I am the walrus

Our church is doing a series of Wednesday dinner “shows” again this Lent. This year, it’s a multi-act play on the Trial of Judas Iscariot, with the audience acting as the jury, this final night being when folks vote on eternal damnation or forgiveness.

Interesting concept, moderately well-crafted. It gets into some fairly deep and wide-ranging religious issues related to grace, faith, forgiveness, sin, what Jesus said, who he said it to, what it meant, and so forth.

I got to play Paul, which was kind of fun. Paul is not one of my favorite authors — I think either people have read a lot more into him than he would have expected when he wrote his epistles, or else he’s got a heck of a lot more cultural baggage packed along with him than was healthy to adopt, regardless of his theological interpretation of Christ’s message.

I played Paul (within the bounds of a fairly neutral script) as a slightly pedantic, slightly smug intellectual type, sincerely enthusiastic (and sincerely angry about his own failings), but also sort of self-aggrandizing in his “See what a horrible sinner I was and am?” attitude. I had fun.

Palm Sunday we’ll be doing the Passion for the Gospel. I got volunteered to do Jesus’ lines. Hrm. Certainly a dramatic enough role, but one I’m a bit uncomfortable with doing much with. “What’s my motivation here?” Yeah, right. Maybe I’ll just try to be earnest; that usually works.