A Retelling of the Story

Excerpt from Strange and Plain Things Christmas post on Dan Kimball's blog:

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Today as part of the season, we had three gatherings where we put on a play called "Strange and Plain Things". The title was taken from a line in a G.K. Chesterson poem about the birth of Jesus. But a team here wrote a play which was a retelling of the biblical narrative of the birth of Jesus putting the story in a contemporary context. It was a mix of acting, beat poetry, singing worship songs, and going through a prayer stations. They had all the Scriptures written for each Act in the play bulletin that was handed out - but they had Mary being a young woman (Mary) who worked in a diner. She even had her pregnant cousin Elizabeth visit her while working. Her fiance, a modern day Joseph struggled with hearing the news of her pregnancy but then had an angel tell him it was truth. They traveled for the census but there were no hotels available and a tavern owner opened his garage for them and put on a space heater so they can have some heat. There was a time in the play where everyone actually walked through a prayer walk and went into the garage and there was set up a mattress on the ground, laying next to some tires and a fender - where the baby was born symbolizing the manger.

It was really a gripping retelling of the story as often we can't really picture what a manger would be or what it would have been like having to have a baby in an unpleasant place (a garage instead of a manger). Or instead of shepherds (who at the time of Jesus, shepherds were not known as honorable people and I read how shepherds at the time of Jesus weren't allowed to testify in court as they weren't seen as trustworthy). So the shepherds recreated in this story were biker types who were entrusted with the news about the baby being born. It really was fascinating thinking about it - and the team stuck to the biblical story but tried to tell the story as though it was happening today.

We then wrapped it up with 26 year old Sarah, who was one of the main writers of the play, explain how when she was in high school she became a Christian and how she wanted people today to understand the story of the birth is not just a nice fable from 2,000 years ago, but a truth and reality in our lives today.

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