It was definitely the "recurrentes citas b�blicas" that did it.

Even MTV Spain is getting in on the act. �Si Coca-Cola es un misterio y Michael Jackson historia, �qu� soy yo?�

African Well Fund virtual vigil

The African Well Fund, a charity created by U2 fans to bring clean water to Africa, invites you to light a candle in their virtual vigil leading up to World AIDS Day.

Pop song sparks off a sermon

Another article on Derek Walmsley, this one in the Church Times. UK readers, watch for a picture in the Sun as well. Honest.

46664: 1 minute for AIDS in Africa

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in America. To everyone in the UK who has been searching on "Preaching the U2 Catalogue," sorry for my American spelling habits. (In the UK and Europe, you can order this book from Columba.)

And if you haven't been following the Nelson Mandela 46664 concert news, here is an article about it from South Africa. The webcast is this Saturday.

Rock the pulpit

The December issue of the United Church News has printed a reworking of this summer's profile of Raewynne and Get Up Off Your Knees, including some focus on contributors Shawnthea Monroe-Mueller and Stephen Butler Murray, who are UCC clergy. The article concludes with a substantial excerpt from Raewynne's essay. In another spot, the same issue also lists U2 Sermons as a website worth investigating.

Randomness

I've added a little more to the FAQ. Also, thanks to ginkworld for the link. {Update: and, as is obvious, I've switched to a 3-column format to make basic, unchanging info easier to find.}

Here we are on the BBC

And here he is! Congrats to our contributor Derek Walmsley, featured on BBC News. Pleased to learn from this story that Raewynne and I have joined the ranks of "U2-loving clergymen." Just kidding.

Check the FAQ

There may be something more official than this on the way, but for the time being I've thrown a quick FAQ on the book up for anyone looking for statistics or wanting common questions answered.

"The spiritual message in U2's work is often subtle."

A press release from across the pond. (I think the posters in the office are a nice touch.) Derek emails that in the one day since this came out, he's already been interviewed by BBC Radio Leeds, BBC Online, Pulse (Yorkshire Independent Radio) and The Church Times.

A vicar from the Bradford Diocese is the only UK contributor to an American book of sermons based on the songs of U2. The Revd Derek Walmsley, vicar of St Mark's, Utley, near Keighley, says, "I'm a big fan of U2 (my study wall is covered with their posters - which is a bit of a surprise for the couples who come in to arrange their weddings), so I was delighted to have the opportunity to express my thoughts on the spiritual content of some of their lyrics".

Entitled "Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalogue", the book includes chapters on "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "Pride" and "Peace on Earth." Derek says, "I chose to write on the song 'Playboy Mansion'. It's a clever comparison of the way people might seek success in the secular world with the way we get into heaven, particularly in the words, 'it's who you know who gets you through'."

The publishers, Cowley Publications, say, "This book highlights how preachers of all ages, from all theological traditions, are reflecting on U2's work. It's not seeking to prove anything about U2 themselves, but it shows how religious leaders are integrating spiritually informed pop culture into their proclamation of the Gospel".

Derek adds, "The spiritual message in U2's work is often subtle. Their lead singer Bono is reluctant to be labelled a Christian and has said 'I don't talk about God very much because I'm not a very good advertisement for it', but nevertheless, U2's lyrics are soaked in spiritual imagery and Bono often quotes from the Psalms in live concerts".

The book, "Get Up off Your Knees," will be available in the UK on 4 January {update: apparently the new date is 9 February} and all royalties will go to TASO, an African AIDS charity.
ENDS

Rhythm and Soul

I've been streaming Rhythm and Soul, the radio show that Steve Stockman hosts, while working this morning, and he just played Pillar's cover of Sunday Bloody Sunday. ...You know, that song is just not in need of a cover version.

Dec 1 from two perspectives

Well, the official release date of the book is a week away: Dec. 1, World AIDS Day. Of course official dates are sometimes honored in the breach. Whether or not the book is around yet, U2 Sermons will be participating in World AIDS Day Link and Think.

Had a nice email from a contact in the Message division at NavPress, commenting that everyone who works in the Message division at NavPress is a U2 fan.

"i have five senses/i need thousands more at least"

As I said earlier, I'm just late to this party, but, another utterly amazing song by Over the Rhine: "The World Can Wait" (already cited in a comment below).

