When I was 11 years old, I decided that I would play hooky from church.  I pretended that I was sick.  Mom and Dad were buying it I think.  They let me stay home, all by myself.  As my mom, dad, and two sisters piled into the station wagon and drove away, the first pangs of guilt began to fire.  They would be gone for at least two hours, and they mentioned on their way out that they would be going out for lunch after church.  Maybe, they didn’t buy my feigned sickness after all.  It could be four hours—they were heading off for the most exciting day of their lives, and I was bunking, pretending to be sick so I wouldn’t have to go to church and listen to a bunch of boring Bible stories.

I rambled into the living room and dragged my feet on the shag carpet.  Along one wall was giant console stereo unit.  You remember the kind that had the built in record player, speakers and enough storage for 800 record albums.  It was back the days when your stereo was a piece of furniture.  You turned the dial, heard a popping noise and then you had to wait for the tubes to warm up.

I opened the doors of the cabinet, exploring forbidden fruit with no fear of being caught.   All that was in there was my parent’s lame LP collection; Helen Reddy, the Carpenters, the Beatles.  The Beatles album, well, there’s a lot going on there, I’ll put that one aside.  There was a Ventures album, although I think my dad bought that one not for the music but because there were women with bikinis on the cover.  Then there was some Reader’s Digest classical music nonsense.  Then I discovered it!  Hidden between the John Denver and the Engelbert Humperdinck albums was a brown box.  The box had gold angels on it.  It had the bold words, in white letters, JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR.

I knew that one.  I thought I did.  I remembered sitting on a school bus going to scout camp singing it.

“Jesus Christ Superstar, riding down the street on a Yamaha.

Cops are chasing.  He don’t care.  He’s wearing bulletproof underwear.”

We sang it so much on that bus ride that I was able to write those words 40 years later, without having thought about it once in that whole time!  So, yeah…I knew Jesus Christ Superstar.

And there it was, church.  It was a sign from God. It was meant to be.  God wanted me to stay home from church, feel guilty, get immediately bored in an empty house and start prying through my parents things.  I figured if I wasn’t going to church, then church was coming to me.  I wasn’t going to God’s house.  God was coming to my house.

I took out the first vinyl album, dusted it off, and placed it on the turntable.  Side 1.  The music was creepy.  It was eerie, but it matched the drawings on the booklet, that was contained in the box.  The people were in bands with weird names like Deep Purple.

Then the singing began and I followed along with the words in the book.  I have to say, I was hooked.  I knew enough about Jesus, and the disciples, thanks to Pearl Patrick my awesome Sunday school teacher.  Maybe all those boring stories were sticking after all.  I listened to Judas sing his song, and looked forward to hearing what Jesus was going to sound like.  After all Jesus loved me, this I know.  Jesus loved the little children.  Jesus was an incredibly loving individual who took pity on everyone and smiled, laughed and healed.

But then Jesus started singing!  Wait?  What?  Jesus Christ Superstar was not the Jesus I learned about in Sunday school.   This Jesus sounded sarcastic and angry.  The Apostles wanted answers but Jesus was having none of that.  The Messiah was kind of a mess.  That went against everything I had ever been taught or knew.  My pre-pubescent mind was blown.

Then Jesus and Judas have this incredible interaction.  Judas is calling out Jesus.  Judas is upset that Mary is showering attention on Jesus, and lets him know in no uncertain terms that this is not acceptable behavior for a Lord and Savior.

But then Jesus yells at Judas!  Mind blown!  I was never the same.  My Jesus yells.  The lamb of God, the cute cuddly Lamb of God.  The Good Shepherd who loves all his sheep raises his voice in anger and indignation.  This was not the Jesus they were telling me about in church.  Where has this Jesus been my whole life?

I was getting the watered down version of the Messiah.

My mom yelled.  My dad yelled.  My sisters yelled.  Sometimes, even I yelled.  My teachers raised their voices. The kids on the bus yelled.  Jesus yelled!  Jesus suddenly became very real.  This was a Jesus I could follow.  This was a Jesus I could believe in. This Jesus could save the world and carry a tune while screaming at the Apostles.

I listened to all 4 sides of that rock opera.  It became an obsession.  It became a church.  It was THE gospel.  I brought the album back into my room, and memorized every line.  The next time that album left my room, was when I was a teenager.  I led the Senior High Youth Group on a Bible Study based on the album.  I was a Jesus freak.  That was my big secret.  With my friends I was listening to the Who, the Beatles and classic rock, but I had a secret shame—I was a closeted Jesus Christ Superstar nerd.

