“The Boss” on Gethsemane

Devils & Dust, the latest Springsteen album, is a “must buy”! Bruce has gone theological on us, and the critics are debating whether he’s finally “got religion”. The good Catholic boy, whose childhood was blighted and faith shattered by the nuns who ran his school, has consistently embraced Christian values but repudiated faith and institutional church. Until now.

Springsteen’s concerts – especially on his native American soil – have always been stunning examples of secular evangelism. His gospel is a re-visioning of the American Dream. It is the Good News that, although the Dream has been betrayed by greedy, self-serving politicians and the dominance of the American Right, there is an alternative – an America where the poor, the dispossessed, the working classes and the no-hopers are the significant shapers of a new society.

Bruce doesn’t just produce a playlist for his concerts. He crafts a story – a journey. “Covenant to come with me,” he tells his audience at the outset, “and I’ll take you somewhere good. Come with me and I’ll show you the Promised Land – the Land of Hope and Dreams!” His songs tell the story of hope betrayed, of corruption and war-mongering. They move through to hope and new possibilities. They end, standing, Moses-like, on the threshold of the Promised Land.

Get hold of the DVD of The Rising. Watch “Land of Hope and Dreams”. The metaphor is the traditional gospel train. In fact, he closes with a two-line reprise of the black spiritual, “People Get Ready”: “People get ready, there’s a train a-comin’/Don’t need no ticket – you just get on board!” Yet while the spiritual belongs in the holiness tradition, and excludes unworthy passengers, the train that journeys to the Land of Hope and Dreams is different: “This train/carries saints and sinners/this train/carries whores and gamblers/this train/carries lost souls.” It’s a radically inclusive vision. And it goes on: “This train/dreams will not be thwarted/This train/faith will be rewarded …” I defy anyone to listen and watch and remain unmoved.

And, having preached the gospel and presented the vision, there’s the “altar call”. “Come and be born again! Come down into the river! Be baptised!” Bruce struts the stage, calling to would-be converts. Ever the satirist, he deliberately mimics the stage antics of evangelists like Jimmy Swaggart. Yet the satire only underlies his own passionate seriousness.

His music and metaphors have always been steeped in the Bible and in traditional gospel spirituality. Devils & Dust moves into explicitly Christian, theological territory, however. The title track is an anti-war song, decrying the ways in which war dehumanises the participants: “It’ll take your God-filled soul/and fill it with devils and dust!” It’s not clear whether this song was written before or after 9/11. Is it the Vietnam war he is on about, or Iraq? Whichever, it was Iraq that took Springsteen off the political fence and he campaigned actively against George W Bush. In a masterpiece of political irony, Bush wanted to use Springsteen’s best-known anthem, “Born in the USA” as a Republican campaign theme song. He obviously hadn’t listened to anything other than the chorus, because the song is a vitriolic denunciation of Vietnam and the militarism of the Republican government … DUH!

But it’s “Jesus was an only Son” that gets my vote as something worth serious theological attention. The second verse goes like this:

“In the Garden of Gethsemane he prayed for the life he’d never live/He beseeched his heavenly Father to remove the cup of death from his lips/And there’s a loss that can never be replaced, a destination that cannot be reached/a light you’ll never find in another’s face, a sea whose distance cannot be breached”

“… he prayed for the life he’d never live”? Wow! I’d never thought of that, nor seen it in any exegesis of the agony of Gethsemane (though it was the theme of Scorsese’s account of the cross in The Last Temptation of Christ). But it’s true, isn’t it? Death means a life that cannot now be lived. It’s the death of possibilities, joys, sadnesses, meetings, partings, experiences, relationships. And it was for Christ just as much for anyone else. More familiarly, it was the death of the possibility of the coming of the Kingdom – all that Jesus had lived for. Yet somehow, phrasing it as he does, Springsteen adds so much more to the agony. He reclaims the humanity of Jesus, which can so easily be obscured by the divine significance of this encounter between Son and Father.

And isn’t it true, too, that there is a loss that can never be replaced? Resurrection (and eschatology) may make possible something good and wonderful and new, but it doesn’t undo or make good the loss of the life never lived. A different future is a marvellous gift, because it is a future born out of the ashes of the old life, but it is a different future and precludes ever reaching the original destination.

To me, that says something vitally true about human bereavement. It reminds me, too, that God in Christ has entered into the human experience of irredeemable loss that accompanies every human death – both for those who die and those left behind. God is marked by loss as we are. These insights into the reality of bereavement are so important pastorally and as part of our theology of the cross. They’re so much more gritty and real than the Christian guff we often pump out over bereavements and at funerals, that balks at giving expression and reality to the agony of loss. Darn, Bruce, but you’re good …

Emerging Bible

How does the Bible function as the Word of God in the community of faith? The answer to this question has a great deal to do with what we understand the nature of the Bible as the Word of God to be, and also the nature and place of preaching.

I was astonished to discover how deeply (and mainly unconsciously) I have imbibed and embraced postmodern approaches to the Bible. By "postmodern approaches" I mean trends in postliberal exegesis pioneered by people like George Lindbeck and postevangelical approaches. What they have in common is that they focus on the internal coherence and detail of the Christian story rather than the historical-critical preoccupation with the reconstruction of history. They ask "What does it mean to live by this story?" rather than "What happened?" (with the unspoken corollary, "Can we accept this as true or not?"). In so doing they break out of the sterility of so many years of liberal vs evangelical standoffs and polarisation.

One of the most helpful people I find is Walter Brueggemann. His contention is that the Bible doesn't primarily relate history or teach doctrine: rather, when we read the Bible, we find in the narrative the "Third World of Evangelical Imagination". In other words, we find our world reconfigured because we discover what it is like to look at it through God's eyes. Put another way, we see it in a new light: it is infused with the reality and presence of God. This is inspirational and empowering. When we look at the world, we are struck by our helplessness in the face of its systems. We see the annihilative power of multinationals. We are reduced to despair by the intractability of global poverty. Our imaginations are paralysed by the power of capitalism such that we cannot even conceive of an alternative reality. What reading the Bible does is to open up an entirely new set of hitherto unimagined possibilities because God is present and active to redeem. Seemingly impregnable powers and authorities are exposed as fragile opponents of God's grace, justice and resurrection. And we are inspired to yield to the Spirit and to change things in the name of Jesus Christ, because that is God's mission.

The task of preaching, then, is to bring the world of the biblical narrative into conversation with our own contextual stories and so to enable people to go out and live and act as faithful, hopeful disciples of Jesus Christ.

I was reading Marcus Borg's The Heart of Christianity. I was reading it in preparation for the Windermere reading party (18-20 November – please come if you fancy it!). Borg is a member of the Jesus Seminar. And the Jesus Seminar is not the place to which I would instinctively turn for nourishment! I remember listening to Robert Funk, its founder, who is a non-realist. I was left wondering why we should bother with Jesus at all. Yet Borg is a different kettle of fish. For him, the purpose of studying the Bible is to elicit passionate faith – by which he means wholehearted commitment and faithful living. The Bible is meant to transform rather than inform. Christian faith is not about believeing a set of doctrines: it is about experiencing the Life of God given in Jesus and becoming christlike. I sat reading The Heart of Christianity and got more and more excited.

Emerging forms of biblical exegesis are to me one of the most hopeful signs of God's Tomorrow. This is something the Church can get its teeth into because it actually matters! The Bible is transformatory. The power of the text is unleashed because its purpose is to enable people to encounter God, rather than become textual experts in ancient literature. And it is Gospel – Good News to a world that is weighed down with Bad News!