Acting Like Jesus - Christianity Today

I was sitting with two buddies from college in the upper deck of Wrigley Field. Midway through the baseball game, Kevin turned to me and said, “I’m directing a play that I think you’ll like. It’s about Jesus and Judas. I’ll send it to you.”

Kevin and I graduated from the Theatre School at Chicago’s DePaul University back in 1995. All my life to that point, I’d wanted to be an actor.

During college, my passion gradually shifted from acting to ministry. When I graduated, I simply didn’t have the drive to pursue an acting career, so I considered this chapter of my life closed. I went to seminary and then into youth ministry, while Kevin and most of my college friends pursued theater and film. I kept up with their work, reading plays that friends were involved with, and trying to attend as many as possible. But Kevin’s project would be different.

The play he sent me, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, was named one of the Top 10 plays of 2005 by Time. The play is set in a courtroom in Purgatory and centers around the trial of Judas Iscariot. Judas is in hell, and a renegade attorney brings his case before a judge and jury claiming that Judas has been unfairly condemned.

During his trial, key witnesses from history take the stand, including Mother Teresa, Sigmund Freud, Simon the Zealot, Caiaphas the Elder, Pontius Pilate, and Satan. It includes Saint Monica (Augustine’s mother) as a foul-mouthed saint who revels in her role as a nag to God.

Jesus is there too, included as a hero.

Major themes of the play include despair, suicide, evil, and living with regret. It was a powerful play. Just reading the final scene brought tears to my eyes. I called Kevin as soon as I could. “Kevin, this is unbelievable! If there’s anything I can do to help you with this thing, just let me know.”

A New Role

Kevin invited me to a reading of the show. When the person who was supposed to read Jesus’ part didn’t show, Kevin asked me to read the part. Afterward I went out with Kevin.

As we were processing the evening, he asked about the date of my upcoming sabbatical. “Middle of March to the middle of May,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment. “Our show runs from the middle of March to the middle of May. I think you should play Jesus.”

I hadn’t appeared in a play in 13 years, but there was a part of me that was excited to return to the stage. My wife and I had even talked about the possibility of my trying to do a play during the sabbatical as a way of doing something out of the ordinary that would be life-giving. But we realized that finding a play that fit the timeframe would be nearly impossible.

It felt like this had fallen into my lap. Plus I was eager to participate in such a unique play, with a powerfully redemptive message.

We lose our mission when our schedules include only people who share our faith.

Kevin was not a religious person, but he decided that because faith was central to the play, it would be a good idea to have cast members talk about their faith journeys. So over the next week of rehearsals I had the opportunity to hear these urban twentysomethings discuss their faith, or lack thereof.

Their stories had a very common theme: in most situations, they had had an unpleasant interaction with a Christian that had soured them on organized religion.

One cast member recalled being “outed” as a Jew at her Christian private school, and how the teacher explained that she was going to hell. Another talked about being in high school and showing up for an advertised “fun night” at a local church with a friend and having a great time in the gym … until the “inspirational speaker” came out and began preaching. He felt duped.

By the time it was my turn to share, I told the group that listening to their stories made me want to crawl under the table. I shared very simply that I hadn’t found God; God had found me. And that Jesus had changed my life. I left it at that.

I was energized by the rehearsal process. I loved getting to know the cast members, providing any background I could about biblical characters, and rehearsing my one scene, the climax of the show, when Jesus finally shows up to have it out with Judas. It was utterly refreshing to get outside of the walls of the church.

I was interacting with people that Jesus himself certainly would have hung with, and using some of my long-dormant gifts. As Becky Pippert might say, I was “out of the saltshaker” and felt a sense of usefulness that I hadn’t experienced for a long time.

Opening Night

As I waited backstage on opening night, I prayed silently, grateful to God for allowing me to be part of the play. I had felt I had been prepared for “such a time as this” and was honored to be portraying Jesus onstage. It was a powerful convergence of emotions.

