In my last post I talked about the perception that NLOTH deals with "subjects [many people] wouldn't bother to consider," and I commented that I am very interested both in these subjects that U2 are considering and in the way they are considering them. But let me clarify (in case the focus of this blog might contribute to any confusion on this point) that by this I do NOT mean I've been hoping to hear U2 sing about God more, or that I like NLOTH because it has many Christian references. That doesn't seem like a very reliable criterion for assessing art to me. As far as I can see, the band have brought the same basic worldview to all their work over the past three decades, whether or not recognizably Christian language was being used or identifiably "religious" topics were being addressed.

Now, naturally I am touched to hear any fellow believer giving wholehearted love to Someone I also love -- but I personally don't feel any special excitement purely upon discovering that U2 have chosen to record a song with that focus. ("Magnificent," for example, did little for me on my first several hearings, and I still don't really enjoy "Yahweh.") I don't much care how many times the texts directly quote the Bible along the way, either (although being able to recognize such allusions when they come is guaranteed to increase your appreciation of U2 songs). But what I do care about, and what so far seems to me to be near the heart of NLOTH, is seeing them (to paraphrase a former homiletics professor of mine) take the issue/moment/situation they want to present and integrate it with everything they have so far learned as Christians about the universe.

It seems to me that what U2 have to give at this point is not "We can be cooler than the Killers" or "We consider Fordham students our contemporaries" (which made me cringe on Friday). What they have to give in their chosen genre is a much larger than usual pool of resources for that integration.

Exit and clarification

Trask at Agape Revolution sends along a link to a post he's written reflecting on U2's "Exit" as performed in "Rattle & Hum," not a song that is dealt with much. The post doesn't use the music at all in its analysis, but attempts to work with the text as describing the state of Lucifer during and after his fall from heaven. I don't happen to find this a successful interaction with the work personally, but it's interesting to watch the reasoning process and some of you probably may be persuaded.

On a more general note, incidentally (coming off a recent conversation with someone who had several mistaken assumptions about this blog and our book), I'd like to say again something I've said many times here -- when I link things on the blog, that doesn't automatically mean I think they are "sermons," or that I agree with the way they treat meaning-making in the arts, or that they would have fit in Get Up Off Your Knees, or that I endorse or don't endorse their perspective on the Bible or U2 or anything. It means I think they're making some contribution that's (for any of many possible reasons) worthy of note to the very diverse theologically-informed dialogue on various aspects of U2's work. (And if it's not, I tend to note that the link is off topic.) If I linked only things that could have gone in the book here, there would be one link about every three months.

Regular readers, feel free to skip...

I apologize to folks who have had to read this several times in the past few months, but for the good of the order... when this blog began 3+ years ago it was tracking the experience of publishing a multi-denominational book of examples of how homileticians in different countries were working with one specific slice of pop culture. It has continued both as a promotional effort for the book and as a way to highlight similar examples of the faith/culture dialogue in the academy and the church. Frankly, there is nothing especially unusual or new about that: theologians have always critiqued and/or highlighted the implicit and explicit theologies expressed in the cultural products of their age. If you're looking for some new celebrity-mad gimmick or other, move along; nothing to see here.

Ah, the media

I recently had a contact from a reporter working on a story about the idea that one particular church had created a brand new trend by using U2 in worship recently, and the reporter wanted to know why other churches were not as innovative. I told the reporter that a very wide variety of denominations /groups had been using U2 liturgically for years, and that representing it as innovative, new, or denominationally specific was so off base as to be comical.

The reporter then asked me whether any other popular music had "made inroads" into churches, or if this new trend was unique to U2. I replied that there were not any unusual inroads being made; all sorts of spiritually-themed music and other media had been used by all sorts of churches for ages. But U2, I said, had long been an "obvious no-brainer" to work with, in part simply because they were so universally known.

The reporter wrote a story about how one particular church had created a brand new trend by using U2 in worship, and mentioned that other churches were not so innovative. [bangs head on wall]

"one but not the same"

A reader has motivated me to clarify something. I'm sure many of you who visit here are aware of this, since I've hammered on it ad infinitum, so I ask your patience. But for those who may have gotten the wrong impression: Get Up Off Your Knees represents the work of laypeople and clergy from many, many Christian denominations, ranging from Roman Catholic to Presbyterian, from Church of Christ to Anglican, from evangelical to mainline, from liberal to conservative. It seeks to honor and draw on the work Christian leaders from diverse perspectives all over the English-speaking world were doing in using U2 in liturgy and worship for decades, long before Raewynne and I thought of putting a collection together documenting one aspect of that longstanding work. Anyone who links Get Up Off Your Knees with the idea of cheerleading for any particular denominational perspective, or, God forbid, recruiting new members for any particular institutional church, has missed the point.

