Holy Week

If there is one thing that Graduate School has taught me, it’s doing double duty. How can I cleverly choose research topics across different courses to maximize my workload? For example, if one of my classes demands I do an in depth analysis of a play of my choosing, and another needs me to perform a scene written before the 1800s . . . you better believe the two are going to be connected. 

It’s called survival, people. We are trained for a nine to five work schedule, not the 60+ hour work week of college life. Even now, I sit here and acknowledge that getting to slow down and fully live in the world of Holy Week is starting to feel like a pipedream. It’s a fanciful hope that I won’t get to see unless I sacrifice something else on my plate, which I most definitely cannot do. 

So instead, I will walk you through my process of creating a lesson plan for my Introduction to Acting students. This week, they are learning how to analyze a story through the lens of an actor. 

Step one: Read the Story (and boy, is it a doozy). We’ve got a homecoming, we’ve got betrayal, we’ve got table-turning, resurrecting, false convicting, miracle making, all topped with the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. A breadth of analysis, just waiting to happen. 

Step two: The Overall Objective. What is it our character wants? What is the need that motivates every interaction we see with this person—in this case, the literal son of God? It seems like “to save the world” is a good place to start. He wants to rid us of our sin. 

Step three: The Obstacle. What is standing in the way of the objective? Ok, so TECHNICALLY we could get into an argument about “God can overcome all, so any obstacle isn’t an obstacle,” and I hear you, but this is also our chance to highlight the strength of God through every single trial that was thrown at Him. I acknowledge how easy it is for myself to buckle under the weight of societal pressure or how frustrated I get in time of conflict. Heck, if I had to create a list of my biggest fears, “betrayal of a loved one” is at the top of it. A friend of mine even used to say that the worst feeling in the world is doing something you think is good and getting chastised for it. Jesus went through it all and just kept trucking because that objective was worth everything. 

Step four: Stakes. What happens if I don’t get my objective? What are we fighting for? This is the one that directors always have to push actors in. “Raise the Stakes!” I hear them cry! But not here . . . for Jesus, the stakes could not be any higher. He had the literal weight of the world on his shoulders, and he had no intention of dropping us. What was at stake were the lives of everyone he loved, us included. 

Step five: Actions drive Emotion. For my acting students, I want them to learn that actors don’t just play emotion. They perform actions that launch them into a feeling. For purposes of this bizarre Holy Week conversation that I’m trying to have, I think it gives me permission to let

Jesus’s actions drive my emotions. The story of a man, whose love for everyone was so great that He would die for us. Because at the end of the day, I want to be a supporting character in this story so bad. I want to be the one who retrieves the donkey, who cuts the palm branches, who turns over a new leaf as I turn over my flipped table. And as someone who sometimes struggles with the obstacle of feeling unloved, the more I read about Holy Week, the more I feel confronted by the actions of Jesus that so desperately tell me that I'm wrong. 

I am seen, I am heard, and I am the ultimate objective to a loving father. 

So if you find yourself in my boat, overwhelmed by absolutely all the things. Perhaps, we can all look for ways in which this holistic story of grace can meld with the other areas of our lives and offer us that same dual purpose college has forced us to live in.