Call it: Snapshots of Easter (that way anything will fit)
Elisabeth…song Erin Washington…monolog Hannah…Dance Brock…monolog John…monolog Mime
Elisabeth….song Dance…Hannah & Madeline Monolog: John Love Monolog: Erin Washington Monolog: Brock Gwaltney Mime: ? Scripture readers for Erin’s monolog: Isaac, Megan, Elly, Bailey Other kids available: Griffin Gannon Ryan Arnold Matt Langley
JOHN: Every time I come to a sunrise service, I think of Bible camp. I mean, it was in the summertime, but that’s where my Easter experience started…that’s where I learned about Christ…at camp. And you can talk all you want about God, when you’re ten years old, Hell gets your attention a lot faster. Bible Camp, Wheaton, Illinois. I memorized 300 Bible verses one at a time. Mom would listen to me every night then sign her name on the back of the little yellow card. “20 verses satisfactorily completed.” 100 verses and you got your own Bible written in a foreign language.. the King James Version. That was just the teaser to get you started. 200 verses got you a lousy bookmark with all the books of the Bible printed in gold. You didn’t care about the bookmark. It was the 300-verse bonanza you were shooting for: one week at the Rural Bible Crusade Camp in Wheaton, Illinois. We’d always heard that when Christ came back to Earth, he’d stop in Wheaton first because Billy Graham had a college there. Christ still had relatives who lived in Wheaton. The deadline for summer camp was on top of me so I forged Mom’s name to the last 50 verses and sent in the card. Mom was busy teaching summer school and she figured that she'd lost count. I suppose that Bible camp admission isn’t a good place to be lying, but when your ten, God’s rules are sort of elastic. You figure if Mom isn’t watching, then God isn’t either. My folks abandoned me in the middle of hottest July in recent Illinois history and I was dumped into a hot cabin inhabited by an entire tribe of granddaddy longlegs. I mean, they owned the place. I had the bottom bunk underneath Lamar from inner city Chicago. I was the only white boy in the cabin. Lamar talked in his sleep. Lamar talked to his brother in the bunk next to him while he was sleeping and his brother talked back. This made me think maybe I wasn’t part of the crowd. Every night Uncle Ernie would scare the hell out of us. I mean that. Uncle Ernie was the camp director. He’s was nobody’s and everybody’s uncle. He talked about hell every night at the evening service and every night I went down to the altar, scared to hell of hell. I didn’t know much about God, but I could describe hell in detail. It was like goin’ to the State Fair with your aunt on the day the water fountains quit. The Baptists say that once you’re saved, you’re always saved, but I was Presbyterian and I got saved every night… six nights running… from hell. I still wonder which one really counted.. or if any of them counted. Heaven? I don’t know. You’ll have to talk to somebody else, but buddy, you want to know about hell… see me. I’ve been to camp.
BROCK: Do you ever forget where you are? I mean, just totally lose track of what you’re doing and you don’t even care? My teachers think I do that a lot. They keep saying, “Brock, are you still with us?” I say “Sure!,” but I’m really not. I was in math class and Mr. Beddingfield was talking about theorems and equations but I was in Bonn, Germany, walking the streets with Beethoven. He’s got this really tough passage in the Third Movement of his Moonlight Sonata… It goes like this. (play ) It’s hard to play, but it’s so cool. I just keep thinking about that one passage over and over. The desktops in Mr. Beddingfield’s room are just perfect for practicing the piano so when I get bored in math I go to Germany. Mr. Beddingfield is talking about sines and co-sines but I’m thinking (play .)
I’m going to college next year and I guess I should start paying more attention to Mr. Beddingfield, but when something really grabs you…really gets inside you…well, it’s hard to let go of it.
I went to Catholic grade school and now I’m about to graduate from a Catholic High School, and I’m not blaming anybody, but I didn’t know much about God through most of it. In fact, I’m not sure I believed at all. Then something happened…
Then I joined the cast of the Routt-Triopia play. Every night we’d stand together at the end of play practice and we’d pray. Something happened. I met a God I had known before. Then I met people like John and I saw Christ’s life lived out in front of me. …and Christ became real.
I met Jesus. And it was like….It was music. I got it inside of me, and it never stops playing. It’s weird. Playing the piano is so much like praying. You get lost in it. Sometimes you play awhile and then God takes over and He starts playing. And then when you’re really into it…when the Holy Spirit takes over…it’s like you’re playing a duet. You can play actual notes that somebody wrote (play) but what’s really great is when you just improvise….you let the thoughts come to you…That’s like talking to God. (improv)
I’m going to graduate in a month. When I got to college I’ll take a lot of what Mr. Beddingfield’s taught me…I’ll take a lot of what my piano teachers taught me…But mostly I’ll take God. I’ll take Christ. (play a very short riff)
ERIN
ERIN: I love camp…It’s the best part of my year. You get to spend a weekend where you can just be yourself around some of your best friends. Not too many places in life you get to do that. And whenever Easter comes I have a hard time focusing on Bunny’s and flowers…I’d rather think about camp.
