Addendum to "Tolerating the Intolerable" -- Godspell

After I wrote my Sept 5 post, I did more thinking about alternative interpretations of the ending of Godspell. While I am reluctant to interpret too far beyond what the show's creators intended, the modern (electric fence) crucifixion scene still leaves me feeling one can interpret it through the lens of the Holocaust and, even if not explicitly intended, find the questions thus raised provocative and potentially profitable.

I had written that perhaps the occurrence of the Holocaust (and, in general, humanity's repeated plunges into unfathomable evil) is an indictment of Christianity, and that we as Christians should ask ourselves whether two millennia (+/-) of our faith's dominance on the world stage has done us as a species all any good. I still think that's a valid question and, while hoping and believing that the answer is positive for Christianity, it's a question that I propose we should entertain more often than we do.

Another way to look at the symbolism, though, is as a comment on the parallelism of the Jewish and Christian sister religions. Soltes talks of the "relationship between Judaism and Christianity as siblings, children of the same Hebrew-Israelite-Judaean parent, each seeing itself as the legitimate child of that parent and the other as the bastard child."* Huston Smith counters that, at least in modern times, Christians have begun to view their sibling in a different light and recognize "the need for a continuing Jewish presence. Until the world is regenerated, the witness of a nation of priests remains relevant."**

Assuming, with Smith, that God has not been a fan of the primogeniture we two sibling traditions have been trying to assert to each other, it could also be interesting to ask if the play's ending draws an explicit parallel between the passion of Jesus and the Holocaust suffering of the Jewish people.*** However one comes down on the question, I think it might not be so bad to ask if the concept of redemptive suffering is commensurate in the two traditions -- more of a both/and than an either/or? If I were staging the musical, I think I would attempt to draw the parallel even somewhat explicitly, just to get people to consider the possibilities.

Anyway, just another thought...

*Soltes, O. Z. (2009). Mysticism in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Searching for Oneness.

** Smith, H. (1991). The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions. Harper Collins, New York, NY. P. 323. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (first paperback edition), Lanham, MD. p. 18.

*** In particular, I am following H. Smith's assertion that "the deep meaning the Jews found in their Exile was the meaning of vicarious suffering" (p. 295), and that the traditional Jewish interpretation of Isaiah 53:4-6 ("he was wounded for our transgressions," etc.), where Christians see prophetic foretelling of Jesus' passion, is the that it points to the suffering of the nation of Israel on behalf of the world.