They performed their latest piece "The Chair, the Table and the Cross" which looked at the events of Holy Week from the perspective of a Jerusalem carpenter's workshop. It was an all age piece, so it didn't go too dark or deep, but thinking about it later took me back to a a couple of things.
The first was the attached oil painting, "The Shadow of Death" by William Holman Hunt, this version being his earlier, darker one painted between 1879 and 1883,
in the Manchester City Art Gallery. And the second is a scene I posted here before, way back in 2008 in the wake of watching an episode of "The Passion" produced by the BBC that year (I've still not seen the whole thing). My thoughts then took me back to a scene in a previous BBC production, Dennis Potter's "Son of Man", a play which, unsurprisingly given the author is, as I said previously, a decidedly sceptical view of Jesus' ministry and death, but one with some interesting insights... But particularly, given all that is happening in the world around us today, with certain people once again "taking up the cross" in ways antithetical to Jesus' original intention, what the following part of Act 2 Scene 3 is saying is especially pertinent and I thought it was appropriate as a Good Friday post.
At this point Jesus and his disciples have been having a discussion in the shadow of a cross. Then, almost absent-mindedly Jesus wanders over to it and starts to caress it.
JESUS: Good timber, this. Hewed with the grain from the heart of the tree. I could fill a room with tables and chairs with wood like this. [He chops the air with his hand.] Cha-ow! Split, it would, straight as ever you could want. Yes! There’s nothing like a bit of wood in your hands. Chaow! Not a knot in it, see? Good stuff.
[He puts his head against the cross, as though it were a pillow, momentarily closes his eyes and whispers]
Father. Father.
[His shoulders start to shake, as though in sobbing. ANDREW steps forward anxiously to comfort him, putting his hands on Jesus’ shoulders.]
ANDREW: Oh, Master, please...
[But JESUS turns swftly, and we see that, far from sobbing, he is in fact shaking with laughter.]
JUDAS: Wh-what is it?
JESUS: A tree! A t-tut-tree!
[He laughs out loud, then speaks, still smiling.]
God puts it in the soil. A tiny little seed. He sends the sun to warm it. He sends the rain to feed it. He lets the earth hug the little plant like a mother with a baby. So it grows. Years and years it grows. Little roots like veins twisting underneath our feet. First it’s a sapling, tossed by the wind, a feeble thing. But still sun, rain, still it grows. And grows. Oh, a huge thing. A great, strong tower climbing towards heaven. Older now than a man, than two men. What has it not seen? Eh?
PETER: [child-like] Go on — go on!
JESUS: Cha-ow! Down it comes! Crash! Oh, great tree, brought low by the axe. Eh? But God doesn’t mind -
JUDAS: [aloof, still] Doesn’t he? How do you — ?
JESUS: No-oo. What are trees for? Wood. God wants us to build. To have tables to eat off. Chairs to sit on. He has filled the earth with good things, all for man, for me, for you. So He doesn’t mind, does He? No-oo. All that sun. All that rain. All those years. All that struggle from seed to giant — well, tables and chairs are fine things too! But look what we do. Look! A cross! To kill a man! All that sun. All that rain. And here is the end of it — something to hold up and stretch out a man while he dies!
[Again, he throws back his head and laughs. The others are paled, and even rather disapproving.]
JOHN: But what is funny about that, Lord?
JESUS: Man!
ANDREW: What?
JESUS: [angry rhetoric] Man! That’s what is funny about it! Man, silly, stupid, murdering man! We take the good things God gave us in order to hurt each other!…
[The scene continues… then, towards the end of it…]
ANDREW: I didn’t even see it – I didn’t even…
JESUS: [harshly] It is part of the landscape.
Selah
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