Why? Because camp is so much like the real Easter. I started off as a camper, but I’m a counselor now...one of the “Big guys.” But when you’re a first time camper, it comes as a shock. As soon as you pull into the parking lot, you get attacked. Counselors jump onto your car before it even stops rolling, they snatch you up out of the seat, grab your luggage, and rush you into the building before you know what’s happening. BAILEY: Early on Sunday morning, as the new day was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went out to see the tomb. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, because an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and rolled aside the stone and sat on it. ISAAC: His face shone like lightning, and his clothing was as white as snow. The guards shook with fear when they saw him, and they fell into a dead faint. ERIN: Yeah, that’s pretty much what it feels like…a shock. But of course one of our jobs as counselors is to make the kids feel at home. My favorite part is looking for that lonely little girl who came to camp and doesn’t know anyone…or that little boy whose mother sent him to camp so he’s decided to be a poophead. I don’t know if the word, “poophead,” is in the Bible, but it should be. ELLY: Then the angel spoke to the women. "Don't be afraid!" he said. ERIN: A lot of the kids are afraid, but that doesn’t last long. It’s a whole weekend of singing and dancing and rolling down hillsides and eating too much. But really cool thing, is that everywhere you look you see Jesus. …in people’s attitudes, in the performances, in the way we treat each other. We never sit down and have Bible study, we never give assignments or take tests on the books of the Bible. But everywhere you look, you see Jesus. MEGAN: The women ran quickly from the tomb. They were very frightened but also filled with great joy, and they rushed to find the disciples to give them the angel's message. And as they went, Jesus met them. "Greetings!" he said. And they ran to him, held his feet, and worshiped him. ELLY: Then Jesus said to them, "Don't be afraid! Go tell my brothers to leave for Galilee, and they will see me there." ERIN: The really cool thing is that so many kids come to camp and really don’t know much about Jesus. Some of them just come to perform and don’t even care much about the Jesus stuff. They come for the singing and the dancing and being around their friends. ISAAC: That same day two of Jesus' followers were walking to the village of Emmaus, seven miles out of Jerusalem. BAILEY: As they walked along they were talking about everything that had happened. Suddenly, Jesus himself came along and joined them and began walking beside them. But they didn't know who he was, because God kept them from recognizing him. ERIN: But it never fails…by the final night of camp, something happens to them. They’ve spent a weekend around other kids testifying about their love for Christ…around kids who love the Lord…It never fails. You’ll find them right there at the final altar, praying for salvation. MEGAN: They said to each other, "Didn't our hearts feel strangely warm as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?" ELLY: And within the hour they were on their way back to Jerusalem, where the eleven disciples and the other followers of Jesus were gathered. When they arrived, they were greeted with the report, "The Lord has really risen! He appeared to Peter!" ERIN: That’s why I like camp… It’s Easter…for real. The Blood Transfusion
ERIN: A St. Louis hospital, the early 1980’s as reported in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
JOHN: The young father had been in an automobile accident and needed a blood transfusion immediately. Plasma was not a good option. He needed whole blood and right quickly.
BROCK: The problem was that his blood type was A-B Negative. Less than 1% of the population has A-B Negative blood. The hospital had none on hand.
ERIN: But there was one donor…his seven-year-old daughter. ….Jennifer.
JOHN: The doctors quickly explained the situation to Jennifer’s mother, saying that it would do no harm to Jennifer to give a pint of blood and her father’s life might be saved by the transfusion. She hurried the young girl into a waiting room and explained to her…
ERIN: “Honey, we need to you give blood for your daddy.”
GIRL: Jennifer looked at her mother, wide-eyed.
ERIN: “Jennifer, did you hear what I said? Daddy needs your blood.”
JOHN: The little girl shook her head.
GIRL: “No. I can’t do it.”
ERIN: “But Daddy needs it. You’ll barely feel it.”
BROCK: Jennifer sat there crying. Her mother wondered why she was having such a hard time with this.
JOHN: After a couple of moments the little girl sighed, looked up into her mother’s eyes and said,
GIRL: “I guess I’m ready.”
BROCK: They took her into the room where her father was lying on bed, ready for the transfusion. Jennifer laid down a cot beside him and the transfusion began.
JOHN: After a few minutes the doctor said, “That’s it. It worked.”
ERIN: Her mother said, “I’m proud of you, honey.”
BROCK: But Jennifer….Jennifer sat there confused.
GIRL: “I’m…I’m still alive?”
ERIN: “Of course you’re still alive! Did you think…?”
JOHN: …and that’s when it hit her mother. In all the hurry and confusion she had failed to explain to her daughter that the transfusion wouldn’t take her life. The little girl thought she was being asked to give her life for her Daddy.
BROCK: And that…that is Easter.