Chapter 19 Jesus Himself Came to Audition

Every so often, it helps me to pause and get my bearings.

So, with that said, it’s important for me, and I suppose you, to know that in the chapters tumbling backward, there was a play about Jesus.

And even though I was the so-called playwright, please don’t be too impressed because I only wrote one play, albeit a big one, specifically about Jesus, as if I knew him, which was true but only in an incidental sort of way.

In this play about Jesus, since art has a way of emulating life, the story went that a director/playwright wanted to put on his own play about Jesus, but he failed miserably, three times in a row, with his casting of the actor to play Jesus. One didn’t look quite right. The other didn’t sound quite right and, well, you get the picture. So, he dismissed his Jesus actors one by one, and just as he was about to give up on his play altogether, lo and behold, Jesus himself came to audition, riding a Harley (of course).

Everyone in the cast and crew and most importantly, the director, was somewhat clueless to the truth that he was, in fact, the real Jesus, even though he was really good at playing the part, for obvious reasons.

And, of interest, they just so happened to be putting on this play in an old run down theater (because they couldn't afford anything else), and they noticed that this new Jesus actor started to slowly restore it.

Because, well, he was a carpenter, remember?

And then, it all came together as a modern rendition of the Gospel, with the whole restoring the theater thing being a big fat metaphor for our world, and everyone finally got a clue, as he started to redeem the cast and crew and ultimately the audience. And really, nothing was ever the same from that point forward.

And so, to fast forward to this present moment, as many of you know, somehow from that play, within a play, the very one that never did take place, I’ve also learned that nothing will ever be the same.

Nothing. Ever again.

Because, well, you see, I found myself the other day on my lunch hour, about three years now after the failed play debacle, joining my two new international friends, Yednik, from Ethiopia, and Hashem, from Iraq on a job interview at a local factory. I sat with them in a conference room and introduced them to the human resources managers and then walked the factory floor with all of them, helping translate their needs to the company, and the companies' needs to them.

They were quiet and humble and leaned hard with deference toward me at times when they didn’t understand, and they smiled awkwardly and I think a little desperately. Of course, I didn’t know their native tongue, and they were doing their best with mine, but I suppose, mostly what mattered was that I was there with them. And I was helping them find work.

The true test came when they were handed the job application and I had to leave them there, alone, in the room. Some of the machinery in the factory required them to know our particular language, to read it and to understand it, and so, how they did on the application was of utmost importance.

I went out and spent some time in private with the gracious people from the company, trying hard to be an advocate for these refugees who have known much pain, in and out of borders, landing here in a strange culture and time and place.

This company has come to know, through hiring other members of the internationally displaced, that these people leave their homes with nothing, travel with nothing and arrive with nothing. Their dignity is all but gone. Their lives are filled mostly with darkness and with very little hope, but slowly, ever so surely, they make their way to my backyard. And maybe to yours.

And so, the end of my lunch hour was approaching and I needed to leave and go back to my means that justifies an end sort of job. I went in to say goodbye to them and thankfully their applications were mostly finished, and right about then, Hashem grabbed both of my hands and asked if he could start working now, while Yidnek nodded, as if he was asking for both of them.

The question, asked just like that, made my knees buckle simply because of the sincerity of it all and the longing, really. I fumbled with my words a bit, probably because I couldn’t take my eyes off of his; they were so mournful and dark and fraught with something I’ve never known. I eventually came to my senses and explained that the company needed some time to check their application, their references and their background and that I would do my best to help them.

Without exposing my weakness, my feeble flank, I felt mostly helpless, as I usually do in these situations. But I comforted myself that I was at least doing something, a little bit of justice perhaps in a vast, heavenly redistribution of resources.

And then they both nodded, in a sort of respect I think, undeserved or otherwise, and they smiled true smiles and said “God bless you.”

~~~

So, I tell you all of this simply to say, that if you ever wonder what or who Jesus cares about, please remember this story about a Jesus in my day play, and a plan to display that very Jesus on a big stage of my own design; a Jesus who I thought looked like him and sounded like him.

But most importantly, remember the hard cold facts that I was wrong, and no play was ever going to happen. It was all a divine ruse to help me realize that the big play is all around me -- and my particular role in the play was always going to be about befriending these men and these women and their families who had been coming to this town long before my play and well back into the days when Ford was tripping at the White House and I was wearing tube socks and toughskins jeans from Sears.

This clueless and ever so righteous playwright knew nothing of them, or any displaced or poor people for that matter, and frankly, I didn’t care. And to really jazz it up, why would I know or care about a forgotten old porn theater with a forgotten old story in a forgotten old part of town? It just boggles the mind.

Truth be told, as I get my bearings, I thought this whole church thing was about me getting the oh so lost ~in~ to show them a Jesus of my own design, but in reality, a new kind of church is about me dismissing some poorly cast Jesus actors and getting ~out~ to reveal the design of the real Jesus in me, and to watch as he slowly but surely redeems his cast and crew and audience.

Maybe some of you already knew that, in an incidental sort of way, but I’ve always been a bit slow on the up take.


The thunder I think I hear on this day isn't really thunder at all. I can make it out ever so faintly -- not because it's rumbling for the first time but because for the first time I have ears to hear. You see, the tires on that Harley are worn and the seat is weathered and, as I said, the saddlebags hold very little. But the rider isn't tired, even though he's been riding around this forgotten part of town for a long time. A really long time.

He's busy at work and he's doing that very thing that I said I'd do so long ago when I promised to follow him.

And it is right around this time that I slowly begin to get a clue. My play that hasn't made it to the stage is forcing my hand, but only in the days and weeks and months ahead will I see that the real play has already begun, and it’s all around me. I’m in it -- everyone is in it -- and our parts were written a long time ago.

The lights are up and we’re on.