That Awkward Moment

I just left worship tonight for the week of prayer evening meeting, and before the message there was a student skit.

I'm not sure how I feel about skits. I can understand why people think they are inappropriate for a worship service or in the sanctuary, but I'm not quite ready to say that. I think they could effectively portray a spiritual message in a different medium as easily as a sermon or even a video (which pops up in the sanctuary much more frequently with far less controversy).

Contemporary Christian music begins to play over the PA system. +Lauren Tieri enters from stage left. There is no dialogue. She is surprised by a man from behind, and is overjoyed to see him. There's a moment leading up the embrace where the audience wonders if this is supposed to be a significant other, or Jesus. The motions are deliberately non-romantic. Then she pantomimes amazement at what is obviously the wounds in his hands and side. He begins to lead her out stage right, when Archie Wheeler, clearly the Devil himself in all black and red, and he snatches her from him, treats her roughly, and throws her through stage-left door on the other side. Jesus and Archie dispute.

Lauren returns being shoved and handled roughly, being shamed, beaten. Others enter with dark brown bottles, sweep her off and get her to drink. Archie shoves her to her knees. Her body wracks with sobs as "Jesus" bends in near.

By this time, it feels like there is a palpable awkwardness in the sanctuary. I feel like we are all thinking this is a tad cheezy, a bit poorly acted, a skoche amateurish, or perhaps just a misguided effort to try and effect a reaction to the gospel in drama for a bunch of private-church-school students who have seen all this before.

Then the camera affords a close up of our victim and Jesus. The performance is shockingly convincing, the crying uncomfortably true-to-life. She is actually pleading.

Then it hits me. Maybe it's not awkward because it's bad. Maybe that's our front for not engaging with these all-too-real life pictures. This is our way of holding a flood of real, often painful, emotions at arms length, and looking at them without feeling them, without acknowledging that we have ever felt that way, that we know people in these situations, that it's happening the world over right now.

Jesus begins to escort her away. The demonic throng in black surge from the other side and pull her. There are six on her left arm, Jesus on her right.

But Jesus never lets go.

"Nothing is apparently more helpless, yet really more invincible, than the soul that feels its nothingness, and relies wholly on the merits of the Saviour. God would send every angel in heaven to the aid of such an one, rather than allow him to be overcome."—Testimonies for the Church, Volume 7, page 17