[Article by Conejo member, Christopher Jerabek.]
I wrote my first stage script when I was a sophomore at Pepperdine. Dr. Cari Myers gave me permission to write a script for my REL102 final project, so I told a story about Elvis and the secular entertainment industry. Last year, Christina Littlefield gave me permission to do the same for her class, and I wrote a show about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Vaclav Havel. I like to think that I’ve grown in those eight years—as a writer, as a person, and as a vehicle for Christ in the world.
To this day, however, neither script has been fully staged in an official production. As such, it doesn’t feel quite right to call these “plays” yet. A script is not yet a play. It requires embodiment. A script can sit on a shelf and be just fine, but a play demands to be performed. Without actors to bring a script to life before an audience, it is just words on a page. Likewise, I find myself deeply inspired when I consider the fact that an isolated God was not God in His entirety. God, like drama, found incarnation necessary.
When God became flesh, He radically changed His relationship with the world. He was no longer separated from humanity. The veil was torn, and He became intimately connected to our world through Christ—through flesh and blood. The incarnation is divine drama in every sense of the word. In order for God to offer salvation to the world that He loved, He stepped into it.
Hebrews 1:1-3: “In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.”
The Gospel of John tells us that the Word became flesh, and the same can be said for a script that comes to life through actors on a stage. Now, through the Holy Spirit, we are the storytellers who continue to bring the Word to life. Just as a play demands to be performed, a Christ-like life demands to be lived. I pray that we are able to play a part in the divine incarnation through our words and our actions as we work to bring the Kingdom of God to fruition.
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