There is a line in Raewynne's essay in the U2 book where she says that from the moment she first heard "Beautiful Day," she couldn't wait to preach on Noah. Me, listening to "The World Can Wait," I can't wait till the John 4 woman at the well reading comes around again. That song -- and I'm not necessarily saying this was intentional on their part -- just offers such a perfect opportunity to give a congregation a window into her emotions, say just after encountering Jesus. Put it on her lips, for example, as she goes back to the village to bring others to meet him.

While I'm in here, thanks to Sleepless in Surrey for the link. [Update: and to WeEbLeLand.]

Bono Much Music in Toronto interview text

From the Canadian interview after the Liberal Party convention:

George: How's your relationship with spirituality changed?...

Bono: Well, I think what you discover is God is even bigger than you think. It's very hard--

George: That he doesn't need your help? (chuckling)

Bono: (laughs) That's right, he doesn't need your help. You go, "I can help God here, I'm sure he's stuck, those kids in Africa and all; I'll help." God doesn't need your help, but, there's a blessing. Somebody said to me - I said this to you last night. A wise man, a spiritual man said this: he said, stop asking God to bless what you're doing, Bono. Find out what God's doing; it's already blessed.

You don't have to guess what's on God's mind. If you're looking for God, and can't find God, he's with the poorest, most wretched, most vulnerable lives. That's where God hangs out. If you want to get closer to God, that's a key. In your own moments of despair, in your own moment of wretchedness, you're also closer to God. [And, you knew it was coming, here it is...] But I don't talk about God very much because I'm not a very good advertisement for it.

I've corrected punctuation and one line, the end of the (unattributed) quote from Bill Hybels about not asking God to bless what you're doing. I have to smile at Bono's avoiding naming him, but I do sort of hope it gets back to Hybels that the sentence he gave Bono a year ago is now part of the playlist.

(However, an aside: I strongly associate that line with John Wimber. Any Willow Creek or Vineyard type readers out there who can tell me if Hybels might have been quoting Wimber, or is that also a Hybels line?)

And one more comment: within about a 10 minute interview (intercut with clips of his Liberal Party speech and U2 songs to make it 30), there are two quotes from the New Testament (one unattributed, and one credited to Bob Geldof). I want to comment on the first of them, when the interviewer has asked about bands who lose touch with the spark of greatness that got them started:

Bono: They say where your treasure is there your heart will be also. I know people who have a bit of success, make a bit of money, get a nice apartment, hang some art on the wall, you know -- as Ziggy Pop says, "here comes my Chinese rug." They get into all this stuff and suddenly music is not where they're at, they're more with furniture... it's not a great trade.

Anyone out there who leads a parish, or a Bible study, or whatever: isn't that exactly what we we all work so hard for, trying to inspire people to integrate the Bible? So that when someone asks them a question that is ostensibly a completely secular matter in their professional life, the first thing they will think of is, "Oh, what explains this phenomenon is a principle Jesus taught." What percentage of our folks have Scripture deeply enough integrated that they'd give an answer like this? (I'm not sure I want to know....)

People who bought this book also bought...

I can tell this is going to provide hours of interest.

Barnes and Noble
Weight of Glory C. S. Lewis (makes sense)
Strength to Love Martin Luther King, Jr. (also makes sense)
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God Jonathan Edwards (whoa.)

Amazon.com
Selections from the Book of Psalms by Publishing Grove (smart connection)
Inside the Zoo With U2 by Lola Cashman (oh please no)
U2 / Achtung Baby (the book, that is.)

So... am I getting the sense that the U2 folks hang out at Amazon.com, and the theology folks hang out at BN?

U2 Go Home

The U2 Slane DVD came out today, and I had to drive to a clergy meeting at lunch which was the perfect occasion to run into Best Buy and pick up a copy. I've only had time to watch a couple things, but it seems very real. I wish like heck the book had not gone to the printer, though... because if I could, I would immediately substitute this performance of "Until The End of the World" as the recommended one in the next to the last session of the adult spirituality program in the appendix. Darn.

Let Them Sing It For You

Trivial fun: Go to Let Them Sing It For You, enter your favorite lyric, and, well, let them sing it for you. Just in case you were planning on using "One," it doesn't know the word "lepers."

Walk On by Steve Stockman

If you're interested in the U2 Christian thing and have never purchased Walk On, or want to give it as a Christmas gift to someone, you might be interested in knowing that Christianbook.com is selling it for only $5.99 right now. A cute typo in the product description mis-identitifies the Popmart tour as the Popular tour.

"We do know where this train is going; what we don't know is how many people are prepared to lie across the track."

Personally, I didn't think the AIDS speech at the Liberal Party convention (PDF here) was one of Bono's standout efforts on the topic. I found it a little too self-indulgent, although commentators seem to be falling all over themselves to say how "powerful" it was and so on.

