CDXXXVIII – Revisiting Jesus Christ Superstar

I am watching as I write this Jesus Christ Superstar. This musical is by no means an orthodox film, yet it holds a dear place in my heart because I often joke that it was my first catechesis, before I became Catholic in 2018. Besides that, I do enjoy the music, too.

When I watched it before, I viewed it’s presentation of Judas as tragic—he took a practical view and he had some legitimate philosophical questions: he thought they should devote every resource to serving the poor and winning a political fight.

Now, I see Judas as a blind curmudgeon. He completely misses the point of Christ as a spiritual king, one a mission that transcends politics.

One thing this movie did for me was it taught me some of the main events of Christs life without requiring me to read the Bible. Whenever we talk about Christ throwing the moneychangers out of the temple, I think of the scene from this movie. On watching it again I see the skeleton and even some of the inaccuracies that stuck in my head until they were corrected as a Catholic.

In one part Jesus says everyone can attain the kingdom, a kind of universalism. I never pondered whether universalism was true, but I did ponder how I would know the difference between being “saved” and being “damned”.

Another error is that the film largely treats Jesus as being only a man, which is heresy. Absent his divinity, the whole thing doesn’t make much sense. He comes off in the film as kind of a jerk, someone who has gnostic wisdom and he can’t tell you. The movie actually spends very little time on the gospel message. A lot of effort is on Judas as a foil to Christ, and on Pontius Pilate.

I remember being very disturbed over the treatment of Pontius Pilate. He tried to wash his hands, he did everything he could to avoid crucifying Christ. This is actually true, and yet Pilate still succumbed to the will of the Mob. He tried to pass the buck but ended up securing the outcome.

A travesty of catechesis is when they recreate the last supper and Jesus says “for all you care, this could be my body (…) and this could be my blood”. Then Jesus goes on a rant about whether he will be remembered. Again—the starting assumption of this musical is that Jesus was a man and not God incarnate.

This movie also made me wonder as a kid what would happen if Judas hadn’t betrayed him, or whether Judas had any other options. This goes back to my argument that life is on rails—God knows our hearts, and is capable of both knowing the outcome of free choice while experiencing incarnate reality as a temporal man. It could only have gone one way, there are no alternate realities.

You see though how Judas presents a problem to young impressionable minds like mine. How do I know I am not following the same path as Judas? The song “Damned for all time” hits a little harder—I am trying my best, so “just don’t say I’m damned for all time!” Again—how would I know? How would I recognize that I am on the right side of Jesus?

Their presentation of the Passion is problematic. I think they didn’t know how to present it–because to them, Christ was just a man, it popped their brains so they put it in, but it is clear that they don’t really know what it’s for. They don’t understand why Jesus died, or why he HAD to die. That’s a theme that comes up often–you can think of this musical as Andrew Lloyd Weber publicly wrangling with the facts of the gospel, and feeling the dissonance with what he actually believes. This is highlighted by the ecumenical song and dance number featuring an angelic (!!) Judas asking if Jesus is with Buddha or Mohammed in the afterlife that immediately precedes the passion.

This has been a bit of a stream of consciousness while I watched the movie again.

AMDG

CCCXXVIII – On Music

The following was a comment on Wood’s blog which is long enough to be it’s own post. I’ve been thinking about this for some time and even thought about making a post on it, but couldn’t figure out how to approach it. Well, Wood broke the dam and my brain spilled out. Here’s the fruit of that:

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I have been thinking about music and this is an excellent opportunity to speak my mind on the subject.

[A] priest [friend] complained recently that a parish he was stationed at had trouble distinguishing between “Christian Music” and “Holy Music”. Hymns can bring tears to my eyes–Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings/Agnus Dei is one of them. The Ave Maria is powerful. Hillsong United, Chris Tomlin–these are Christian musicians, but not–beautiful, not holy. Not in the same way as Barber’s Agnus Dei or Schubert’s Ave Maria.

When I was younger, I used to hoard music–I got a subscription to Amazon music and I would download everything. Songs that I liked I supposed I would like forever, I wanted to catalog them. But changes in music formats and music delivery systems made hoarding music impractical. I have no idea where all those songs are that I hoarded, or if I am even still technologically capable of listening to them.

There was something in me that recognized that Music touches something beyond mere sensory experience–there is something Transcendent about it, for good or ill. Pink Floyd’s Time is one of my favorite songs, and it is not particularly holy or reverent, but it touches me in way that is unique to me. It took me a longer time still to realize that songs that touch my soul will not touch other people’s souls the same way. Something that stirs me will not stir someone else. I may not feel holiness emanating from Hillsong United or Chris Tomlin (NB: I enjoy both Hillsong United and Chris Tomlin–don’t want you to think they are bad musicians), but someone else might be moved to tears by them. (Still doesn’t make them appropriate for the musical liturgy of the Mass).

What I have settled on recently is that Music is the spice of life. It adds flavor and feeling to an experience, like it adds flavor to a meal, but it takes very little, and it is gone very quickly. You remember the meal, but will probably not remember the seasoning with the same vividness. Yet the seasoning is inseparable from the experience of the meal. So the purpose of music is to help people see themselves, see other people, see God, or see other things with greater clarity. As you say, Music helps tune our souls to something. When we die and, God willing, go to Heaven, we are not going to care what songs we listened to–we will get to participate in the greatest music that is the chorus of Angels: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts, Heaven and Earth are full of Thy glory.

I may forget Pink Floyd’s Time when I’m in Heaven, but in some way Pink Floyd’s Time will have helped me to get there–either by helping me see Beauty, helping me understand myself, or merely by making the fleeting experience of Earthly existence a little more enjoyable.

I didn’t expect to riff off your post so much but all these thoughts were pent up in my head and they just spilled out. Thank you for this post!

AMDG

CXXVIII – Presented Without Comment (No. 10)