Jesus... the story
 
FRIENDSHIP
What a difference Jesus made in the lives of people he touched! A tax-collector, a couple of brothers, fishermen – they were just ordinary people who gave up everything to follow him. A woman who had been abused as a child, another woman who had been taken for granted by a sequence of husbands and was now living with someone else – they both found that Jesus touched them at the point at which they were hurting most and gave them a new start.
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He broke down barriers between people of different races, between men and women: it was as if he had come to make people friends. More than that, it was as if he had come to make people friends with God. He had opened up a gateway of opportunity and given people the opportunity to live a better life. In a world of darkness he showed people the light, invited them to believe in the light and challenged them to let the light shine in their lives and become children of light.
 
CONFLICT
It was perhaps inevitable that he should come into conflict with the powers that be. The religious authorities could not cope with a radical Jesus who had a gospel message of good news to take on to the streets. Jesus, in turn could not cope with religious leaders who wanted to contain God in their buildings and religious institutions.
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It angered him. God’s house was designated a house of prayer for all the nations. Yet religious people had turned it into a den of thieves. “Get out!” was what he shouted as he turned the moneychangers’ tables over. “Stop turning my Father’s house into a supermarket!”
 
BETRAYAL
Betrayed by one of his close friends, Jesus was arrested. It came as no surprise to find that the religious leaders put him on trial. A URC Minister playing the part of Caiaphas? A Canon of Gloucester Cathedral playing the part of Annas? It was not a little un-nerving to find our religious leaders levelling a charge of blasphemy against him. They had him whipped and escorted to the civic authorities.
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Was that the Mayor of Cheltenham playing the part of Pilate on the steps of the Municipal Offices? Was that the Town Crier playing the part of Herod? For a moment it seemed that Pilate would release him. But they whipped up the crowd. It wasn’t long before the crowed started shouting for his blood. “Nail him to a cross!” “Crucify him!”. Betrayed by a friend, accused by the religious leaders, put on a trial by the civic authorities it was the crowd … it was all of us … who condemned him to death!
 
DEATH
It was a hard road. A painful journey. The way of the cross. They stripped him of his cloak. They nailed him to a cross. And he felt the torment of it all. “My God, why have you abandoned me.” His mother stood at the foot of the cross and watched. Many others did too. They looked on in stunned silence.
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And then came those most wonderful of words. The soldiers who had nailed him to the cross heard them. The religious leaders who had accused him of blasphemy heard them. The civic authorities who had put him on trial heard them. Those friends who had let him down heard them. All of us in the crowd heard them. “Father, forgive them: they don’t know what they are doing.” In silence …

he died … for us.
 
RESURRECTION
But death was not the end. It was the beginning of something new. Early Sunday morning we returned to the place where they had buried him. A beautiful walled garden just behind the Town Hall. The gate was open. The tomb was empty. And the first to see him was that woman who had been abused, the victim of such violence. Jesus spoke one word to her. It was all that she needed to hear. With that look of love that makes such a difference he spoke her name. “Mary!”
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Again he appeared to the disiciples, to the other women too, even to doubting Thomas. “My Lord and my God,” was the response we all wanted to make. How moving his words were. “You believe with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing.

Jesus provided many more God-revealing signs than we have told in our play. We’ve told our story so you will believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and in the act of believing, have real and eternal life.
 
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