View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

The tale of Jesus and His disciples is really the greatest love story ever told. Jesus would lay down His life for His believers and His disciples would help found the Christian church with a lot of sacrifice and suffering. And they were just ordinary men. But they would do extraordinarily things that ordinary men in those days just did not do. They would tell about their teacher. The Messiah. The Savior. The One who had come and lived with them for maybe just three years. The one who had been crucified just like a common criminal at the time. The one who had been buried. But the one who had risen from the dead. They were ordinary men. Uneducated. Poor. But they would travel and they would preach and they would be bullied. But their faith would be so strong, they would endure it all. Because they had seen and heard. And they believed and they had been sent around so that others too would believe. It was not easy. Most of them were killed for their work. But they died with peace. Because they believed and they loved. Just like their master, Jesus.

But before all this could happen. Before He were to die. Jesus would be betrayed. He knew this. He was human and divine and knew events before they occurred. He had to be betrayed. It was God’s plan. It was part of Him being human that He should endure all we humans endure. We love and we are hurt. People who hurt us the most are the people we love. Our friends. So just before His death, Jesus also had to endure the fact that He would be betrayed. By one of the twelve. One of his very best friends and followers. Judas. Judas would betray him for money. Was it jealousy or greed? Judas had followed Him with the twelve for three years. He had heard him preach. Seen Him perform miracles. Calm the sea, walk on water, and raise people from the dead, cure leprosy. Yet, he sold him so to speak to be crucified. A slow painful death.

It is an old and well-known story. The betrayal. The crucifixion. How can it be told in a new, fresh way? How can it be made meaningful again, so that people see it for what it really is: a tragic story of love betrayed and death, made joyful on Easter morning?

Ruth Elaine Schram has done just that. She wrote a musical drama entitled “The Living Last Supper.” Ordinary men, although dressed to look like they lived in Jesus’ time, are really men living in our time. Ordinary men, not actors, not prophets, not biblical scholars. But teachers and bus drivers, farmers and retired bankers. They are taking on the roles of portraying the twelve disciples, who also were ordinary men, fisher men, tax collectors and carpenters. They emphasize that Christ came to us ordinary folks, us humble people, us sinners. The love that we were given through the sacrifice of our Savior is poetically and beautifully interpreted through the voices of the actors and the singing of a choir made up by people, young and old from our community“The Living Last Supper” will have only one performance. On April 2 at 7 p.m. at Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Church in Benson. Instead of tickets, a free will offering will be taken.

Come and experience for yourself the greatest love story of all times!