But we're also getting, as we do every single time Bono does something high-profile about AIDS in Africa and debt relief, a new round of shoot-from-the-hip broadsides: either "what on earth does a rock star know about international development?" or "why doesn't he just shut up and spend some of his own money on the cause?" or more frequently both at once.

You know, if you disagree with the guy's position, fine. Not everyone shares his politics; jump right in and start refuting, if you want to. But "what on earth does a rock star know about international development"?! "Why doesn't he just shut up and spend some of his own money on the cause"?! Have these people been living under a rock for the past three years?

Bono and Paul Martin

As many readers of this blog probably already know, today Bono will be speaking in Toronto at the Liberal party convention, asking Paul Martin to build on Canada's commitment to provide generic AIDS drugs to poor countries by tripling Canada's contribution to the Global Fund, pressing other countries to do the same, and keeping Africa on the agenda of the G8 economic summits.
{Update: You can find the video linked here.}

Amazon.ca, MSN, and Paste

The sales rank of our preaching U2 book today on amazon.ca is 3050. This just seems really, really good to me. I mean, it's not the DaVinci Code, but still. [This blog does not endorse the DaVinci Code, yadda yadda yadda.]

MSN Entertainment has three tracks from the forthcoming DVD U2 Go Home: Live From Slane Castle for you to watch online. It looks like it's going to feel much more "live" than Boston. 160,000 people is a lot of people.

I was reading ramblin' man, who links us, and listened to two free tracks he has up by a roots group called Pentecostal Bouffant (which is a great name for a roots group). On the publisher's site, Paste Music, there is a "Paste radio" link, and there were some Over the Rhine numbers on it.

Now, as a sort of follow-up to my post yesterday, this all typifies how I personally interact with pop culture: I am not very hip or in the know, but after I hear about something 4-5 times I feel obligated to check it out. Over the Rhine is a good example; I know they are very widely discussed and respected in Christian circles (and out of them), I even know they postponed their fall tour, but I wasn't (knowingly) familiar with their work. So here was my chance! I asked Paste Radio to play me some Over the Rhine.

It was good enough. Fine. You know, I could see the attraction, but no blinding lights from heaven or anything. Until we got to the song I Radio Heaven, which absolutely froze me at my computer screen. Oh. My. God. I've probably played it 8 times and do not anticipate stopping any time soon.

On Clergy Refusing to Engage with Culture

Just when someone posts an interesting comment, Reblogger starts acting up and I can't reply. Pshaw.
[update: or, it could just have been that I am too long winded - sorry, Ben, it's there now in 2 parts]

Tuning in to a higher power: Divine intervention hits pop culture

Another article (thanks to Relapsed Catholic and Thunderstruck) on the recent proliferation of films and TV shows addressing spiritual issues. Music is not included.

The most telling thing to me is the end of the article, when they call a lot of local clergy to ask for comments. Nearly all of these people, whose vocation presumably involves assisting others in working their faith out in that fluid space where personhood and daily habit and culture intersect, are not really aware of the trend and cannot speak to it. Many of them also say something dismissive.

So let me get this straight: Part of your plan for effective ministry is to deliberately shut yourself out of the main arena in which your culture is addressing religious issues, refuse to familiarize yourself with the theological messages your parishioners hear all week, and then present your own message with no understanding of the real climate in which it's being heard? How's that working for you?

Stuck in a Moment

So, tell me: some of you have been suspicious, haven't you, that maybe only trendy disposable-pop-culture-religion bring-in-the-youth types take this stuff seriously? That our U2 book project may boil down to [for Baby Boomers: the Church of What's Happening Now redux? // for Xers: Buddy Jesus redux?]

Well, what if I sent you to an Eastern Orthodox blog writing about U2 and God? How about an Eastern Orthodox blog that suggests enhancing your Lenten observance by reflecting on "Stuck in a Moment" and St. Andrew of Crete?

Interview with Steve Beard of Thunderstruck

The U2 fansite Interference has posted an interview with Steve Beard about his chapter in that Spiritual Journeys book.

