Watching Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl, with Cynthia Erivo as Jesus and Adam Lambert as Judas, was not just a night of theater — it was a moment of revelation.
Erivo, a woman, carried Jesus with a tenderness, love, and pathos that made the Gospel pulse in new ways. Her voice — strong yet vulnerable — embodied the paradox of Incarnation: divinity poured into fragility, strength veiled in suffering. It matters deeply that Jesus was portrayed by someone whose very body and presence, in our world, carries the weight of multiple marginalizations — Black, woman, just over 5' tall, Kenyan parents, lesbian. When she sang of thirst, or when the gut-wrenching 40 lashes fell on her small back, you weren’t just watching a story set in the first century. You were seeing Jesus crucified again, and again, and again, in the bodies of those who are hunted down, brutalized, dismissed.
On top of seeing Erivo as Jesus, we saw Adam Lambert as glitter-eyeshaddowed Judas. Lambert was mesmerizing — flamboyant, anguished, defiant. Judas became not a flat villain but a fully human disciple, conflicted and wounded, reminding us that betrayal grows from real, complicated soil.
The staging itself was electric: a mix of concert-syle spectacle and gritty modernity. It felt both ancient and urgent, reminding us in the audience that the Passion isn’t a relic. It’s unfolding in our time — in detention centers, in protest movements, in every place where the vulnerable are left exposed to power.
Even the supporting characters were alive with meaning: the high priests draped in dark leather-daddy-from-outer-space decadence, Herod (with John Stamos on our viewing) as garish and cruelly sarcastic, Pilate as exhausted and complicit. They weren’t just characters — they were the systems, powers, and compromises that still crucify Christ today.
For me, it was more than art. It came at a time when I am still living in the aftermath of losing our home and community to the fire. That grief lingers, smoldering. And yet, watching Erivo’s Jesus — so small, so strong, so unflinchingly present in her suffering — did something to me. It touched the raw edges of my loss and whispered that God is still here, even in the ashes.
Theologically, this production did what good theology always does:
* It put Christ on the margins — literally re-imagining Jesus in a body the world so often devalues.
* It brought the Gospel into the present — so that we don’t just remember the cross, we recognize it in our streets and systems.
* It gave every character humanity — challenging easy moral binaries and inviting us to see ourselves in every role.
And maybe that’s why it felt so sublime: because art like this can become a kind of sacrament. It helps us see Christ more clearly, in unexpected faces, in painful truths, in shimmering beauty.
As I left that night, I kept thinking: If Jesus showed up today, would I recognize him? Her? Them?
Maybe that’s my way forward. Not to solve my grief or erase it, but to stay awake enough to see Jesus — even in the most unexpected places, even when my world feels burned to the ground. May we be transformed by seeing Christ in our own wilderness.
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