Being
Displays
Itself

By: Maria Fee

We are people of the Word but our beloved text points to gathered sounds that ultimately utter God’s actions. From burning bush to a son nailed onto a tree—we hear activity. The whole biblical narrative from creation, fall, alienation to reconciliation exhibits, as von Balthasar relates, God’s “genuine unfolding of himself in the worldly stuff of nature, man and history.” (von Balthasar, Glory of the Lord). The bible is a divine-human drama that begs for a theology that is just as robust and dynamic.

Following God-patterns employs imagination and theologian von Balthasar explores the Christian drama like a theatre critic trying to make meaning of a play. For Christ has radically changed the stage of history. The pagan dramas between human and divine entities so central to the ancient world has shifted. Through Christ “the dialectic of immanence and transcendence, nature and super-nature” can now find hope for reconciliation. (Von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, p. 129) Christ has invited all actors to take the stage and enflesh the Word through their lives.

Just as the torn temple curtain reconciles us to the Holy, the incarnated Jesus also removed the actor’s mask for God to draw near. This also means the Christian actor has the choice to follow Jesus into the tragedies of life. The passage into the dark abyss of the human psyche can only happen because of Christ’s own journey in and out of hell. As von Balthasar relates, “Christianity, with its inner dramatic tension… can take all theatrical aspects into itself in even the darkest moments” only because Jesus travailed through death. (Von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, p. 82)

Observable transformation and authentic hope erodes the meaninglessness we find in much contemporary drama. With Jesus our stories become interwoven with the Christian story and some of these narratives need the stage to fully express its theological import. Theater allows us to publically incarnate these stories with the potential of ushering in his presence.

Imagine a God who would write us into his drama. Be an actor on his stage.