As Jesus moved through his last week, we’ve been there. I mean, we were watching as he entered Jerusalem and cleaned out the Temple. And we heard him confront his enemies and teach his followers. And we were there when Judas made his deal and Jesus shared a last supper with his disciples. We were even off to the side when he was arrested and Peter denied knowing him. You see, we’ve been there. But even so, we really haven’t been a part of the story, because unlike everyone else involved in the narrative itself, we know exactly what was going to happen in the end. Jesus was going to suffer and die on a cross and then, on the third day, he was going to be raised. You see, we know all this. And even though it may seem unimportant, the fact that we know causes us to stand away from the leaders and the disciples and the crowd. In other words, we’re observers, witnesses to what occurred. At least, I believe that’s the perspective all four evangelists want us to have as me read their accounts.
Well, after the arrest, things really started to happen and to happen quickly. And as Webber and Rice put this frantic action to music, they chose to do something that I generally discourage people from doing. They combine the four stories, borrowing bits and pieces from each to construct a narrative. Of course, Christians have been doing this kind of thing for almost two thousand years, assuming that a reconstructed life of Jesus was somehow better when four separate and different gospel stories. Now that’s what folks have tended to do, which explains all those sermons on the last seven words spoken by Christ from the cross.
But there’s a problem when we do it. Since the intention of the gospels was to announce “good news” and not historically verifiable facts and each of the four evangelists seemed to have their own slightly different opinions about the identity and significance of Jesus Christ, I believe we lose something extremely important when try to blend four distinct stories into one. As a matter of fact, I think doing this can be compared to food. For example, I really enjoy Italian, Mexican and Chinese. But I really don’t want chicken parm shoved into a taco on a bed of lo mein. Forcing them together doesn’t improve the taste. But irregardless of that, we have what’s called a conflated story in the musical.
After his arrest, Jesus was taken to the high priest and the religious leaders. This was how the Evangelist Mark described the scene:
They led Jesus to the Chief Priest, where the high priests, religious leaders, and scholars had gathered together. Peter followed at a safe distance until they got to the Chief Priest’s courtyard, where he mingled with the servants and warmed himself at the fire.
The high priests conspiring with the Jewish Council looked high and low for evidence against Jesus by which they could sentence him to death. They found nothing. Plenty of people were willing to bring in false charges, but nothing added up, and they ended up canceling each other out. Then a few of them stood up and lied: “We heard him say, ‘I am going to tear down this Temple, built by hard labor, and in three days build another without lifting a hand.’” But even they couldn’t agree exactly.
In the middle of this, the Chief Priest stood up and asked Jesus, “What do you have to say to the accusation?” Jesus was silent. He said nothing.
The Chief Priest tried again, this time asking, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed?”
Jesus said, “Yes, I am, and you’ll see it yourself:
The Son of Man seated
At the right hand of the Mighty One,
Arriving on the clouds of heaven.”
The Chief Priest lost his temper. Ripping his clothes, he yelled, “Did you hear that? After that do we need witnesses? You heard the blasphemy. Are you going to stand for it?”
They condemned him, one and all. The sentence: death.
Some of them started spitting at him. They blindfolded his eyes, then hit him, saying, “Who hit you? Prophesy!” The guards, punching and slapping, took him away. [Mark 14:53-65, MSG]
Later he was taken to the Roman governor, Pilate. This was what the Evangelist Luke wrote:
Then they all took Jesus to Pilate and began to bring up charges against him. They said, “We found this man undermining our law and order, forbidding taxes to be paid to Caesar, setting himself up as Messiah-King.”
Pilate asked him, “Is this true that you’re ‘King of the Jews’?”
“Those are your words, not mine,” Jesus replied.
Pilate told the high priests and the accompanying crowd, “I find nothing wrong here. He seems harmless enough to me.”
But they were vehement. “He’s stirring up unrest among the people with his teaching, disturbing the peace everywhere, starting in Galilee and now all through Judea. He’s a dangerous man, endangering the peace.”
When Pilate heard that, he asked, “So, he’s a Galilean?” Realizing that he properly came under Herod’s jurisdiction, he passed the buck to Herod, who just happened to be in Jerusalem for a few days. [Luke 23:1-7, MSG]
This encounter was the basis for the song, “Pilate and Christ.”
