My sister Maureen and I last night had our annual viewing of 1973’s Jesus Christ Superstar. We’ve been doing this for decades now on Holy Saturday or Easter Sunday (of course, it’s even more fun when we watch it with our other sister, Kathy, as we did in 2009). Maureen and I got to see Ted Neeley in the title role at Wolftrap a couple years ago, and it’s pretty crazy, how good he still is nearly 40 years later. We also were among the screeners (and, unfortunately, on the losing side) a few years back when the Library of Congress considered adding JCSS to the National Film Registry. I guess you could say we’re JCSS junkies.
Strange as it sounds, after more than 100 viewings, I always find something new in the film. Last night, it was the bookending of the songs, both sung by Judas Iscariot (Carl Anderson): “Heaven on Their Minds” and the song that was released even before there was a play or movie, “Jesus Christ Superstar.”
In the opening number, Judas sings angrily about Jesus the man getting bigger than his actions and calls on him to ratchet it all down because people think Jesus is the Messiah “and they’ll hurt you when they find they’re wrong.” “Please remember that I want us to live,” he pleads as the song closes.
“JCSS” shows a far different Judas–decked out in a fringey white suit, surrounded by beautiful babe dancers, swinging onto the stage and looking on Jesus below. This Judas, of course, knows how the story ends–Jesus has died and risen. But he still has questions: “Why’d you let the things you did get so out of hand? Why’d you choose such a backward time in such a strange land? Did you mean to die like that?” He wonders how Jesus rates himself against Buddha and Mohammed. “Don’t you get me wrong,” Judas sings. “I only want to know.”
So there he was, for most of it, and, in JCSS, received redemption and saw Jesus again in the afterlife. But Judas still can’t simply accept what’s happened. Instead of being full of gratitude and joy, he has more questions.
It’s that way for us too. God graces us, and we want to know why. We run into tragedy, and we want to know why. Acceptance and confidence and faith can be hard to come by. We only want to know. As for me, I’m working on stopping the questions, at least for a while.
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