The Patsy

I mentioned that I sat on a panel Thursday night at Michigan State University as a part of a program led by some Christian ministers entitled Join the Conversation—a dialogue about faith and spirituality.

Toward the end of a long night (in which we talked about theodicy, creation, evolution, theism, atheism, war, non-violence, ethics) one of the panelists ended the discussion with this story.

This is my recollection of his account.

When I was a boy, I remember responding to the story of Jesus without realizing it. I was watching a dramatic production entitled “The Patsy” starring Sammy Davis Jr. In the film, Davis plays the lone minority in a regiment full of white soldiers. Davis is ridiculed, mocked and despised. The soldiers tell him to go and get striped paint, and Davis goes to get it. When he comes back he’s jeered. The tell Davis to get a left-handed monkey-wrench, Davis goes but has no lock securing one from the commissary. He is, the quintessential “patsy.”

Towards the end of the production, the soldiers decide to play a mean trick on Davis. They take him out to the grenade field and hand him a grenade that is not operable. Davis, however, does not know this. One of the soldiers pulls the pin and all the soldiers, who’ve gathered for the tom-foolery, scatter like birds, leaving the young soldier all by himself.

They look back and see something they had no language for. Davis is lying prostrate on the ground using his body as a human shield while screaming, “Don’t worry guys, I’ll save you. I’ll protect you. Run!”

“And that was my first introduction to the gospel,” said this converted follower of Jesus who was now sitting next to me almost fifty years later.