Now, Pilate sending Jesus to Herod is found only in the Gospel of Luke. For a little background, Herod Antipas was the tetrarch of Galilee; therefore, he was sort of a “king, second class.” He was the son of Herod the Great, the builder of the Temple. And even though he had some authority over his territory, he was under the Roman thumb. He was also the one who had beheaded John the Baptist. This was what Luke wrote about Jesus before Herod:
Herod was delighted when Jesus showed up. He had wanted for a long time to see him, he’d heard so much about him. He hoped to see him do something spectacular. He peppered him with questions. Jesus didn’t answer—not one word. But the high priests and religion scholars were right there, saying their piece, strident and shrill in their accusations.
Mightily offended, Herod turned on Jesus. His soldiers joined in, taunting and jeering. Then they dressed him up in an elaborate king costume and sent him back to Pilate. That day Herod and Pilate became thick as thieves. Always before they had kept their distance. [Luke 23:8-12, MSG]
Herod’s expectations and disappointment were the basis for “King Herod's Song.” And even though it’s been staged many different ways, Herod always comes off sounding foolish and looking incredibly sleazy.
Now, in the bible accounts of his passion, there was no action that didn’t involve Jesus, except Peter’s denial. But that wasn’t the case in Jesus Christ Superstar. Webber and Rice shifted attention to Mary and Peter. And even though it wasn’t from the text, the confusion they may have felt was reflected in the song, “Could We Start Again Please?”
Like King Herod, the role Judas played in the final part of the story wasn’t consistent within the gospels. Although his motivation varied, Judas was always the one who betrayed Jesus. But after the arrest, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John described his action in different ways. For example, he simply dropped out of the Gospels of Mark and John. According to the Evangelist Luke, Judas died in a very graphic way; therefore, after the resurrection he needed to be replaced.
During this time, Peter stood up in the company—there were about 120 of them in the room at the time—and said, “Friends, long ago the Holy Spirit spoke through David regarding Judas, who became the guide to those who arrested Jesus. That Scripture had to be fulfilled, and now has been. Judas was one of us and had his assigned place in this ministry.
“As you know, he took the evil bribe money and bought a small farm. There he came to a bad end, rupturing his belly and spilling his guts. Everybody in Jerusalem knows this by now; they call the place Murder Meadow. It’s exactly what we find written in the Psalms:
Let his farm become haunted
So no one can ever live there.
“And also what was written later:
Let someone else take over his post. [Acts 1:15-20, MSG]
But the Evangelist Matthew worked a little remorse into Judas’s post-betrayal character. According to the evangelist, “Judas, the one who betrayed him, realized that Jesus was doomed. Overcome with remorse, he gave back the thirty silver coins to the high priests, saying, 'I’ve sinned. I’ve betrayed an innocent man.' They said, 'What do we care? That’s your problem!'
Judas threw the silver coins into the Temple and left. Then he went out and hung himself.
The high priests picked up the silver pieces, but then didn’t know what to do with them. 'It wouldn’t be right to give this—a payment for murder!—as an offering in the Temple.' They decided to get rid of it by buying the “Potter’s Field” and use it as a burial place for the homeless. That’s how the field got called “Murder Meadow,” a name that has stuck to this day. Then Jeremiah’s words became history:
They took the thirty silver pieces,
The price of the one priced by some sons of Israel,
And they purchased the potter’s field.
And so they unwittingly followed the divine instructions to the letter.” [Matthew 27:3-10, MSG]
Now it was this last portrayal that became the basis for the song, “Judas' Death.”
Since Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross, he had to be sentenced by Pilate. You see, the Jewish leaders could also execute criminals, but their technique of choice was stoning. And so, for Jesus to be nailed to a tree, the Romans would need to do it. And although the gospels vary in their accounts of Jesus’s last appearance before Pilate, the exchange from the Gospel of John was the one that Webber and Rice used. The Evangelist wrote the following:
So Pilate took Jesus and had him whipped. The soldiers, having braided a crown from thorns, set it on his head, threw a purple robe over him, and approached him with, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Then they greeted him with slaps in the face.
Pilate went back out again and said to them, “I present him to you, but I want you to know that I do not find him guilty of any crime.” Just then Jesus came out wearing the thorn crown and purple robe.
Pilate announced, “Here he is: the Man.”
When the high priests and police saw him, they shouted in a frenzy, “Crucify! Crucify!”
