A few months ago, I was given the opportunity of a lifetime:  to be an extra in a scene from my favorite T.V. show.  Two weeks before heading to the set, I was blessed with a full blown case of one of the most painful viral diseases still in existence.  Yes, you read that correctly: BLESSED, right before making a four-day drive to Texas just before the worst winter storm ever to hit the state.  How could that possibly be a blessing, you ask? 

I started watching The Chosen half way through the first season and I’ve been addicted since. The Chosen the first ever series depicting the life of Jesus, pushing the boundaries of evangelical storytelling by giving a fictional, but historically plausible context to the true biblical narrative, including heart-wrenching character development that pulls the viewer in like a sci-fi tractor beam.  When I found out that paying it forward could give me a chance to be a stand in during the filming of Sermon on the Mount, one of the most well-know events of Jesus’ ministry, I was elated.  I made the donation and let God do the rest…and boy did he.   

Immediately, several roadblocks popped up that could have ended the dream before it began. Obviously, the great devastator of all plans made in 2020, COVID, came into play forcing the studio to re-evaluate everything they were doing for season 2.  Tavel restrictions imposed by my job blocked almost any request before it would even get to the boss’s desk.  Then came the timing of my PhD dissertation and boards which I had to get knocked out of the way before I could go anywhere.  Parenting time with my son was also going to be a challenge, especially since I have to negotiate schedule changes with my ex, a prospect which always comes with the canned phrase “I already made plans” even if those plans include something as concrete and immutable as staying home and making cookies, or watching a movie.  

Despite all the layers of the armored coat of “NO,” one by one the layers fell open.  The show’s director, Dallas Jenkins, was able to pull off organizing the shoot despite the initial fear of not even being able to film the second season.  My boss miraculously said yes to my request because of all the required COVID testing by the studio, all my testing and boards were completed just before Christmas, and the timing open up perfectly that I would only miss a couple of days with my son. Once the green light became clear, everything was in motion including my friend’s Winnebago, which allowed us to avoid airports as well. 

Then, three weeks before D-day (that’s the day we would start driving from sunny, but communist, California to free, but frozen, Texas), I got bit by a tick.  A deer tick, no less, the one type of tick that carries every disease from lyme to syphilis to blinding death aids-cancer. This tick was the size of a Chihuahua and twice as nasty.  Since my travel buddy is already struggling with Lyme disease, I thought I better get it treated quickly as a precaution.  Ten days into the antibiotic treatment, an itch started developing on my belt line.  I figured it was a rug burn from one of my  intense ab workouts, until a couple days later when I was getting into the shower and noticed my entire right hip was covered in sores as if I spent a month sleeping at a 3rd rate French brothel. My second trip to Urgent Care in two weeks determined I had the shingles. 

Not just an ordinary case, mind you, but the mother of all shingles.  You know something is bad when you see the nurse’s eyes bulge into silver dollars when they look at the wound, then proceed to give you nearly a full physical.  Sadly, it’s also the only time in my life I will ever get to say that I pulled down my pants in an examination room and the nurse yelled, “Oh my God, that’s that largest thing I’ve ever seen…get on the table”.  Within a very short period of time, I had gone from fit as a fiddle to taking antibiotics, anti-virals and steroids as well as  enough calamine lotion to dry up a walrus. 

The sores spread all the way around to my spine with the most interesting array of sensations, all of them bad and never in sync, transmitting from my lower half.  Sometimes  burning, sometimes itching, sometimes tickling, and sometimes it felt like I may have an appendicitis and each one worsening every time I stand still, or move, or both.   The good news was that I wouldn’t be making the trip alone, and that my road-dog had the chicken-pox vaccine so she was immune.  Additionally, the timing was such that I would be on the mend by ‘D’-day, although the sores would still be there I wouldn’t know how bad it would be still be until we got on the road.   