Jesus’ role in the play is very small, so I spent a good deal of time backstage, chatting with other cast members. They paid me the ultimate compliment of being completely transparent. They asked tough questions, including ones about sexual ethics and why the Jews were God’s chosen people. It kept me on my toes, but I loved every minute of it.

The show turned out to be a hit! It was extended and transferred to a trendy neighborhood closer to the heart of the city for an additional five-week run. The top reviewer at The Chicago Tribune gave us a glowing review, and there was talk of another extension at another venue in the fall.

The play touched people. On opening night of the extension, someone I had met through a cast member approached me: “You know, walking into the theater, my religious views included some ideas about reincarnation and Buddha. But I see this show and all I want to do is go to Mass. It’s all about Jesus for me.”

Later in the run, I got an email from a friend who was deeply moved by his experience and invited his brother the following night. The brother was not a believer but had struggled with issues similar to the ones addressed by the play. He began sobbing during the final scene as the message of God’s grace touched him deeply.

The highlight of my experience came when the playwright came to town to see the show on a Sunday afternoon. After the show, he came backstage to congratulate everyone in the cast. Afterwards, he joined us at a neighborhood bar. Because I had to get to youth group, I made sure to grab him right away, to share my thoughts about the play.

He was incredibly friendly, and we chatted about his experiences with religious people in his life. I tried to wrap up our conversation, but he stopped me and asked me a very simple but profound question about God’s desire for humanity. I responded with my perspective, and a Bible verse I thought would be helpful, then thanked him for his time, and left.

Curtain Call

As I walked back to my car, I was struck with a sense of wonder. I had just portrayed Jesus in a hit play, and had the opportunity to talk about significant matters of faith with a playwright from New York.

How exactly did I get here? I wondered. What lessons did I learn?

First, I realized that as a pastor I spend far too much time in the Christian ghetto. We attend meetings, send emails, and study books at the expense of investing time in the larger world. Our studies are safe; the world is risky.

We must not “neglect the ministry of the word of God” (Acts 6) but we also can’t forget that Jesus came for the sick and not the healthy (Matthew 9). That’s a balance we must maintain. We lose our mission when our schedules only include people who share our faith.

Second, our agenda with those outside the community of faith should be to love them, while being ready to share “the reason for our hope” (1 Peter 3) at appropriate times. If I had (intentionally or not) communicated in any way that I had an interest in “converting” my fellow cast members, I would have been dismissed as readily as those about whom they had told hurtful stories. I had to be careful not to be too forceful, especially as a pastor playing Jesus! Any hint of hypocrisy would have been damaging.

I wasn’t shy about my own passion for God, but I made sure I wasn’t trying to sell them anything. I just took an active interest in their lives. I tried to show them that to participate in the kingdom of God is the most fulfilling thing one could ever hope to do.

As far as I know, no one in the cast became a Christian. But some made significant strides toward faith. And at the very least, by the grace of God, their idea of what a Christian looks like had to be expanded to account for a pastor in their green room.

Finally, I learned that God defies our categories with the direction our lives can take. Throughout the experience, I was reminded of Eric Liddell’s famous quote from the film Chariots of Fire. “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.”

I would take that thought even further. God’s purpose was for Eric Liddell to preach the gospel by his missionary work and by running. God’s purpose for me was to make disciples in my youth ministry and to appear in a play about Jesus. When I minister to a teenager, and when I appear onstage, I participate in his kingdom, and I feel his pleasure.

Even though I thought I had closed the acting chapter of my life, God hadn’t. Just because I began pursuing ministry, it didn’t mean I stopped having gifts in the arts. Just because there’s only one box to fill in on the “Occupation” line on our tax return, doesn’t mean our lives have to be confined to that one role. I can be a pastor who acts. Or an actor who earns a living shepherding young people.

Or perhaps, a basketball-playing, Cubs-cheering pastor who loves his family and acts in the occasional play—all to the glory of God!

Syler Thomas is the high school pastor at Christ Church Lake Forest in Lake Forest, Illinois.