CROSS TALK

... the other answered,

" ...we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds;

but this man has done nothing wrong.

.... Jesus, remember me

when You come in Your kingdom!"

CROSS TALK

(by Craig Tavani, copyright 2007)

[Two players, enter, cross UC, and stand facing cross hanging on back wall of stage. After 5 beats, both cross downstage to their respective places, one on the right of the cross. the other on the left.

(see EPILOGUE below)]

DEXTER: Can you see the Garden from here? [Pause.]
LEFTY: What?
DEXTER: Can you see the Garden
LEFTY: I see nothing.
DEXTER: I thought I would be able to see it from here.
LEFTY: If you saw it, how would you know it was the Garden?
DEXTER: I’m sure I would recognize the Tree in the middle.
LEFTY: Which one? There were two, weren’t there?
DEXTER: I don’t know.
LEFTY: In fact, there were more than two.
DEXTER: How many?
LEFTY: I don’t know – many more!
DEXTER: All I care about is the one in the middle.
LEFTY: All I care about is the one on which I hang.
DEXTER: Right.
LEFTY: What else is left?
DEXTER: What else?
LEFTY: Nothing.
DEXTER: Right.
LEFTY: Damn right. [Pause.]
DEXTER: How long will it be?
LEFTY: Too damn long.
DEXTER: Not long enough. [Pause.]
LEFTY: Is anything else going to happen?
DEXTER: I don’t know. [Pause.]
LEFTY: What do you see?
DEXTER: They’re doing something.
LEFTY: What?
DEXTER: I don’t know. [Pause.]
LEFTY: I hate this.
DEXTER: So do I. [Pause.]
LEFTY: What do you care about the Garden?
DEXTER: What do you mean?
LEFTY: Why is the Garden so important?
DEXTER: I don’t remember.
LEFTY: I never listened.
DEXTER: You should have.
LEFTY: All lies.
DEXTER: How do you know?
LEFTY: You live, then you die.
DEXTER: So?
LEFTY: That’s life. That’s it.
DEXTER: Maybe.
LEFTY: That’s the truth.
DEXTER: What do you know?
LEFTY: I know lies.
DEXTER: No argument there.
LEFTY: No tree growing in any Garden gives life.
DEXTER: How do you know?
LEFTY: I can tell the difference.
DEXTER: What?
LEFTY: Shut up.
DEXTER: You shut up.
LEFTY: Idiot!
DEXTER: Fool! [Pause.]
LEFTY: I hate this cursed tree.
DEXTER: Do you not even fear God?
LEFTY: We are being crucified!
DEXTER: We are being crucified with Christ …
LEFTY: Jesus …
DEXTER: Is that not enough?
LEFTY: I no longer live.
DEXTER: But Christ lives …
LEFTY: You fool! Who bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus is being crucified!
DEXTER: Have we suffered for nothing – if it really was for nothing?
LEFTY: It is written, is it not? Whoever hangs on a tree is cursed! [Pause.]
DEXTER: We might have received what was promised.
LEFTY: What was promised?
DEXTER: I don’t know. [Pause.]
LEFTY: This whole world is in prison.
DEXTER: The Law has us all locked up.
LEFTY: The Law led us straight here.
DEXTER: Yes.
LEFTY: To be crucified with Christ.
DEXTER: Right.
LEFTY: What is left?
DEXTER: We might be justified.
LEFTY: What? [Pause.]
DEXTER: I am still alive.
LEFTY: You are about to die.
DEXTER: We will die.
LEFTY: He will die.
DEXTER: He lives. [Pause.]
LEFTY: You immerse yourself in what you imagine to be true.
DEXTER: You are blind to what is portrayed before you.
LEFTY: You were locked up like the rest of us and then led here to die.
DEXTER: I see that.
LEFTY: You see nothing.
DEXTER: I see you are blind. I see He is still alive. [Pause.]
LEFTY: You hang there suffering.
DEXTER: Right.
LEFTY: All is lost. All you have left is to die.
DEXTER: Right.
LEFTY: What gain is there in sharing in His suffering?
DEXTER: I don’t know. [Pause.]
LEFTY: I consider it all rubbish.
DEXTER: I want to know what is right.
LEFTY: What is wrong with you? Everything is lost!
DEXTER: I want to know …
LEFTY: Rubbish!
DEXTER: Somehow, if I press on …
LEFTY: You have forgotten what is left behind.
DEXTER: I am straining toward what is ahead.
LEFTY: What is ahead? Consider that.
DEXTER: He is here and we are about to die. [Pause.]
LEFTY: He is supposed to be the promised one? HA! It is crazy to think that
this crucified Christ can come down from the cross himself, let alone save us!
DEXTER: If he did, we may see and believe. [Pause.]
LEFTY: Are you not the Christ? [Pause.] Save yourself and us! [Pause.]
DEXTER: We are justly condemned.
LEFTY: We are being punished.
DEXTER: Right. We are just getting what our deeds deserve.
LEFTY: Damn it! Shut up, will you?
DEXTER: But this man …
LEFTY: Shut up!
DEXTER: … this man has done nothing wrong.
LEFTY: I said shut UP!
DEXTER: Jesus …
LEFTY: Shut up!
DEXTER: Jesus …
LEFTY: Do you know what you are doing?
DEXTER: Jesus, when you come into your kingdom …
LEFTY: What kingdom?
DEXTER: Remember me …
LEFTY: Tell the truth – today you will die.
DEXTER: He tells the truth – I believe Him.
LEFTY: I believe you are crazy. [Pause.]
DEXTER: I believe I see the Garden now. [Pause.]
LEFTY: He commits Himself to death.
DEXTER: He gave up His last breath. [Pause.]
LEFTY: I guess this “Son of God” can now find out what His Father’s face looks like!
DEXTER: I see so much more … [Pause.]
LEFTY: I see soldiers standing by to stab us, ready to break our legs …
DEXTER: Right.
LEFTY: What is left is for us to die. [Pause.]
DEXTER: I see the Garden now. [Pause.] I recognize the Tree.

