JESUS’ BACKSTAGE PASS
Notes from the Artist
Most of what I do publicly is FRONT STAGE.
Facebook posts.
Jesus Street Preaching.
Zion Coalition.
Jesus TV.
My Jesus-Greg WORLD.
Whatever this thing is becoming.
Increasingly, I am trying to let the art just happen in front of you without immediately explaining it.
That is intentional.
Jesus had a habit of doing and saying things FRONT STAGE that people did not immediately understand. Parables. Strange sayings. Symbolic acts. Questions instead of answers.
Sometimes the explanation came later.
Sometimes it apparently didn't.
So I am experimenting with that too.
FRONT STAGE
On the FRONT STAGE, you might encounter me casually referring to my “Bible,” inventing a word like presenced-upon, talking about Jesus TV, rehearsing an opera, turning my house into scripture, redeeming a classic-rock song, or behaving as though Jesus is an active participant in the performance.
And I may not explain myself.
But there is another door.
BACK STAGE
A small group of people have indicated that they actually want to know what is going on behind the curtain.
Questionable judgment, perhaps.
Nevertheless:
Occasionally I send Notes from the Artist—emails in which I pull back the curtain (open the veil?) and talk about what I think, believe, imagine, wonder, guess, experiment with, and am trying to do.
It is the commentary track.
The footnotes.
The deleted scenes.
The director talking over the movie.
The machinery behind the stage.
The Book of MORE Jesus, perhaps.
Bonus, extra-biblical material.
FRONT STAGE is the art.
BACK STAGE is Greg trying to explain what Greg thinks might have just happened.
Oompah, oompah.
WANT A BACKSTAGE PASS?
This is invitation-only.
Fortunately, you can invite yourself.
If you are curious and—more importantly—if Jesus tells you to:
Send me an email at gomuller@gmail.com and say something approximately like:
“Greg, let me BACK STAGE.”
No application.
No worthiness interview.
No secret handshake.
No demonstrated ability to understand what Greg is talking about.
You will then become part of a very select group:
chosen, predestined, foreordained...
...okay, you asked for the emails...or didn't request them to stop.
And sometime thereafter, when something happens FRONT STAGE that seems to deserve a peek behind the curtain—
Welcome BACK STAGE.
Or don't come.
Your choice.
Hello fellow "watchers" of Jesus TV. Jesus and I posted the following to my Facebook Feed.
Here, forward, you also will have the joy of unwrapping (or not). Following breadcrumbs or not.
I’m Going Dark.
Well… not dark.
Harder to find.
I’m moving away from the Amazon-patented ONE-CLICK approach to sharing my Jesus-Greg WORLD.
I feel Jesus taking me somewhere different: a place that anyone can find, but only if they’re willing to click more than once to get there.
Because I’m trying to be like Jesus.
And Jesus, I’m discovering, is really into Easter-egg hunts.
Treasure hunts.
Seek, and ye shall find.
Jesus puts good stuff everywhere. He gives goodies to everybody. But there always seems to be MORE waiting for the person who keeps looking.
Another clue.
Another door.
Another layer.
Another Come and see.
And I think my Jesus-Greg WORLD is headed in that direction.
Not hidden.
Wrapped.
Think Christmas presents—but instead of wrapping the present once, Jesus and I wrap it 30 times.
Until now, many of my Facebook posts have been like Christmas morning with every present already completely unwrapped and sitting under a flashing neon arrow:
LOOKY LOOKY!!!
LOOK WHAT JESUS IS SAYING TO ME!!!
😂
And, judging by the response, relatively few people are terribly interested in Greg standing beside a flashing neon Jesus sign.
Which is fine.
Because something different seems to be happening.
The neon sign isn't disappearing.
It's moving deeper into the building.
So maybe tomorrow you wake up and Greg's Facebook post is just a picture of an old sock with a lump of coal inside.
Nothing to see here.
Keep scrolling.
But suppose you don't.
Suppose you click.
You discover that the lump of coal has actually been fashioned into a secret decoder ring.
You turn the decoder ring and discover a tiny inscription:
LOOK UNDER THE SOCK.
Under the sock is a hand-drawn map with an X on it.
You follow the map and discover an old wooden door marked:
(unless Jesus tells you to)
Naturally, you open it.
Behind the door is a little red button labeled:
You push it.
And then—
six clicks, three clues, one sock, a lump of coal, a decoder ring, a treasure map, and a suspicious door later—
there it is:
Same weird Greg.
Same Jesus.
Same sharing.
Same neon sign.
I'm just putting some wrapping paper around it.
Because maybe finding it is becoming part of the experience.
Maybe the journey to the thing is part of the thing.
Maybe Jesus doesn't always put the treasure on the front porch with a giant arrow pointing at it.
Sometimes He says:
Seek.
And then waits to see whether we'll take another step.
And another.
And another.
Until suddenly—
we find.
A Walkable Chiasmus
The next part we just wrote has a chiasmus-like architecture, even though it isn't a strict word-for-word literary chiasm. The interesting part is that your new way of presenting the Jesus-Greg WORLD could itself operate as chiasmus.
A simplified map looks like this:
Everything is visible. Greg is saying, “Look! Jesus! Here it is!”
The obvious meaning disappears. You get the sock and coal.
The coal becomes a decoder ring.
The decoder ring points to the map.
The map leads to the strange door: “Do not open unless Jesus tells you to.”
Behind the door is the button.
The seeker chooses to enter.
The search produces discovery.
What looked meaningless becomes meaningful.
The wrapping comes off.
And you're back where you began—with Greg's flashing neon Jesus sign.
So structurally:
And X is Jesus / MORE Jesus.
That's remarkably compatible with the biblical idea of chiasmus because the center is often where the emphasis lands. The journey inward isn't merely making something harder to access. It focuses attention on the center.
There's an even simpler conceptual chiasm underneath your piece:
Which makes your line “Not hidden. Wrapped.” especially useful.
And there's another dimension I think fits what you're developing: the reader physically enacts the literary form.
Instead of merely reading a chiasm, someone coming from Facebook would walk one.
↓
click
↓
clue
↓
room
↓
deeper room
↓
JESUS / treasure
↓ discovery gives new meaning to the rooms
↓
clue now makes sense
↓
original Facebook post now makes sense
They arrive back conceptually at the beginning—but the beginning looks different because they've encountered the center.
That's almost a chiasmus as website architecture.
And your coal example is perfect for it: at A, coal looks like nothing. After reaching X, you can return to A′ and realize the supposedly boring coal was the entrance to the whole thing.
Seek → find → see again.
don't merely write chiasmus—build one people can walk through.