The case for Jesus Christ, Superstar

It has been many a moon since I saw or heard Jesus Christ Superstar. However, now that the final countdown to Christmas is on, it is worth taking a look at its message: Who is this Jesus whose birth we are celebrating?

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice teamed up to produce this remarkable musical. We know that Webber produced the music but we don’t hear so much of Rice. He was a British librettist who created the story. Using the gospel accounts of the last week of Jesus’s life, he presents a very human Jesus with Judas and others asking probing questions about him.

Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ Who are you, what have you sacrificed

Jesus Christ, Superstar

Do you think you’re what they say you are? It was 1971 and the tumult of the ’60s was just cooling down.

During the social upheavals of the time, religion had taken a hit. The traditional beliefs and values were questioned and abandoned by many. A divine and supernatural Jesus ceased to make sense to the rebelling youth, and many of their parents. Many simply abandoned organized religion. But some were left bewildered and confused, wondering who this Jesus really was and what Christianity was all about.

Bishop John A.T. Robinson had raised the questions in Honest to God, as had John Hick in The Myth of God Incarnate. But their work was confined to scholarly and church circles. Tim Rice gave public voice to all the questions that were in the minds of many. With Webber’s music Jesus Christ Superstar gave a powerful popular presentation of what many people were feeling and thinking.

These questions regarding Jesus become especially pressing as Christmas approaches. We now sing the carols — or relentlessly hear them — and read the stories of a virgin birth and supernatural happenings that boggle the mind. We can’t really believe those stories as literal truth. We still ask Tim Rice’s questions about who this Jesus really was.

Answers slowly began to emerge. In 1985 a group of about 50 biblical scholars, and others, founded The Jesus Seminar. They began examining the gospels – they added a fifth gospel, The Gospel of Thomas, a compendium of Jesus’s teachings — to figure out as best they could what Jesus actually said and did. Two major books resulted: The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say, and What Did Jesus Really Do? Many of the scholars wrote their own books on the subject. The best known around here is Marcus Borg’s, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. He spoke at ASTE several times.

They gave us a picture of the human person Jesus, an itinerant teacher and healer who lived what he taught. A person of such wisdom and integrity could not long escape the oppressive powers of the time, resulting in his crucifixion.

A couple of quick points. First, the stories that grew up around Jesus’s birth evolved to explain the supreme quality of the human Jesus. They are literally impossible but they were the way the people of that time had to explain the compassion and integrity of the human Jesus. “No one spoke like this man.” So enjoy the shepherds and wisemen, and a virgin giving birth in a stable. They are the traditional symbols of Jesus’s greatness.

Having given up on the supernatural stories about Jesus there is a tendency to write him off as just another wise person. And that is true. Jesus is in there with the other great spiritual figures.

Tell me what you think about your friends at the top

Now who’d you think, besides yourself

Was the pick of the crop? Buddha was he where it’s at? Is he where you are? Could Mohammed move a mountain or was that just PR? Did you mean to die like that Was that a mistake or

Did you know your messy death would be a record breaker?

(Don’t you get me wrong, now) Don’t you get me wrong

(Only want to know) Only want to know.

Then we need to remember that for 2,000 years Jesus was the archetypal model for the western world. We are part of that tradition, like it or not. The full humanity of Jesus’s life stands as a model of wisdom encouraging us to be the person that is in us to be.

Tim Rice had it right. Jesus is still a Superstar.