CURTAIN.

READER 1: I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

READER 2: You fools! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.

READER 1: Have you suffered for nothing – if it really was for nothing? Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law
by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”

READER 2: He redeemed us in order that … by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

READER 1: The Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised,
being given by faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.

READER 2: Before this faith came, we were held prisoners of the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. To the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified through faith.

READER 1: You are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ,

READER 2: for all you being baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

PLAYER A: CROSS TALK explores both the explicit narrative descriptions and the implicit assumptive speculations
regarding the Christ’s crucifixion.

PLAYER B: During the course of playing out this living portrait, traditional prejudiced perspectives are overturned

PLAYER A: (dexterity is not a moral virtue, for example, nor is being on the left sinister).

PLAYER B: Imagine the two criminals who were literally “crucified with Christ” meeting in the middle to find true character revealed in relation to the centrality of the Savior, whose presence overwhelms the petty persona each actor put on prior to participating with one another in presenting the singular story of God reconciling Himself to us
in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

READER 1: Folks, join with others in following my example, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. Whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

READER 2: I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings,
becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

READER 1: Folks, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do:
Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

READER 2: All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.

READER 1: And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.

READER 2: Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

EPILOGUE

READER 1: There they crucified Him. And with Him two other men, one on either side, and Jesus in between.

PLAYER A: What new perspective might one have if one looks at the Passion of Jesus through the eyes of those two chance companions of Christ’s crucifixion?

PLAYER B: With Jesus at his crucifixion were two men, both criminals, each suffering execution on crosses of their own.

PLAYER A: The scene is depicted imaginatively on the altar triptych in Hannover’s Marktkirche. Whereas other artistic renderings of the crucifixion have the two visually overwhelmed by strong focus on the deservedly central figure of Jesus Christ, the Marktkirche artist chose to emphasize as well the two who hung alongside Jesus, their positions on their respective crosses portrayed with detailed care:

PLAYER B: While the dying Jesus is shown nailed to his cross in accordance with all the Gospels, the other two hang from each of their crosses merely by their arms draped back over the tau-shaped cross-pieces – the thief on the left looks down contemptuously at all those gathered around the cross, but the one on the right of Jesus, his head tilted toward heaven, directs his attention to Christ himself.

PLAYER A: One gazing at the scene is provoked to creatively reconsider the event as recorded in the words of the four Gospel writers.

PLAYER B: The possibility of exploring the whole event in a dramatic presentation performed during the Paschal season is worth the attempt to do so.

[Players exit.]