God is always in on the act

During this last tour there's been a series of generic, adequately-written U2 and spirituality articles reporting on how U2's work arises from a Christian worldview. Whether these pieces piggyback on church events, concerts, publications, or something else, I'm wondering more and more if it's worth linking them all. I have to believe most readers of the U2 Sermons blog already know these basic facts and have read multiple examples of, e.g., the mandatory "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" paragraph. Maybe I should start being more selective, and only highlighting things that either say something fresh about U2 and faith, or that document how people are working theologically with their material in a creative way.

Oh, what the heck, for the time being I guess I'll link one more generic piece. Mostly a Rolling Stone rehash with some Stockman insertions.

This is how the interpretative community works, and I love it.

So U2 write a song called "Beautiful Day." Someone hears it, connects it with a passage in the Bible, and preaches on it. Their sermon appears in a book.

And then someone considers "Beautiful Day" wearing the lenses from having read that sermon, and uses it in constructing another, totally different sermon.

And then someone who heard that sermon will themselves go back to the song wearing those lenses.... and the cycle continues.

This is so much better than the futile quest for the mythical "real meaning" of a U2 lyric.

I'm intrigued that people seem to be getting here searching on things like "U2 lyric meaning" or "meaning behind U2 songs." There is in fact a site, U2MoL that, unlike Get Up Off Your Knees, purports to tell you what U2 songs "mean." It actually is more of a compilation of references, purely private opinions, and comments band members have made about U2 lyrics, and it's interesting. There is also a book by Niall Stokes on this topic (Into The Heart), which has lots of lively comments from Bono about what U2 lyrics mean; I own it, and it's good enough, but (for one thing) it sure doesn't evidence much ability to notice and understand U2's spiritual allusions.

We talk about this overall issue in the U2 sermons book, but I guess if I were going to make a short comment it would be this: I certainly understand the fascination in wanting to unearth what U2 were "on about" when they wrote a song. However, IMHO a key aspect of U2's work is that the songs have elastic, allusive, re-assignable meanings. So any question that is after "The" meaning of a U2 lyric is by definition, I think, going to chop off part of its own answer.

Our book collects U2 sermons in the sense of sermons that use U2 songs, not sermons on good works by the members of U2. Still, following up on my previous post, here is a sermon --not in the book-- that cites the Larry King interview, from the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood.

The relevant portion: I happened to be surfing through the television channels this past week, and I came across an interview with Bono, the lead singer of U2. Since Bono worships with us when he's in Los Angeles, it occurred to me that this might be a useful thing for me to hear. It was. One of the things that he articulated was a belief that everyone had a gift. The tragedy is that most people never realize their true destiny. He mentioned that there were probably people sleeping in the streets who had been destined to be a world-renowned cellist but that they would never realize that destiny. The interviewer then asked him, "If you were not a song writer, what might your life look like?" Bono smiled and said, "I might be one of those people sleeping in the street!"

I (Beth) have been catching up on some of the articles about The Matrix Reloaded, and doing so has made me think again about the way the press tends to cover any religious leader/organization working with any example of pop culture in worship or education: Minister uses 'Sopranos' to teach religion. Church uses 'Simpsons' to reach youth. So often there's this sort of quaint, human interest tone, following a script that I imagine has been similar since the 60s: Priest wears tie-dye vestments to attract the today generation.

To exaggerate for effect, the script pictures an unchanging thing called "The Church," populated by out-of-touch authority figures who occasionally, amusingly, come across some reference to something the kids out in the real world like. So they trot it out as a recruitment tool, and this fact itself is what is newsworthy. Church tries to seem hip, hee hee.

Well, it hit me with something like horror this morning that -- assuming articles are written in the secular press about Get Up Off Your Knees, or about the concept of U2 sermons -- that script is likely to be layered over some of them. As hard as any of us say "No, this is no gimmick, this is who I am, this is my band, they've been part of my faith life for years," some of the articles will probably boil down to: Church tries to seem hip, hee hee. Oh, God.