Rethinking "Jesus Christ Superstar"

After a full morning of celebrative worship on Easter Sunday, I was glad to rest for the remainder of the day. In the evening, I watched NBC’s live production of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” featuring John Legend in the role of Jesus, Sarah Bareilles as Mary Magdalene, Brandon Victor Dixon as Judas, and Alice Cooper as Herod Antipas.

My recording of the original “Superstar” soundtrack was pretty well worn out before I graduated from college. I knew every word of every song in this captivating rock opera that retold the story of Jesus’ passion through the lens of the cultural upheaval of the 1960s and early 70s. (Here is an analysis I wrote six years ago of how “Superstar” reflected the culture of the time it was written.) It’s amazing how well the music and lyrics still hold up. They don’t seem at all dated. And the live audience gathered for this performance was made up of young people who cheered with all the fervor they would have given their favorite contemporary artists.

It was fun to watch it, sing along with it, and see how a new cast would interpret it. But it’s been a while since I listened to “Superstar.” And although the Broadway hit is both celebrated and reviled as a non-traditional portrayal of the days leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion, I was struck this time by how much Tim Rice’s lyrics are based on tradition and legend rather than the gospel narratives themselves. In some ways, this is just imaginative storytelling. In other ways, however, “Superstar” perpetuates unhelpful myths that need to be deconstructed.

For instance, it lumps all the leaders of ancient Judea together. Pharisees and Sadducees are in collusion and of one mind regarding Jesus – he is “dangerous.” Uniformly dressed in black costumes connoting evil, they all follow the lead of the High Priest Caiaphas in plotting to have him killed. But we know that the Pharisees and Sadducees were actually enemies of each other, and that Jesus’ own teachings largely reflected those of leading Pharisaic rabbis of that time. Jesus had sometimes heated disagreements with Pharisees (probably reflecting the arguments between different Pharisaic traditions), but the Pharisees were not Jesus’ mortal enemies. It was the Sadducees – the priests in the temple and collaborators with Roman occupation – who plotted against him. Why is that important to understand? Because all subsequent Judaism is based on the Pharisaic movement. The rabbinic tradition developed as a reaction against the corrupt Temple priesthood. After the Temple was destroyed, Pharisees became the leaders of Judaism by default. So the conflation of Pharisees and Sadducees in the Christian imagination has fed the erroneous narrative that “the Jews killed Jesus.” That assumption is not only wrong (all Jesus’ original followers were Jewish and the early church regarded itself as part of Judaism for 300 years). It has gotten us nowhere good in European history. Eighteen centuries of anti-Semitic laws eventually led to the Holocaust.

Another unhelpful storyline that is played up dramatically in Superstar is that both Jesus and Judas (who are really the co-stars of this show) are helpless tools of a God who forced them to follow a divine script that ended with one “damned for all time” and other forced into a cruel death by crucifixion. This harsh predestinationist view of the gospel conveys a theology of God so overpowering in human affairs that “free will” is meaningless. Jesus’ statement in Mark 8:31 that “the Son of man must suffer many things” is taken to mean that Jesus had no choice but to die on a cross – that every detail, including Judas’ betrayal of him – was already foreordained. That reading of the gospels reflects more tradition and later theology than it does a close reading of the text. Jesus absolutely had a choice. He faced choices at every moment in his life. His statement of the necessity of his suffering was an acknowledgement that, in order to be faithful to God’s call, he would have to pay a high price. He was confronting the structures of this world that were tools of the power of evil. He knew he could not possibly confront the problem of evil without subjecting himself to the rejection and torture of those in positions of earthly power. When we reduce the story of Jesus’ death to a substitutionary sacrifice that saves us from eternal damnation, we miss the whole point of the biblical narrative. We fail to recognize how evil continues to operate in the world, and how to defeat it. We reduce the gospel to a message of only personal salvation that does not take seriously our call to transform the world.

A less problematic, but still unhelpful, portrayal in Superstar is of Mary Magdalene as a former prostitute (“I’ve had so many men before in very many ways”) who is now Jesus’ personal love interest. Popular imagination has added so many layers of legend to the story of Mary Magdalene that it is nearly impossible to separate reality from fiction. But the spare details about her in the gospels are probably enough to tell us all we need to know. All four gospels report that she was at the empty tomb on the Sunday of Jesus’ resurrection. Two gospels report that she was the first to bear witness to the resurrection and was not taken seriously by the male disciples. The gospel of Luke counts her among the women disciples “who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities,” and who provided for Jesus “out of their means.” The notion that she was a prostitute is based on the completely unwarranted identification of Mary with the anonymous woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with ointment from an “alabaster flask” such as prostitutes often carried with them. Nowhere is Mary identified as a former prostitute or as Jesus’ lover.

Far more consequential is that “Superstar,” if performed faithfully, ends with Jesus’ death as an unexplainable and ultimately meaningless tragedy. Any allusion to resurrection has to be supplied by the director of a particular production. Twice, I’ve seen stage productions end with Jesus’ cross ascending out of sight. That’s not really resurrection, but it is a gloss over the edgy ending originally scored. Intentionally nor not, “Superstar” raises serious questions about what kind of cruel God Christians believe in.

But, despite all this, I still enjoy a good production of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” It’s important to remember that it is entertainment. It is in no way a substitute for reading the gospels. It’s a really good show. Unfortunately, I fear, too many people who love this musical have allowed it to inform their entire understanding of the gospel narratives, leaving them both under- and misinformed.

“Superstar” is iconic pop culture. It invites meaningful reflection about how that culture views Jesus. But it is not the gospel. Finally, it is the church’s responsibility to study, wrestle with, tell, and live out the story of Jesus.

©2018 by J. Mark Lawson

Comments

[Michael Salamone]

Good analysis of the production, Mark.. You spelled out so well some of the uneasiness theologically I have whenever I watch this play. It just did not mesh with my knowledge of the Gospels. Thanks.