Passionsspiele 2010

"I think I only have two things on my bucket list," says my mom as we drive north. "Other people may have more, but for me, I just have two. And we're going to do one of them right now!"

My mom isn't the kind of person who disguises her enthusiasm for something, and there's an atmosphere of excitement in the car as we cross the Po and start to spy the foothills of the Alps. Since I was a child I'd heard about a village in Bavaria that put on a play only every ten years, and while these ever-growing mountains may have posed quite a challenge to the likes of Hannibal, we'll cross them in just a few short hours.

The town of Oberammergau, population 5,204, is home to some fantastic artisanal wood carvings, a NATO school, breathtaking flower gardens that hang from typical dark wood Bavarian facades and, every decade, swarms of ancient tourists creaking off tour buses, finally checking the Passionsspiele off their bucket list.

In 1634 the town of Oberammergau was plagued with, well, the plague. The townspeople came together and put on a play about Jesus' death and resurrection, in a desperate attempt to show their devotion to a God who, they thought, had forsaken them. It must have worked, because from the time of that play, no one in Oberammergau has died of plague. They now put the play on every ten years to keep the memory alive and, perhaps, to keep the protection from the plague alive too.

We worry about how they'll change the story, or what they'll do to Christ's divinity. Germany (and indeed, most of Western Europe) is famously skeptical, with abysmal church attendance and a strong influence not only of modern progressive humanism but westernized incarnations of Buddhism or spirituality in the most nebulous, uninvasive forms. It's really only the Catholic PIIGS countries that have any measurable church attendance or active religiosity anymore (ideas, after all, have consequences). Can an ancient story of an outdated religion survive in such a climate?

We sip our radlers--a mix of Sprite and beer that, we hope, will allow us to savor the tastes of Oktoberfest while not knocking us catatonic during the first three hours of the six-hour play--and discuss our concerns. We hope these people can get it at least mostly Right. Sip.

We are about to find out just how preposterously small our minds really are.

"Jesus, the Jew, sought to renew the religion of the fathers, a religion built on the foundation of the law and the prophets, by showing that the personal relationship to the Eternal Father-God represents the core of all religious activity," my Passionsspiele 2010 textbook reads. "Religion is meant not only to give order to human life but a lasting inner connection with the realm of the divine."

They've given us textbooks in English to follow along, because the play is, naturally, in German. Julie and I share a booklet, even though they gave us two, because while it may be a bit inconvenient to have to accommodate another person's reading speed or desires, sharing a booklet allows us to share the experience, to read along together.

But how can I tear my eyes away from the stage? A crowd, all in blue, more people than I've seen attending most other plays, swarms the stage. Sheep, donkey, goats, horses, camels, all leaving their mark behind to be cleaned up during intermission, are led or ridden by actors from age one to ninety. When the crowd roars, my heart stops with the sound. I've seen fewer people on the field for a Super Bowl halftime show than the multitude to whom Jesus preaches. He turns over their money changing tables, their oil jars. He smashes a cage with doves, and they fly out into the open sky to make a home in the Bavarian Alps.

Recent iterations of the play have incorporated more and more of the Jewish traditions from the period, and the fabulous costumes worn by the priests and teachers of the law, the Last Supper based more on an actual Passover meal and less on Da Vinci's fresco, and the constant acknowledgement of a simmering tension between a people both socially and politically oppressed and their Roman occupiers shows the depth of thought the committee put into the show. The miracle unfolds itself on stage as additions to the sparse gospels play out flawlessly and seamlessly. Jesus' words repeated by Nicodemus as he quarrels with his colleagues in the synagogue. The pomposity of those Jesus called "whitewashed tombs," and their elevated intellectual dialogue. Third-Reich Pilate, a no-nonsense military man in complete command of his post, but who also asks, jarringly, "What is truth?"

My favorite is the living images, the live stills of Old Testament episodes that introduce each scene and ground the story in its ancient past. And how apt (and sometimes obscure) the references: the anguish of Cain before the anguish of Judas, the mocking of Job before Jesus' trial in front of the high priest, Joab's betrayal at the rock of Gibeon before Judas' kiss in Gethsemane. The sacrifice of Isaac and the raising of the bronze serpent before the way of the cross and crucifixion.


(from the trial of Jesus before the high priest):

3rd witness: He said: I am going to tear down the temple built by humans and replace it in three days with another that was not built by human hands.
Ezechial: What an impudent boast! It took 46 years to build this temple, and he wants to rebuild it in three days?
Nathaniel: What do you have to say to object to this testimony? Can't you think of a response? Contradict, if you can!
Annas: He neither speaks nor gestures. The defiance he has shown against me has not yet left him.
Nathaniel: I see: you think you can save yourself if you keep silent. He doesn't dare confess in front of the fathers of the people, in front of the judges, what he has boasted before the common people.
Caiaphas: Jesus of Nazareth! Impatiently I have waited for this moment. Whence do you assert this claim? Who has appointed you leader of Israel and judge over us? Speak!
Jesus: (is silent).
Annas: Should reverence not protect us foam being made an object of his derision?
Nicodemus [to Annas, Nathaniel, Caiaphas]: He is a living reproach to your basic convictions.


The scene continues and Jesus does claim to be the Son of God. He does physically rise from the dead. He does preach the Beatitudes (though he might have said "Blessed are the poor" vs. the “poor in spirit”), He is wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. The feared theological "flaws," such as they are, mostly aren't. Jesus has blonde hair, and Judas looks much more Jewish than any of the other disciples. For all the strides forward in German-Jew relations these past six decades, you'd think someone might have noticed. The former charge, about poor vs. poor in spirit, may be the insidious influx of progressive socialist theory into the text, or just a translation slip-up, or whatever. Certainly heaven and the Christian life are dependent on subjecting one's individual will to the Divine Will ("In his will is our peace," as Piccarda Donati says), whereas one's relative economic class may have far less influence on actual salvation, but as the choir sings Hallelujah and the crowd envelops the risen Christ and we weep in the cold night air, not much matters but Christ and Him crucified.