What I didn’t know that day was the controversy surrounding Jesus Christ Superstar.  Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice had been commissioned to write a cantata which was only 15 minutes long.  Lloyd Webber was only 20 years old at the time.  The cantata would evolve and grow into Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, based on the story of Joseph from the Hebrew scriptures ( the Old Testament).  That gave them the cache to begin working on a new project.  This time, they tackled the gospels, more specifically, the Passion, or the last week of Christ.

They wrote the music and words for what would be a double album.  It was billed as an “original concept album.”  With the success of the album, it was brought to the stage, and later, the big screen.  It created a couple best selling singles and undoubtedly gave voice to a more liberal, progressive Christianity.

How dare the 21 year old Lloyd Webber and 25 year old Tim Rice write such sacrilege.  After all, they never mentioned the Resurrection.  The story was about the relationships between Jesus, Judas, and Mary.  It gave Jesus a more human quality, a personality.  It read a little too deeply beyond the written story of the gospel writers.  It was both condemning and sympathetic to Judas Iscariot.  It put the gospels and its characters into an almost contemporary context.

When it came out, some of the Jewish community claimed that it was anti-Semitic because it presented Jewish people as villains and played a part in the death of Jesus.  There was the crowd of Jews, a mob, in Jerusalem calling for the crucifixion of Jesus.

So, here’s the thing…Caiaphas, Annas, Herod and the priests were Jewish.   There is no escaping that.  They wanted Jesus dead.  He was a threat to their belief system and hence, their way of life.   They stacked the deck, and worked the crowd to get them on board.  This is not indicative of an entire race or religion.  It is not hard to imagine a few charismatic leaders getting a crowd riled up to chant, shout, believe, or buy into hatred rhetoric.

Throughout each of the gospels there is an undercurrent of two crowds.  There is the pro-Jesus crowd, and there is the anti-Jesus crowd. I listened to Jesus Christ Superstar more than a fair share and to the best of my knowledge did not grow up an anti-Semite.

This is what it did do…Jesus Christ Superstar presented me with a Jesus I could believe in.

I wanted a “real, authentic” Jesus.  One of the great theological arguments in the history of the church is the question of Jesus’ divinity and humanity.  It was determined years ago that Jesus was 100% divine and 100% human.  There were willing to put bad math aside.

Jesus is God incarnate.   That means that Jesus had to be a human.   Superstar presents Jesus as a real, honest to goodness, human being.  They took Jesus off the shelf, dusted the icon off, and made him accessible.

I don’t care about the religion of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, but I care about their words and music. Even from a young age, I could appreciate the lyrical genius of Rice.  He could twist and turn a phrase and make the gospel writers proud.  It is no easy task to sum up the works of four writers, and synthesize and synchronize them.

I have always preached that the people in the Bible were real people.  They may be historical, they may not—but I believe that they are real.  I know this because they act the same way that you or I might act.  Caiaphas and Herod acted the way we might act.  Judas and Peter acted the way that we might act.  At times in my life I have identified with everyone in that story.

That makes a good story.  And that is the good news, the Gospel.  Jesus Christ Superstar made religion accessible, and for many the crackle and pops of the old phonograph machine was as meaningful as any church organ.

Finally, Jesus Christ Superstar is why I am here today.  It changed the direction of my religious study.  I was on the typical back in the day Faith Formation route.   I went to Sunday school, sang in the youth choir, aged into Junior High Youth Group, Confirmation, Senior High Youth Group.  Of the 16 kids confirmed in my class, I was the only one left in the group my senior year of high school.  That was the year I presented on Jesus Christ Superstar.

I had entertained the idea of being a pastor.  If I did ever become a pastor—I needed to tell people about the Superstar Jesus, because that was the Jesus this kid connected with.  And there had to be more kids out there like me.  Kids who loved the story:  the man, the Messiah, the music!

I’m a pastor today because I played hooky from church.  I’m preaching today because two young men took a chance and gave new life to the old, old story.  I’m a Reverend Doctor today, because I believe that Jesus Christ Superstar is an irreverent, unorthodox, heretical way the church could reach across generations.

Jesus Christ Superstar that sacrilegious and blasphemous rock opera, is the cornerstone of my faith formation.  And its okay, if its yours too.