Sitting in a Cracker Barrel parking lot at 3 am, with two days left in the drive,  I was awakened by the typical combination of burning and tickling that the dried-up sores were still causing. Since the cold temperatures were already setting in, I went to sit in the driver’s seat of the van where it was still cool.  I pulled my sweat pants pulled half way down my side, knowing that if a police officer pulled up he may think I was a pervert so I started getting mentally prepared for the requisite line of questioning.  Then I took the time to ponder what the hell I was doing driving to Texas with this mass deformity on my side, sleeping in a van in parking lots like a homeless man or a refugee

That’s when I was reminded of the fact that this journey didn’t just start this week, or when my shingles started, or when I got bit by the tick, but rather it had taken over a year to get where I was…even if it was the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in the outskirts of Amarillo.  See I had something more than just a dream of being a part of this TV series, I had something that made me instantly stop and give thanks to God for one of his most precious gifts: Hope.  

I knew then that in two days, as bad as the shingles were, they weren’t going hinder me from completing my journey to be there at the sermon.  I knew I wasn’t going to die of this ailment, and in a few weeks it will be little more than a memory, a story to tell to my friends at gatherings, with all the drama and allegory included. 

But then it also occurred to me that the hope that I felt was merely a shadow of the hope of those who lived two thousand years ago whose suffering had no limitations, and whose circumstances were certain and would lead to a miserable, painful death.  I thought of the lepers that were shunned by society and forced to live outside of the cities for fear they would spread their illness or make people ‘unclean’. I thought of the woman who had a continuous menstrual cycle making her ill and unclean for 12 years, incurable by any doctor she had seen. Even for the man whose daughter was suffering, dying of fever, and no other remedies were working. 

Unlike me, each of their situations was, in any normal circumstance, hopeless, because treatment and medicine of the time had no cures for these conditions. They didn’t have urgent care, or 24 hour pharmacies, or nurse hotlines, for them the assurance of death without healing was never ceasing, and probably bore down on their sad, disheartened souls every hour of every waking day.  But imagine if there were one small speck of hope, a flickering candle in a distant window, or a star far away in the night sky.  For just the chance that they could receive healing, would not the most treacherous of journeys be not only justified, but worth paying every ounce of their strength and penny in their pocket to accomplish.  

For these biblical accounts from the gospel, that hope came in the form of this ‘Son of Man’ whose rumored to have been teaching and performing miracles throughout Judea.  A man who some proclaimed may be the savior of the world, or the second coming of Elijah, or even the Messiah.  Many in despair may have blown this off as myth and continued to live in darkness until death, but because of the faith they had, even if it meant going down a road of no-return, all of them, the leper, the unclean woman, and the father, all packed up their belongings and travelled great distances for the one shot they had to be healed.  They didn’t have heated Winnebago’s with queen sized beds, but slept on the hard ground and walked many miles on foot. No drive-up coffee or fast food, but rather cold packed bread and fish, or perhaps even going hungry hoping they would find food after they were healed. They weren’t welcomed by smiley faces and friendly greeters either, but were cast out and spat on because of the sins that they must have committed to put them in such a predicament in the first place, according to the culture at the time. 

Their journey was dangerous, they were unwelcome wherever they went, and the chance of failure and humiliation was ever-present, and yet, their faith was so strong that they made the journey anyway and because of it their stories are forever etched in scripture, and passed down for generations as symbols, to us, of how faith should be in our own lives. 

Half naked in a Cracker Barrel Parking lot,  I was overwhelmed with gratitude and grace; that through this eye-opening case of shingles, I got to have a tiny glimpse into what it must have felt like for those people who made the journey to see Jesus out of faith to have him touch and heal them from diseases infinitely worse than what I am experiencing.  The way it must have felt to wake up in abject pain, but tearing down camp and pressing on knowing that, if you can just touch the tip of his garment, your entire life may change.  

Incidentally, I got to touch Jonathan Roumie, the actor who plays Jesus, while he walked by me during the filming.  Although I knew full well that I wouldn’t be instantly healed, I still checked my side afterwards just to see. Hey, God works in mysterious ways. I will say that the freezing cold temperatures and frostbite made any pain from my rash barely noticeable, which was kind of a miracle in it’s own way. My next installment “The Frozen version of Sermon on the Mount” will cover some other lessons I learned from the Texas Tundra.

Shingles made my journey to see ‘Jesus’ more valuable and life-like than I could ever have imagined.  How marvelous it must have been for those hopeless faith-warriors whose lives were changed in the blink of an eye, and to have been a witness to the man who will one day bring salvation to the entire world.