Written and performed as part of Psephizo’s Third Festival of Theology on Tuesday 8th October 2019
What were you expecting to see?
A reed bending in the wind?
What were you expecting to see?
A man dressed in soft robes? They are found in seats of power.
So, what were you expecting to see?
A prophet? Yes and more than a prophet. The one about whom it is written,
“See I am sending a messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.”
What are you expecting to see?
A person who will blow in the wind of fashion; keeping up with the latest fads and cultural references?
A person who will affirm you in your theology, your philosophy, your political ideology?
A person who will bend; bend over backwards to be relevant to you and who will affirm you in your own self-built mythology?
What are you expecting to see?
Someone dressed to impress? Who conforms to the image of our time in clothes seen on the silver screen, the red carpet and the glossy magazines?
A celebrity? An icon? An image of an image to learn from and plagarise?
What are you expecting to see?
A prophet? More than a prophet?
A messenger? A messenger who will clear the way before us and prepare us for a future encounter with the Living God?
What are we expecting to see?
The latest expression of a fleeting thought? An impression of acceptable identity?
Relevance. Acceptance. Perception. A poor copy of the rich and famous?
An image. A prop. A visual aid and a comic joke that lulls us back into sleep?
You will find that in Rich Theatre that stands for the commercial and the popular.
Consumers seek out comfort and acceptance; an identity that will be tolerated and they place it on them as a mask, like a figurative fig leaf.
Or are we expecting, wanting, no, needing a person; raw and unmasked?
“stripped of all that is not essential to it” discovering “the deep riches which lie in the very nature of the human experience”?
A prophet.
A preacher, like the theatre, who aims to, “peel off the life-mask. And with full-fleshed perceptivity, be a moment of provocation… enabling us to give ourselves nakedly to something which is impossible to define.”
A priest? Who, like Christ, the only fully human, enfleshed nature, will sacrifice themselves on the altar of our time, revealing its transience and weakness?
A public death of ego and image.
What are we expecting to see?
A living sacrifice of perceived identities, bearing their true nature, vulnerable and real, in the presence, and for the benefit of another.
Popular culture is about image, spectacle, aesthetic trappings to dazzle and entertain at the safe distance between viewer and viewed.
Should we not expect, as we gather as community, to encounter the presence of the real; an incarnated embrace of relationship in all its risk and vibrancy?
Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre sought to eliminate all that blocked a communion between the actor and the audience.
Theatre was not about teaching; passing on information or knowledge. It was about an encounter which would inspire one to change, not the way they think but the way they lived.
An actor would enhance what was real and sought to strip off all that was fantasy and imposed.
In his concept, of ‘poor theatre’, Grotowski used the language of priesthood as the actor entered into the sanctity of the performance space and birthed a holy relationship between themselves and the gathered community by sacrificing their masks and revealing, as much as they could, their true nature.
Scars.
Scars.
All the scars.
Scars are beautiful.
Scars speak of healed wounds, of past pain and of future hope.
My scars of disappointment speak of new vision of grace and love.
My scars of abuse speak of new sources of justice and peace.
My scars of loss and grief, of my loved one missed, speak of new depths of hope and light.
Scars are not wounds.
Wounds infect and get infected.
Wounds are half stories yet to be finished.
Scars are beautiful
They are expressions of survived encounters with the real, present pain of others.
Scars are glimpses of the future for those who still need healing.
Salvation.
This is the Word of God.
This is the Gospel of the Lord.
The healing for the nations.
In the tenderness of his scars, Christ reaches out and touches us.
Through his scarred Body, He speaks to us of resurrection hope.
Wounded healer?
Scarred healer.
For this is not about wounds. We don’t want any more unhealed wounders.
This is about scars.
Undeniable, real, authentic, vulnerable, tender scars inviting us to receive what has been poured out.
What are we expecting to see when we gather?
What are we expecting the preacher to deliver?
A sermon that attempts to appease?
What are we expecting to see?
Clever rhetoric and impassioned speech?
What are we expecting?
A prophet, I tell you, and more than a prophet.
And not some third rate image of a waterfall, or of a future harvest but a stripping away, a sacrifice of life masks and a revealing of present reality.
The real presence of a real person scarred by the real journey of real faith witnessing to the real power and very real hope of the living, breathing, real presence of the Word of God, the incarnated hypostatic union of God and humanity: Jesus Christ our scarred and unmasked Lord and Saviour.