Two Sundays ago a friend at church handed me a black cardboard envelope and said, “You remember what CD’s are, right?” The envelope was a nicely packaged copy of Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball album. I had given a listen to the first single from the album a few weeks earlier (based on my friend’s recommendation) and was struck by how brutally honest “We Take Care of Our Own” was. I’ve never been a huge Springsteen fan, actually I don’t listen to much music at all, but that single was enough to make me want to hear the rest of the album. When my friend handed me the disc, I was equally shocked and over-joyed.
As I mentioned, I don’t listen to much in the way of music. I enjoy music, but when I’m reading, writing, or even exercising I find music horribly distracting. It’s one the reasons I dislike speaking on the phone – sound places stress on my attention in a way that other stimuli do not, and music is the worst. I point this out because, while I ripped the CD into iTunes the very afternoon I received it, I didn’t get to listen to it much until last week when I did a terribly old-fashioned thing and put the CD into my car stereo.
As I drove my “coffice hours,” and then to lunch with a friend, I was struck with an album of fascinating musical breadth which expressed longing, hope, anger, and despair. Songs like “Rocky Ground,” and “We Are Alive” look forward to a new day – the latter even holding a sense of the resurrection being the doorway to hope. Songs like “We Take Care of Our Own,” “Shackled and Drawn,” and “Jack of All Trades” place hope and anger in the context of this world (specifically, this Country) – even going so far as to admit a longing to do violence to those who’ve created a system of oppression. As I listened to the album, I noticed something rather interesting. I felt buoyant, and ennobled, as both the reality of the current day and the hope of the new day had a light shown on them. By the time I arrived to lunch, I felt more compelled to live life well for the sake of the new day I hope for in Christ.
This left me wondering, however, why so little “Christian Music” has such an impact on me – particularly Christian music which is meant to be used in worship. What I finally concluded was this. When Bruce Springsteen sings of his hope for a new day he proclaims the hope of someone who knows he hasn’t arrived in it – nor do I get the impression that he’s certain he ever will because he can’t see a change without dehumanizing one group in order to lift another up, but he won’t stop hoping. When I listen to much of Christian music, particularly worship music, I catch very little of Springsteen’s longing honesty. What I encounter is, largely, an assumption that we’ve pretty much arrived and all we need to do is celebrate that. I come away from listening to Christian music as though I’ve eaten way to much candy. My taste buds feel great, but my stomach feels nauseous and the Kingdom seems far away.
What I think much Christian music lacks is something Springsteen knows intimately – the sense of “desert.” The more I pastor, read Scripture, and proclaim the Gospel the more I realize there is no hope without a sense of wandering. I’ve also noticed the ironic twist that those who are most aware of their wandering status are the ones who tend see the presence of Jesus’ Kingdom clearest. Those who think they’ve arrived tend to be unsettled and discontented with the way their families, churches, jobs, etc. have turned out.
I think I prefer being ennobled to long and hope for a new day over being fed candy while complaining about obesity.
Discover more from Painfully Hopeful
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
You get that feeling too? I listen to, and continue to listen to lots of music genres because of the lack of depth in many subgenres of Christian music. It’s honestly really weird how often the “formula” is repeated across those subgenres. Those folks that do something different are hard to find; very hard to find.
I hear you. I don’t listen to music much – but when I do I want a bit more than “party music.”
It is fitting that you’d write about this in the midst of Lent, since Lent really seems to express the “both-and” of “arrived” and “arriving.”
To explain that a little, Fr. Alexander Schmemann, in his book, “Great Lent,” describes Lent as showing the Church in Exile. In fact, the day before the Great Fast begins is, liturgically, called Sunday of the Expulsion of Adam from the Garden of Eden. We are all Adam, having forsaken Paradise, and Lent is our return.
Because of this, he notes, the Eucharist is not celebrated on weekdays of Lent (and the Saturdays and Sundays of Lent, being Eucharistic days, are also relaxed fast days—still fasting days because we need the Fast to be unbroken, but not the full fast, either). The celebration of the Eucharist is incompatible with fasting because, while fasting is “arriving”, in the Eucharist, we have “arrived.”
As far as popular Christian music’s candy-like quality, can you really blame them? Generally speaking, many of the artists seem to come from a theological background where “arriving” doesn’t make much sense: either you have arrived or you haven’t. Either you’ve “been saved” or you haven’t. And, once you’ve “been saved,” what, really, is left? You’re there! You’re in!
Though I do wonder if, maybe, all the loud music and energetic preaching, and so on, isn’t at least partly geared to hold their (formerly our, since I speak as one who has been there) attention, so they can ignore that nagging thought, “Well, we crossed the Sea…but why does the Promised Land look so much like a desert?”
Great comment. I think your last point is insightful. I’ve often wondered if we keep on shouting “we’re so blessed, yay!” because we’re actually trying to convince ourselves that we really are.