This is a flashback to a Bible drama performed at a retreat years ago when we lived in Japan.
The drama was “The Raising of Jairus’s Daughter.” My father-in-law played Jesus. He was wrapped in a white sheet. We’d had corn on the cob for lunch, and Dad had made a beard out of corn silk retrieved from the kitchen garbage. Wetted down and somehow stuck to his chin, the beard looked awful—like a glop of hair from the shower drain. Michiko, who was narrating, got so tickled when Jesus came onstage, she had to stop and couldn’t continue reading for a while.
Then as Jesus raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead and commanded that she be given food and drink, Michiko suddenly realized she hadn’t prepared her props of food and drink. So she called out into the audience for one of the kids to bring up the bottle of pop he was holding. That was funny enough, but then Michiko knocked the bottle over. She had to interrupt the drama again to call for a towel and clean up the mess.
By this time most of the actors (playing the townspeople) were nearly in hysterics. The only ones who managed to remain in character were Jesus and the little boy cast as Jairus’s daughter.