Pilate told them, “You take him. You crucify him. I find nothing wrong with him.”
The Jews answered, “We have a law, and by that law he must die because he claimed to be the Son of God.”
When Pilate heard this, he became even more scared. He went back into the palace and said to Jesus, “Where did you come from?”
Jesus gave no answer.
Pilate said, “You won’t talk? Don’t you know that I have the authority to pardon you, and the authority to—crucify you?”
Jesus said, “You haven’t a shred of authority over me except what has been given you from heaven. That’s why the one who betrayed me to you has committed a far greater fault.”
At this, Pilate tried his best to pardon him, but the Jews shouted him down: “If you pardon this man, you’re no friend of Caesar’s. Anyone setting himself up as ‘king’ defies Caesar.”
When Pilate heard those words, he led Jesus outside. He sat down at the judgment seat in the area designated Stone Court (in Hebrew, Gabbatha). It was the preparation day for Passover. The hour was noon. Pilate said to the Jews, “Here is your king.”
They shouted back, “Kill him! Kill him! Crucify him!”
Pilate said, “I am to crucify your king?”
The high priests answered, “We have no king except Caesar.”
Pilate caved in to their demand. He turned him over to be crucified. [John 19:1-15, MSG]
The song was entitled “Trial Before Pilate.”
As an interesting aside, Pilate wouldn’t finish his career in Judea. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, Pilate was removed from his office, because he violently suppressed an armed Samaritan movement at Mount Gerizim. He was sent back to Rome by the legate of Syria to answer for this before Emperor Tiberius, who, however, had died before he arrived. Nothing is known for certain about what happened to him after this.
Although he faded away in both the gospels and history, Jesus was nailed to a Roman cross. And the theological perspectives of Superstar’s composers were offered in the song, “Superstar.”
With the exception of John’s gospels, the crucifixion itself was straight-forward. This was how the Evangelist Mark described it
There was a man walking by, coming from work, Simon from Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. They made him carry Jesus’ cross.
The soldiers brought Jesus to Golgotha, meaning “Skull Hill.” They offered him a mild painkiller (wine mixed with myrrh), but he wouldn’t take it. And they nailed him to the cross. They divided up his clothes and threw dice to see who would get them.
They nailed him up at nine o’clock in the morning. The charge against him—the king of the jews—was printed on a poster. Along with him, they crucified two criminals, one to his right, the other to his left. People passing along the road jeered, shaking their heads in mock lament: “You bragged that you could tear down the Temple and then rebuild it in three days—so show us your stuff! Save yourself! If you’re really God’s Son, come down from that cross!”
The high priests, along with the religion scholars, were right there mixing it up with the rest of them, having a great time poking fun at him: “He saved others—but he can’t save himself! Messiah, is he? King of Israel? Then let him climb down from that cross. We’ll all become believers then!” Even the men crucified alongside him joined in the mockery.
At noon the sky became extremely dark. The darkness lasted three hours. At three o’clock, Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying loudly, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
Some of the bystanders who heard him said, “Listen, he’s calling for Elijah.” Someone ran off, soaked a sponge in sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down.” [Mark 15:21-36, MSG]
But even though this all seemed clear and in general consistent, Jesus’s last words differ depending on the gospel, and I believe these differences reflect how the individual writers viewed the meaning of the crucifixion and the identity of Jesus. For example, according to the Evangelists Matthew and Mark, before he died, Jesus said, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” To me, this sounds like a cry of intense despair, even doubt, something I think we can all identify with. But that wasn’t so in the other gospels. In Luke, he offered what sounds like a statement of faith: “'Father, I place my life in your hands!' Then he breathed his last.” [Luke 23:46, MSG] And in John, Jesus simply stated that his mission on earth was complete when he said, “It’s done . . . complete.” [John 19:30, MSG] You see, each was a little different. But all of these crucifixion themes were incorporated into the song, “The Crucifixion.”
And so, this was the last week in the earthly life of Jesus, using Jesus Christ Superstar as a guide. But the musical didn’t end with the crucifixion. The following instrumental marks the conclusion.
And the title of this little piece was “John Nineteen: Forty-One." Now this is the verse: “In the place where Jesus had been nailed to a cross, there was a garden with a tomb that had never been used.” [John 19:41, CEV] And you know, what happened at the tomb in a couple of days, that would absolutely change the world.
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