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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday April 21, 2003 Volume V Number 17 |
FOCUS - Malchus
He asked me if I had any experience doing drama.
I said, “Yes, some.”
Frankly that was something of a stretch. I’m interested in drama. I admire people who can take on a character, animate a script and play a convincing role - on stage or on screen. But while I have a fair amount of experience as a public speaker (I suppose that’s a kind of drama) and many years ago, I vocalized regularly, singing before audiences all over the country (college level concert tours with solo parts), I can’t say I’ve played any sort of role in a stage play or anything you would call acting. But a good friend of mine stopped by the office the some time ago. He produced an original Easter drama. He sat down and tossed a written narrative across my desk. He then suggested that I might be well suited to play the part.
I read a couple paragraphs and found the role irresistible. On the spot, surprising myself, I agreed to take the part.
Don’t be misled. This was not a career move. Our worship leader had a big idea for Good Friday. He paid me the high compliment of thinking I might (in some small way) contribute. This would be a neighborhood production. The intent was clear: bring a sensory, multi-media drama; music and visuals and dramatic narrative; all to portray something of the human drama of the impact of Jesus’ execution on the people he knew. By tapping into their observations and experience, Gerry hoped people in our contemporary audience might catch some sort of glimpse of what it must have been like to be there, and watch events unfold.
The drama would capture something of the essence of Good Friday. How this Christian holiday became known as “good” Friday remains itself something of a mystery. What’s good about the capital punishment of an innocent man, betrayed by some of his best friends, set up for a sting, falsely accused, denied due process, squashed by the rich and the powerful, caught in the political cross-fire of occupied territory, used as a pawn in a high stakes religious contest between warring factions, and then finally suffering the most horrific of indignities – a very public and cruel execution?
Most historians recognize “Good Friday” as a distortion of “God’s Friday,” when Christians remember the crucifixion of Christ. But no one calls it God’s Friday anymore. Even if they did, it still doesn’t resolve the terrible irony of it all. In many ways it seemed like the bitter day when God appeared to be the most helpless – a Father standing by while his Son’s life is extinguished by an unruly mob.
What’s so good about that?
Other Christians who know the ending of the story label it good because of what it accomplished. All Christians agree, the outcome was good. The result was good. So much of the Christian’s poetry and hymns reflect happiness and joy and celebration over the awful events of Good Friday, glossing over the pain, denying the horror, pretending that the alienation Jesus experienced in the Garden called Gethsemane and then through what Gerry calls the Kangaroo Court of a trial, and up the road under the weight of the wooden cross-beams up to Golgotha with the jeering crowds and the heartless, cynical work of the executioner driving the nails and lifting the cross upright, and in the heat of the relentless sun and the loss of blood, the sharp and terrible pain, and the physical and spiritual isolation, unthinkable agony, all of this a simple paying of the dues to achieve a noble goal. Christians have been known to sing about shed blood in the same carefree tones as bringing in the sheaves. (“Are you washed in the blood?”)
It opens Christians up to the charge of denial; that is, denial of the dreadful human realities of Jesus’ final days. And there is some vulnerability here. Injecting the triumph of Resurrection Sunday into the agony of Good Friday is jumping the gun. You can’t really be ready for the glory of Easter if you haven’t come to terms with the tragedy of the Cross.
If you’ve never known illness, you can’t really appreciate good health. If you’ve never known loss, you don’t really understand gain. You can’t improve if you don’t admit to weakness. You don’t really know joy if you’ve never known sadness. You can’t be forgiven if you deny your debt. You can’t truly embrace fellowship if you’ve never been alone. You breathe deeply a satisfying sigh of relief in the calm after the storm. You drink with heartfelt thanksgiving only if you’ve known real thirst.
The empty tomb only has power if it once contained a corpse.
So tambourines and merriment don’t really belong in a Good Friday remembrance.
Gerry understood this when he created a Good Friday experience for our community. Good Friday is dark. It is sober. There is pain there. The world rejected the message on that day. Love got put on the shelf. Loyalty forgotten. Jesus, the one who embraced the world as his own, the one who taught us to pray and to give and to share and to be a people of the heart, to connect with the creation and the Creator, to view God as our Father, to forgive and to grow, and to believe - he was rejected on that awful day. And as the prophets predicted: he was despised and abandoned and forsaken.
So the room would be dark. Windows covered in black fabric to block out the sun outside. Candles flickering here and there, the only light. Graphics on the video screen outline images of three crosses on a hill against a dark and foreboding sky, shaded in red. The music, a heavy tone. Haunting melodies. The whine of a synthesizer. Big kettle drums, shaking the room like thunder. And the characters dressed in black, no costumes, no robes, no phony beards or turbans, props, only words to tell the story. Emotion, lots of emotion. Pathos. The order of the day.
I would be Malchus, Gerry said – the temple guard who lost his ear to Peter’s sword.
