The Bible and Music

This past weekend, I attended The Passion Play at Purdue University. This play has typically retold the story of Easter. It talks about the life of early Jesus, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. After talking to someone that I know who worked on the set of the play, they said that it has been a pretty traditional play. It never really strayed away from the long-established story of Jesus Christ/Easter.

This year, they did a parallel story of Jesus’s life and a man that got caught with heroine. For some of the play, they did a split stage. On the right side of the stage, the story of the heroin addict took place. On the left side of the stage, there was the story of Christ. This did not happen very much though. The only times that they really had both stories going at the same time was when the trial was going on and Jesus was on the cross. The other time that there was a split stage was when Michael (the heroine convict) was learning about the story of Jesus. As someone was narrating the story, the actors from the biblical side were acting it out.

So after I shared that, I want to talk about the new plot of the play. The man, Michael, gets drug out of his house in the beginning of the play. He is taken to jail on account of dealing heroine. Once he is in his cell, his cellmate, Eric, convinces him to a religious meeting because if you go, you get free cookies. So, Michael and his cellmate go to these meetings, and get their free cookies. As a non-believer of Christ, he did not care to really listen to the pastor at the meetings; however, the more he went, the more he started to really listen and believe in God.

As the story continues, so does the story of Michael and his jail story. So, he ends up having to go to trial. He is given the option to plead guilty or plead innocent and have to go to trial. Eventually, he ends up pleading guilty for the climax of the play. When he is pleading guilty on the right side, Jesus is getting crucified on the other side of the stage. The lights all shine on him with bright blues and then dark reds. Then, the stage goes dark for a while.

The stage lights come back on and it finishes with Michael. His wife leaves him, he pleads guilty, and he is now a believer of Christ. While the Michael comes forth and shares his love and faith in Christ, the side acts out the resurrection of Christ. I feel as if the resurrection of Christ and the moment when Michael admits his trust in the Lord is significant. The newly Christ can represent God’s “new” love in another human.

I also liked the music in this play. There was a wide array of songs. Some sad, some upbeat, and some slow. I was not familiar with any of the music that was played. They had an experienced choir, a children’s choir, and individual soloists. They never used any straight verses straight from the Bible (or songs that you would hear in church) but it was more of an interesting connection between the Bible and music. It reminded me of the soundtrack in Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Altogether, I am very impressed with this play. It was something I had never seen before. It was powerful, new, and exciting. I highly recommend this to anyone.