PLAYING JESUS

Nathan Attwood

Pastor, Marianna First United Methodist Church

"The word became flesh and lived among us." John 1:14.

Have you ever seen Jesus? I mean, in the flesh, in person? I did. Well, sort of. Here's what happened.

If you were an evangelical kid involved in all the Jesus-culture of the 1980s and 1990s, you probably are familiar with an actor named Tom Newman, even though you very likely don't know him by name. Tom Newman played Jesus in many, many productions during that time. 

I first saw Tom Newman play Jesus in a large church in Kansas City when I was just a little boy. He was a primary actor, producer, and director for a Christian media group called Impact Productions. Impact Productions toured the country for years with a play called "The Toymaker's Dream." Of course, I had no idea who Tom Newman was but it was a huge deal to see the Toymaker's Dream in a big venue in those days. 

He also played Jesus in several Christian movies with limited production. But, if you grew up in the church-world in that period, undoubtedly you saw Tom Newman play Jesus in Michael W. Smith's "Secret Ambition" video. It was a major production and a smash hit. It was played in youth groups, Christian TV, and all over Christian media. For many church kids, our picture of Jesus was as much shaped by that video as the picture of Jesus for our grandparents was shaped by the portrait of Jesus with the blond hair staring into the sky that hung on every church's Sunday school wall.

Impact Productions was based in Tulsa, OK, a center of evangelical culture then and now. I lived in Tulsa while I went to school at Oral Roberts University in the 1990s at the height of Impact Production's success. 

During that time, I had an old Buick Skylark that broke down all the time. It would often stall and I would have to push it to pop the clutch to restart it. Occasionally it just died out in the street and I couldn't start it at all.  Once, when my car died on the road between South Tulsa and the small town of Jenks, OK, I was having to push my car towards a gas station in order to make a call and try to get help. This was before cell phones. When you broke down back then, you had to walk to a phone. 

As I pushed, I also prayed. My prayers were pretty direct that night. I was aggravated at God for letting this happen to me. After all, I was in Tulsa to prepare to serve in ministry. I was doing all I could to share the Gospel and do God's work. Why wouldn't Jesus help me? My lament was intermixed with my cries for Jesus to help me.

And then, all of the sudden, I noticed that Jesus was, indeed, helping me. The car was moving along much easier as I pushed it. I looked back, and lo-and-behold, there was Jesus helping me push my car. Not the actual Jesus, mind you, but Tom Newman, the actor who played Jesus wherever Jesus was played during that era. After we got my car to the gas station, I thanked him profusely and also let him know I was a big fan.  

I was so struck by that encounter. It still seems surreal more than 30 years later. I was so blessed to know that the man who played Jesus in all those plays, music videos, and movies also played the part of a Jesus-person in real life. Tom Newman was an actor who portrayed Jesus. He was also a disciple who acted like Jesus. That night, he was the hand of God to me and the very literal answer to my prayer.

When John's Gospel opens by telling us the meaning of Jesus coming, he says that Jesus's purpose was to make God manifest, to make the unseen God seen. He says that the eternal Word of the eternal God "became flesh and lived among us."

What does that mean in practical terms? It means many things, but one of the things it means is that when we pray and ask for God to visit us, we seldom think that the visitation will be tangible, but he does. I certainly didn't think God would visit me in a direct way the night my car broke down. But God does, indeed, interact with us in the real world. He truly intervenes in a physical, practical way, not merely in a disembodied, spiritual sense.

Maybe the main way God shows us his face is through the people who do God's work and follow Christ's teaching in the way they live and interact with others. Only once have I been in a pinch and had my prayer for deliverance answered by a famous actor who famously portrays Jesus. But many, many times God has answered my prayer for help through a disciple who was Jesus to me just as much as Tom Newman was to me that night.

Perhaps God might use you to be the answer to someone's prayer for Jesus to be real to them today. Will you merely act like an actor of a Jesus-follower, or will you act like Jesus?