* * * * *
There were three others. A woman whose young daughter had taken a liking to Jesus and called him “The Storyteller.” A carpenter who recognized Jesus’ carpenter hands, and ultimately secured a government contract for building execution beams and would become the man who drive the nails through Jesus’ flesh. A Roman Soldier who, at the foot of the cross, won the toss of the dice and took home Jesus’ robe as a prize. Me, I was a Temple Guard who in the mayhem of the arrest in the Garden, thanks to Judas’ betrayal kiss and Peter’s eager defense of Jesus with the razor sharp blade of a sword, got my ear cut off.
My narrative focused on the macho aspects of first century militarism. I was a guard, according to the script. I didn’t have a name. But I was caught up in the drama. My captain had sent me with a few others to follow Jesus around. I witnessed his preaching to the masses, and I was detached, cynical, observing from a distance. I concluded that the official concern over this teacher was overblown. I did my job. I made my reports. And when time came to act on the intelligence provided by an insider (Judas), I was there at the ready to assist in the arrest late one Thursday night in a garden in Jerusalem.
After the performance I did a little more homework on the actual New Testament references to my character. He is indeed mentioned in all four Gospels. Each adds a little more to the story. In every case, at least in the English version I used to check out the text, the character is called a “servant of the High Priest.” John even provides his name: Malchus. Only Dr. Luke mentions the healing. John also is the one who informs us that the “follower of Jesus” with the sword was Peter.
In fairness to the writer of my narrative, Malchus could well have been a Temple Guard. But it is also possible he may have been a wannabe priest, an apprentice or assistant to the great high priest, also named in the New Testament: Caiaphas. Caiaphas was the first to suggest that this Jesus ought to be eliminated, and later participated in his “trial.” The Romans who occupied Jerusalem cared about little more than keeping the peace, and the religious establishment determined to keep things under control. Jesus was viewed by Caiaphas (the top religious leader of the Jews) as an agitator, tapping into the frustrations of the radical fringe who wanted to oust the Romans from the city. Established religious leaders like the Pharisees and the Sadducees understood that there was no fighting the Romans. They were too powerful, and too brutal. Malchus could have been a student of theology with an eye toward the priesthood. He may well have had questions about the theology of Jesus – curious about the speeches of a teacher with no formal education.
Either way, Malchus was part of a troop of about thirty acting on a tip from Judas, who was paid for his information, and willing to lead the party to Jesus’ exact location and identify him with what has become a legendary kiss.
My script was about a page and a half long. I wanted to deliver the lines with a degree of credibility and sincerity, so I committed them to memory. I practiced them over and over, and as I did, the words became internalized. I said over and again, that if I was to become convincing during the performance on Friday night, that I had to become the temple guard. That night, I would no longer be me – I would be him; it would be my own ear that would be cut off.
I dressed in black. And the time came, my turn to approach the microphone. The room was filled with worshippers. The music haunting and loud. Candles flickering. Incense burning. The readings pointed people to a moment in history memorialized all over the world to this day some two thousand years later. I stood in a dim spotlight from the stage floor, took a deep breath, and began my story.
I forgot myself. I talked about my view of this mysterious man as a detached observer. I watched Judas do his dirty work. And in an attempt to prove my professionalism, I raced into the garden on cue, leading the charge of this band of Roman and military and religious leaders, all bent on eliminating this Jesus from the public scene. In a moment’s terror, I saw the flash of an angry sword coming my direction, and as it collided with my own head, the sharp blade caught my right ear, and sliced it cleanly away from my skull.
In the horrible moment, something amazing followed. I experienced the gentle love and penetrating look of Jesus that burned into my memory for the remainder of my life. That moment in the garden changed everything. I was made whole. My life and loyalties took on entirely new dimensions, and I was left like so many others, to figure out how I could have been so radically changed by just one encounter with this solitary man.
Afterwards, people told me how convincing I had been up there on the stage.
It took me by surprise, really, because I have never in my life participated in this sort of role play; and never really imagined myself as an actor. But upon reflection, the answer just may be that I am much more like this Malchus than I ever knew, and while I’ve never lost an ear, this same Jesus has touched and healed me, like he did the Temple Guard that fateful night in the garden on the eve of Good Friday.
And like him, my life was forever changed.
* * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
The story of resurrection never grows old. Every year it is as fresh as a spring rain, and as alive as the burst of color on the hillside. We never grow past our need to be renewed by the powerful juxtaposition of Good Friday and Easter Sunday morning. The agony and the ecstasy, when the darkness gives way to spectacular light.
I trust that somewhere in your weekend you connected. There are consequences to our failures. We live with the burden of our inadequacies. Our disappointments distract us. Sometimes the isolation becomes unbearable.
We lose our capacity to hear.
There is One who can pick up a dirty sliced off ear and replace it whole. Without a trace of a scratch.
And make us hear again.
Check with Malchus.
He’ll tell you all about it.
Posted in Valley Center, California
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2003
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
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