Sept 20, 2022

Hello From Oberammergau:

Kim and I just got back from the Passion Play. It was an awesome experience. I’m not sure how to describe it, but I will do my best. The structure was quite interesting. Before each scene of the passion story, the director created a human tableau of a scene from the First Testament - one that spoke to the scene in the play. For Example, one tableaux was Moses at the burning bush, where Moses’ struggles to receive the call of God to deliver Israel from slavery in Egypt. That was followed by the Garden of Gethsemane scene where Jesus struggles to drink the cup of suffering, which is God’s will. This connection between the First Testament and the Passion Story were made throughout the evening.

With every First Testament Tableau - where every person was so still, it looked like you were viewing a portrait - the choir would come out to sing a song of praise. There were 60 choir members, and 4 soloist, and they were magnificent. They sang in German, but it didn’t matter, because I could close my eyes and easily hear voices rise up through the theatre as if the angels in heaven were singing themselves.

The first half of the play was very much in the Rabbinic tradition. Jesus was portrayed as a Jewish Rabbi, passionately arguing with the Pharisees and the scribes after he enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday; passionately arguing with his disciples at the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in Bethany; passionately arguing with the religious authorities when he turns the tables over, and so on, and so on, and so on. One member of our group said that she didn’t remember Jesus being so angry all the time, and in the bible, he wasn’t, but I believe our Director was trying to honour the fact that Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi, and like ministers, when you get a bunch of Rabbi’s together, they tend to defend their beliefs passionately.

The first half went as far as the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the play was pretty loyal to the biblical passion story, with two notable exceptions Judas does not kiss Jesus in the garden, and an angel appears alongside Jesus as he is praying to God in the Garden of Gethsemane. Because the play is entirely in German, I had to ask someone who the guy was with Jesus in the garden, for the gospels have him praying alone while the disciples sleep. I like the idea of an Angel present with Jesus at a time of great need. It’s nice to believe that he wasn’t all alone.

The second half reverts back to a Christian understanding of the Passion Story. This especially comes out in the portraying of the 14 stations of the cross. The stations include 3 times when Jesus collapses with the cross, Veronica rushing to Jesus to wipe his face with a cloth, Mary embracing her Son as he makes his way to Golgotha, and the women of Jerusalem weeping with Jesus stopping to-address them. All of these are depicted in the Passion Play, and none of them are biblical. Mary shows up to speak a great deal as Jesus journeys to the cross, and after he is crucified, which is more about Christian Church tradition than the gospels.

But that’s not to say that Church tradition and the gospel story can’t combine to produce a powerful and moving Passion narrative, because it certainly did here. The way to the cross, the Crucifixion of Jesus, his death, which included all 7 last statements of Jesus Christ, the lowering of the body from the cross to be wrapped in linen cloths, and the resurrection were all incredibly done, capturing in very moving ways one’s spirit so it feels like you were with Jesus each step of the way. The taking down of Jesus from the cross was especially powerful for me. I have seen a lot of passion stories in my lifetime, but never before had a seen Jesus being removed from his instrument of death. Lovingly, carefully, slowing they brought him down, laying him on a cloth, and grieving him. It brought me to tears. By the way, the angel who was present in the Garden of Gethsemane, is also present as Jesus is crucified. It’s nice to know that Jesus is not forsaken after all.

This Passion story has a resurrection. They don’t always do, but I was glad it all ended with God raising a Jesus from the dead. The women do not come to the tomb in the morning, but to the empty cross. They see an angel there, the same one at the Garden of Gethsemane, and the cross, who tells the women that Jesus is risen. The women believe, the disciples rush to the cross, the women tell them, and the disciples believe them. The entire cast comes out along with the choir, and while lighting candles, the Choir sings a joyous Hallelujah Anthem to end a fabulous night.

No standing ovation, no curtain call. After all, the people of Oberammergau made a promise to God in 1654 to put on this play, not for us - it’ s all in praise of what God did for them, and for Jesus.

It will be hard to top this day, but we have one more in this trip. A walking tour of Munich, and then preparing to come home.

Until then, Take care and God bless.

Ed