New Directions in Pooh Studies: �berlieferungs- und religionsgeschichtliche Studien zum Pu-Buch

No U2 content at all here, but can't resist. I think this mock scholarly textual analysis of authorship traditions in Winnie The Pooh will be funny to people who slogged through 19th-century German explanations of the documentary hypothesis in Old Testament class, and/or that whole Frazer History of Religions stuff... and not to many other people. Sample:

There is also a tradition that [Pooh] lived under the name of Sanders (W 1.2), which appears only once in our present texts, since for some reason now forgotten, Sanders traditions have been rigorously expunged from the corpus. The name Sanders does however occur in one of the illustrations (W 1.3) in the archaic script, which, belonging as they do to the pre-verbal stage in the transmission of the traditions, have a strong claim to authenticity. There is a secondary and utterly implausible 'explanation' of the two principal names for Pooh, Winnie and Pooh, which is offered by the final redactor and which only displays the editor's acute embarrassment with the double tradition. The complexity of the problem is increased by the appearance within the same chapter of the double name of Piglet's grandfather (Trespassers William), again implausibly explained by the redactor as 'in case he lost one.'

Thanks to the inimitable AKMA.

Amazon has a price at last

Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog is finally fully loaded into the Amazon.com system. And it's listed at $10.47, which is 30% off.

The U2 Xacobeo concert rumor

I had to smile this morning upon discovering U2 Sermons had been visited by someone at the Universidade S. Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. I don't know any more than you guys do, honest.

Book proofreading update

I feel like my eyes are about to fall out of my head. The ms arrived about lunchtime today, and I have to send it back tomorrow, so I've been proofing almost nonstop. I would like to make these comments:
1) I thought 160 pages seemed short! It's over 200.
2) I like Cowley's font choices, epecially the one for quotes.
3) I don't envy our editor having to make calls about lyric quotes - like, if a text is in lower case in the Pop booklet with no punctuation, does that mean all quotations of it should be in lower case with no punctuation?
4) Italics issues. Lots of italics issues. Must have been some computer glitch.
5) I'm kind of amazed how long the spirituality program appendix is, typeset.
6) Our editor made a really smart and U2-literate addition to the sentence about Zooropa in my essay and I am extremely impressed.
7) Whaddaya say: "beatific vision," or "Beatific Vision"? I can go either way.

mini-milestone

We just hit 5000 visitors to this blog.

Worship planning suggestion, a propos of nothing

You know what would make a perfect sequence hymn (or gradual hymn, for those that like to call it that) on Palm Sunday in any church that uses the lectionary? "Falling at Your Feet." Most of the lyrics are an imaginative fleshing-out of Philippians 2, which people would have just heard as the Epistle, and it ends with "not my will, thy will," which people would be just about to hear quoted at the very beginning of the Passion Gospel.

Preaching on this song would be hard, I think, but as essentially a prayer, it's perfect for liturgical use. And how often do you get a piece of music that transitions so obviously and directly from one reading to another?

Nice review of the Shine album with "Falling At Your Feet" comments by Jeffrey Overstreet at Looking Closer, by the way.

Customers who shopped for this item also shopped for these items

Hallelujah, Amazon has it right at last. {revision a few minutes later: no, I spoke too soon. They don't. You can buy it... but... for $0.00. Well, if I were you, I'd run do that right now!}

In other news, I'm expecting to spend Wed-Thurs proofreading the book. Whew.

Steve Garber at The Voice Behind

Just FYI, one of our contributors, Steve Garber, will be speaking this week in the Washington DC area on "The Power of Stories" at an event called Brewing Culture. It's sponsored by The Voice Behind.

The site also has an interesting reprint of an interview with Dennis Claus, the executive producer of the Luther movie. I was surprised to find some of what he said resonating with me about this book....

Amazon.uk listing is up

Well, Get Up Off Your Knees is now on Amazon.UK, though not pre-orderable yet. They have, however, done a much better job with the subject indexing than the American Amazon site.

All Saints Eve and/or Reformation Day

Thanks again to the folks at Friends at the Advent for the repeat invitation. It was really cool to preach in the midst of a Solemn High Mass at a place to which, years before I even went to seminary, I was sneaking down to go to Solemn High Mass. As for the sermon, instead of quoting U2 I ended up quoting both Betty Bowers and Dom Jean Baptiste Chautard.

I went up to Boston early and saw Luther, which was surprisingly good and made me get teary-eyed about the Word of God. It was also a fun history review, making me remember all kinds of things from school: oh, yeah, Prince Frederick... Staupitz.... the Peasants' Rebellion.... and later I remembered, oh, yeah, Luther's hilariously titled book Against the Murdering Thieving Hordes of Peasants.

But they skipped some of the, you know, off-putting, religious parts of the story. So we didn't get "The righteous shall live by faith" or "I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates." Thus we never really heard what Luther's brilliant, earthshaking insight about justification actually was, which is a shame. Still: much better than it could have been.

