Conjugating Jesus

Season of Lent .... John 18:1-8 (and Exodus 3:1-15): The Garden of Gethsemane (and the Burning Bush) .... Prayer and God's Name

Puppets: Barnabas, Olivia, and Fodder
People: Kids
Songs: Lord’s Prayer

[Barnabas, Olivia, and Fodder are all up front, Olivia in the middle]

Barnabas: Buenos dias, boys and girls. How is everybody today?

Olivia: Hi kids. It’s good to see you all here this morning.

Fodder: Gooood mornnnning Methodists! Whaaaaat’s happpenin?

Barnabas: I don’t know what’s happening. But I do know what I’m wondering.

Olivia: What’s that, Barnabas?

Barnabas: I was wondering whether Jesus knew Kung Fu.

Fodder: What?

Barnabas: Well, what I was really wondering was why Jesus didn’t fight back. When they came to get him in the Garden of Gethsemene, you know, with Judas betraying him, and the soldiers coming to arrest him. Why didn’t Jesus fight back? He could have.

Olivia: Hmm.

Fodder: I know what you mean. When the soldiers came to grab Jesus, why didn’t he just do some Jesus jujitsu? [Pause]

Olivia: [Quietly] He did.

Fodder and Barnabas: He did?

Olivia: That’s exactly what he did. Jesus jujitsu—responding not by fighting back, not with violence, but by responding with words. With the Word.

Fodder and Barnabas: Huh?

Olivia: Don’t you get it? There he was, in the garden, in the Kidron valley, Jesus with his disciples, a place that he liked to go, to find peace. And Judas knew it. And Judas took advantage of it. Judas knew that Jesus liked that place. So Judas led the solders there, and the police, the police from the chief priests and Pharisees, and they came there in the night with lanterns and torches and weapons.

Barnabas: It sounds like they expected Jesus to fight back. Pow. Kachine. Zowee.

Olivia: But Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward in the dark to them, and he asked them: “Whom are you looking for?”

Fodder: And they answered: “Jesus of Nazareth.”

Olivia: Exactly. And that’s when Jesus did his jujitsu.

Fodder and Barnabas: Huh?

Olivia: Here, maybe it will be easier if I tell you a story first.

Barnabas: OK.

Fodder: I like stories.

Olivia: So, there was Moses, walking in the desert, looking for one of his lost sheep.

Barnabas: Moses? Is this another Bible story?

Olivia: Shh. And then suddenly, Moses saw something…weird…something… strange…something that made his hair stand up on the back of his neck.

Fodder: That happened to me the first time I saw canned salmon.

Olivia: No, really. You know what Moses saw, it was a bush, on fire, but it wasn’t burning up. And it was God there. And God called him by name, saying: “Moses, Moses.”

Barnabas: I know. We’ve studied this in Sunday School. And God called on Moses to be a leader, to go back and lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, saying that he, God would help.

Olivia: But Moses was nervous about all this. So he asked his famous question:

Fodder: What question?

Barnabas: He said to God: “What is your name?”

Olivia: And God didn’t yell, or get mad, or…not answer. God did answer, and He said: “I am who I am. And if anyone asks, or wonders why you are doing these things, then tell them that ‘I am’ has sent you.”

Fodder: O….K!? Olivia: So listen. There is Jesus in the dark. With the disciples, who are scared. They know something big is going to happen. Jesus has been talking about it, at the Last Supper, and before.

Barnabas: Right. So here comes Judas, and the soldiers, and the police, in the dark, with their weapons, and their fear, and their hate.

Fodder: And Jesus steps out into the circle of light, from their torches, and says: “Whom are you looking for?” And in their anger they yell out the answer, “Jesus of Nazareth,” the right answer, if only they’d seen it, the one whom we all are looking for.

Barnabas: [Quietly] “Whom are you looking for?”

Fodder: And they say, “Jesus of Nazareth!”

Olivia: And that’s when Jesus responds, with…the Word. He says: [slowly and emphatically “I am.” [Fodder and Barnabas both fall backwards, as if in a faint, with a clunk]
Exactly. That’s exactly what Jesus’ disciples did, when they heard Jesus say that. Because they understood.

Barnabas: [Getting back up] I am! The name of God, the same as from the burning bush. Jesus was telling them that…that he…was…God.

Fodder: It was what he’d been saying all along, for those who would listen: in his stories, in his teaching, in his words: I am…I am the way…I am the resurrection and the light. I am here.

Olivia: And he’s telling it to us. [Praying] Thank you Jesus. Thank you for words so that we can pray to you, and say thank you, for your undying love. Thank you, Lord.

All: Now, is this a great day join in and pray, or not? [Sing Lord’s Prayer

The First Last Supper.

