'ts, rights or wrongs. They are there, yes, to give us a model by which we can live by, but the law is secondary to WHO the law points us too. Just as in History, dates and mere facts are secondary to the lives lived, so are laws meaningless without the LIFE lived, Jesus, for without HIM, there is no salvation. No law can save, only Jesus. The law can help us be more like Him, but only He can make the true transformation.

In the summer of 1973, that began to become real to me in ways I never imagined. The Bible began to turn from a rule book, into a love story, of which I was the object of affection. And I was loved with PASSION. Enough so that God's only begotten son, Jesus, gave His life for me. We will never be perfect, as He is perfect, even though we should strive to perfection. But we are loved. With passion. Let us love Him, and each other, with nothing less.



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