Christ in Black Light

Recently I noticed a "Jesus Christ Superstar" poster up for auction on eBay. I borrowed the picture of the poster for this post but didn't bid on it. I couldn't justify the significant expense for something I knew would just be kept in storage as a nostalgic keepsake. Someone did purchase it.  But I displayed a different copy of the poster forty years ago in my bedroom, along with other black-light posters discarded long ago. I forget which posters I had but several covered the walls of my room, along with non-florescent posters of Santana and Black Sabbath. I had a black light bulb that darkened my room but filled the night with amazing colors from the posters, most of which I purchased at the old Sav-Mart store on Collinsville Road in Collinsville, IL. In this poster, notice how the da Vinci Christ appears as a psychedelic pattern, LOL.

I haven't listen to that music---Jesus Christ Superstar by Lloyd Webber and Rice---for a long time. (Andrew Lloyd Webber turned 65 yesterday!) But I remember thinking about the music during Holy Week at my hometown church, since the album is essentially the story of Christ's passion. Telling Christ's story is always tricky, I think, because if his struggling, uncertain humanness is emphasized (as in this album) his divinity and lordship seem eclipsed, but if his divinity and is emphasized, as in the famous Zeffirelli film where Christ is all wide-eyed and unblinking otherness, he doesn't seem quite one of us.

The approaching Holy Week is a time to think about both: the real and tragic humanness of a young man moving toward abandonment and death, and the divine meaning and presence that connects passion to resurrection and eventually Pentecost.