Godspell

Mom, rest assured that there are good people in Bethel so long as they know of this movie…okay so only one other person knew about it but we brought 1 ½ converts with us…

It has to be at least five years since I saw it and now watching it again I’m blown away. Images of Jesus filter through my perception and meets the forms of dancing hippies. Suddenly the once strange movie is momentous, the songs are controversial, and the antics are meticulous. These people are my heroes, these players, playing out the age they lived in. The age of fierce fundamentalist-religion and the wild Jesus People movement, clashing like the Pharisees with Jesus. I’m in awe of what the last generation left us with; the hope of a good God.

Jesus, in all his gawky and odd splendor, running and splashing, wanting to “get all washed up.” Jesus, who warns to turn the other cheek, a test failed, and a smile to the one who repented, this Jesus, who laughed and danced, who jested at his own analogies, this is my Jesus. Who was a live and passionate, but so quick to return to joy form anger. Praise God I saw this Jesus.

This pictures of a loving, hippy, friend. This Jesus was 150 pounds wet and yet a guy you couldn’t think of a situation to not trust him in. I think more and more this is what I see in Jesus. What an odd time to reveal Christ. Yes, here and now at ‘bible school’ (lols) it doesn’t seem too strange but when every other abstract seems determined to get into my head there He is. When Love and Grace are opening up a revolution, when church history is flooding into my heart and I’m screaming “FULL!” there’s, Jesus.

(It sounds more heretical around here)

That every layer that encompasses me, this explosion of the Christian world that I am left with and the power of what we are called forth into, is only a brighter understanding. That none of these things seem to be hindrances from God. It sounds super-spiritual, so spiritual that this ubercharismatic land wouldn’t call it religious per say, to want distance. To hear the call of Jesus and then abandon everything I have written here. To live in an eternal prayer closet and forget all the Grace, Love, and Church… But Jesus doesn’t seem daunted, no, what glorious nerve that He would be glorified in it. That I can look at the tears on an actor’s cheek in 1973, to the words once Hebrew now English, 2000 years prior, spoken by Him and He is still glorified. Glorified no less than before, never waning, awesome, God. This is a revelation of heart and mind, to see in layers of Love and of Grace, to see the time between then and now, still He is glorified.

My mind is blown