I got to be Jesus once. It was passion play, back in the noughties with my old church in Headingley, and in those days I had a beard and shoulder-length hair, and was often known to wear sandals, so I was obvious casting. We were doing it the length and breadth of Headingley, presented as real contemporary events with a news-crew watching us and giving ironic commentary to tie it together.

I was excited by the opportunity. I wanted to do something in Lent to show people the story of Jesus’ life and death. I think most people who aren’t Christians will very rarely pick up a Bible and dip into it, but people might go to watch a play, or series of performances, if they’re outdoors and free. As the book of Romans tells us, faith comes by hearing, that is hearing the good news about Christ.

There were a group of six or seven of us who worked together to devise ‘The Headingley Hero’, as it was called, under the baton of director Dan Ingram-Brown, who was really responsible for the vision. Jesus, as I played him, began with his triumphal entry on bicycle, because who has a donkey these days. I remember my arrival very distinctly. The passion plays tend to cover the last week of Jesus’ life, during which he was at his most pained, desperate and righteously angry.

I was determined, in the role, to seem as human and as inwardly grieved as possible, within the realm of reason. If I was making a film of the whole life of Jesus we would see him laughing and dining and hoping and sneezing and having moments of peace among friends, but this was his week in Jerusalem. The last time I read the gospel of John, which is my current favourite gospel, and which really focuses on that week, I thought Jesus was really really pissed off, all week.

Sidebar: don’t worry, dear listener, the word ‘piss’ is in the Bible. Check your KJV, 1 Kings 21 21.

The garden of gethsemane was placed outside a Burger King. There I prayed and wept, before the cops turned up to take me away in their car. Jesus’ trial took place at a restaurant called The Arc, which always did tasty burgers. The trial was unseen, covered by the news reporters. The focus for the audience was Peter outside, who denied me thrice, before I emerged onto the balcony, looking down with inevitable sorrow.

All that remained for me was to drag the cross to the place of the crucifixion. It was a long way to drag anything, and that was the point. The whole audience would form a procession, following after Jesus with the cross. It was big, it was heavy, but it wasn’t heavy to my satisfaction. I wanted to suffer under that cross, to stumble and to be hurt. Jesus carrying the cross in Ben-Hur is agony. In reality it must have been monstrous. We’re told, if we believe, to take up our crosses and follow Jesus. This seemed a chance to take that literally, and suffer in it. But on this occasion, my burden was relatively easy, and my yoke was light. Nonetheless, I endeavoured to drag it with that suffering in my mind and on my back, as the crowd followed, followed on to the place of crucifixion.

And then — then I think I must have gone through a doorway or an archway where I couldn’t be followed. I don’t know how the piece ended. Everyone, cast and audience was then going to go in for tea and hot cross buns. But this was Lent, and I strictly disallowed myself such pleasures. If they went in and saw Jesus was just Ben eating a bun, it would dispell anything we had built up. I wanted the idea of Jesus’ suffering to be with people for the rest of the weekend until breakfast on Easter Sunday. I changed my clothes and stole away without anyone noticing. I was always good at escaping unseen. Maybe that was ego and vanity, wanting to be missed. I certainly think some of my self-punishing Lenten fasting was more about satisfying an urge I had than focussing on God. But I’m glad to have been Jesus, or an avatar of him. It helped me, and I hope it helped others. In any case, I’m pretty sure I went straight back home and watched Ben-Hur. What else is there to do on a Good Friday afternoon?