Season of Lent .... The First Last Supper .... Matthew 26:26-29: The Last Supper .... Jesus in the bread and wine.

Puppets: Barnabas and Lorenzo
People: 2 kids to hold up blanket; five or six kids to be the disciples posing in Da Vinci’s The Last Supper; Kids
Props: White sheet, as a tablecloth for puppet bench; communion cup and bread plate; biblical dress for kids, as disciples in Da Vinci painting; bed sheet or blanket; copy of Da Vinci’s painting: The Last Supper, if available

[Arrange to have five or six kids in disciple dress hiding behind altar, ready to come out. Also arrange to have two kids or adults to hold up the sheet]

[Barnabas and Lorenzo are up front; the tablecloth and communion elements are in the prop bag. The copy of the painting is propped up so everyone can see it. The disciple kids are hiding, and the drape holders are sitting up front, ready to go]

Barnabas: Buenos dias boys and girls. How is everybody today?

Lorenzo: Hola ninos. You all look marvelous this morning,
simply marvelous.

Barnabas: So. Lorenzo. Are you excited about today’s
amazing attempt?

Lorenzo: Attempt?

Barnabas: It’s that time of year again.

Lorenzo: What time?

Barnabas: The time when we present a living reenactment of Da Vinci’s famous painting of The Last Supper, in honor of…The Last Supper.

Lorenzo: But there are only two of us. [Counting] Uno, Dos. We can’t enact a whole painting of Jesus and the twelve disciples, with just the two of us.

Barnabas: We can if we move fast.

Lorenzo: All right. But I've got a bad feeling about this. [Prop assistants hold up blanket in front of puppeteers; then drop it, revealing Barnabas and Lorenzo striking a Da Vinci pose. Now speaking to each other out of the sides of their mouths] Aye carumba. The only amazing thing here is how much this doesn’t look like Da Vinci’s painting of The Last Supper.

Barnabas: You’re right.

Lorenzo: So what do we do now?

Barnabas: We start talking about something else quick, so they’ll
stop thinking about how embarrassing this looks and start thinking about something else.

Lorenzo: Are they really that easy to distract? [Barnabas nods]
OK. [Start humming, filling a long pause. Eventually look over and shrug] I know. Let’s talk about if Jesus’ disciples knew that he was dyslexic.

Barnabas: If they knew that he was what?

Lorenzo: You know. Dyslexic. That condition that lots of people have, when they read, when the letters look like they’re backwards or reversed and stuff. After all, Jesus was always going around reversing words: you know, saying that small things were actually big things. And how the first would be last, and the last, first.

Barnabas: That’s not dyslexia…..It’s wisdom.

Lorenzo: [Give Barnabas a long stare] And Jesus was doing it again in today’s Bible story, switching first and last, on that evening, near the end, that we call the Last Supper.

Barnabas: What?

Lorenzo: You know. The story of the Last Supper. But it wasn’t really the last supper. It was the first supper, the first communion, the first Eucharist, when Jesus ate with his disciples, and he told them to continue to eat bread and drink wine together like that, to remember him. He said last, but it was first. Viola: dyslexia.

Barnabas: [Aside] (That should be voila: dyslexia).

Lorenzo: [Aside] (Sorry, I’m dyslexic.) Anyway: voila dyslexia.

Barnabas: But, but, but…it wasn’t just the first supper; it was also the last supper, the last time Jesus ate with his disciples before he was taken by the Romans, and crucified. The Last Supper. In other words, Jesus was not dyslexic.

Lorenzo: Hmm. The first supper and the last supper. I wonder if you can be both dyslexic and not dyslexic—at the same time? Maybe that’s what Jesus was. What’s the word for that?

Barnabas: God.

Lorenzo: [Pause] Oh. [Pause] God. As in omni-lexic. All words. As in “In the beginning was the Word.” I get it. Jesus. As in Jesus in the bread and the wine and the words: “take, eat, this is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you.” The word made flesh.

Barnabas: Which gives me a better idea for our Last Supper reenactment. We just needed more flesh. [Prop assistants hold up blanket. Quickly spread white sheet, as tablecloth on puppet bench, then put communion elements in middle; hiding kids come out from behind altar in costume, kneeling behind the bench and strike a pose. Assistants drop blanket. Lorenzo and Barnabas move around over to the side, looking on.]

Lorenzo: I don’t know if it looks exactly like the painting or not, but at least this time Jesus is there. In the bread and wine. Right in the middle. With his disciples. The kids. Right where he belongs.

Barnabas: [Praying] Amen! Come Lord Jesus, we’re you’re guests. Let these gifts to us be blest. Thank you Lord for Communion, for the first, and last, and lasting supper. Amen.

All: [Including the posing kids and puppets] Now, is this a great day, or what?