This Sunday, yesterday, the church service was a two-hour Christmas celebration. The centerpiece was a Nativity play. And what a treat that was! The whole production had a delightful "homemade" feel. Or should I say "prisonmade" feel?
The men leading the service had pooled their commissary resources to provide drinks and cookies for the eighty men who attended. Red and green streamers with paper decorations adorned the walls. A string had been strung across the front of the multipurpose room to create a makeshift stage. Seven or eight sheets had been tied together to create a curtain that was pulled back and forth between each scene. All the costumes were also improvised with towels and sheets, from the angels to the shepherds to the wise men to Herod to the Holy Family. And yes, with much hilarity, an inmate donned a makeshift wig to play Mary. It was pretty funny seeing Mary with a beard.
The script was also written by the men. The play was a series of paired, back to back scenes. The first scene dramatized an Old Testament prophet followed by a scene from the birth narratives of Luke and Matthew showing the fulfillment of the biblical prophecy. We'd see, for example, the word of the Lord coming to Isaiah or Jeremiah followed by a depiction of an event in the gospels, from the Annunciation to the birth of Jesus to the visitation of the magi. Between these prophecy/fulfillment scenes the praise band would play songs, a mix of praise songs and Christmas carols, and we would worship
The prison Nativity play was, dramatically speaking, all over the place, by turns devout and hilariously farcical. Exactly what you'd expect with a bearded Mary and tattooed angels dressed in sheets. We praised the Lord and laughed uproariously. It was a highlight of my Advent season.
And mixed in with the joy were all the hard, sad things. This has been a very difficult season for the men in our study, not having us out there as much. There is so much pain and darkness in the world where they live. Which was why our Christmas service was such a blessing.