Another round of links

Thanks to NeoTheo(b)logue, who opines that our preaching U2 book "looks like yet another reason to violate my self-imposed moratorium on book buying," for the link. (By the way, if you're reading this, Daniel, one of our contributors, Mike Kinman, was at that concert with you.) And thanks also to The Ooze Blogs for listing U2 Sermons.

Amazon preorders are up, sort of

You can now preorder Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog from Amazon.com, but they claim not to know the price. Well, it's $14.95 list....

The post 9/11 Elevation Tour shows

Two years ago today I was anticipating heading over to Providence to see U2 the first of two nights at the Dunkin Donuts Center. In the wake of Dave's comment on my post about All Saints, I was thinking about a subsequent discussion on a clergy-only listserv -- someone raised a strong objection when a few of us who had seen U2 on the 3rd leg of the Elevation Tour used the word "liturgy" about that experience. The concern was (like the person) thoughtful, and boiled down to the fear that we were legitimizing a consumerist mentality in which professionals serve up prefabricated experiences to a passive audience.

I went back through that list's archives today and reread the discussion, and since I now have the opportunity to be really self-serving and narcissistic by posting things I write here [;-)], here's something I said which I still stand by.

I would be stunned if those in attendance who are not "churched" didn't experience themselves as much more empowered and less an audience at a U2 concert than they would in a standard Sunday Eucharist. And a large part of my passion about what they did with the 3rd leg of the Elevation tour is precisely that --- not just that people had religious emotions and mystical experiences and grieved together and so on (altho that's great) but that they got to be on board, empowered, and part of creating a spiritual event.

If you want to fault it, fault away -- I can certainly think of criticisms, and there are things about it I would hate to see the church emulate -- but faulting U2 on being "served to people" or non-participatory is, IMHO, a significant misreading of what's going on.

When U2 are involved, everyone seems to put the word "radical" before the word "faith"

Looks like the Notre Dame campus ministry is going to have an interesting few weeks of U2 theology. I had a nice note from Tim; book flyers are on the way!

In the Name of Love: Artists United for Africa

The full tracklisting for the U2 Sparrow records AIDS in Africa charity CD tribute is available now. Here's a reprinted story about this album of Christian CCM artists covering U2 songs from The Body's HIV/AIDS Newsroom. This article from CMCentral is a lot more complete and throws in the tidbit that Steve Averill of Four 5 One designed the thing, and that the packaging is going to include excerpts from The aWAKE Project: Uniting Against the African AIDS Crisis and Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2. The first single will be Beautiful Day (hmm; why does that sentence sound oddly familiar?)

Bono meets Brian McLaren (not really)

A note to say "Thanks for the link" to Rudy, who has declared today U2 Day at Urban Onramps ("Maybe I'll oppress my hip-hop loving staff at Harambee with some Irish beats.")

On the side of a hill, we were filled

[Update 2 months later: we all now know that the rumor reported in the following is definitely not true.]

I don't know if I believe this or not. In fact, I probably don't; I haven't mentioned any number of similar rumors that have appeared in print over the past few months. This one, however, I can't resist: a Spanish-language U2 site is reporting that U2 are booked to play the "Xacobeo" (the Santiago de Compostela holy year festivities). On the Monte del Gozo itself, no less (nearest stop on the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela, called "Mt. Joy" because you can see the spires of the cathedral from there.) The math is fairly easy: Although I believe the entire year counts as the Xacobeo, the trigger event for the party is a sort of Dogma-esque plenary pardon for everyone who walks through the church doors when the feast of St. James (in Spanish, Santiago) falls on a Sunday. That would be July 25, 2004.

Here's another report on it. If it were true, I think this would be a concert to be at. It's probably not true, of course. This kind of stuff usually isn't.

Don't mention the war

I'm preaching for the Friends at the Advent at their Halloween Mass on Friday night. We're using the All Saints readings, for obvious reasons, and I have only one request from the celebrant: "Mention U2." I find that quite funny, since sermon preparation for me would normally be more likely to involve the opposite effort: don't mention U2. And now that I've started working on the sermon, I find it even funnier... because I cannot think of anything U2-related to say about All Saints.

Um, the book is about U2.

Well, Amazon has corrected, at least somewhat, its Get Up Off Your Knees listing.... They have most of the info right now, although they still have not put U2 in the subject index for the book (!) and they still don't have the preorder link up. But this is progress!

I love seeing the U2 book cover on someone else's blog

Thanks to two Quirings, Greg and Heidi, who remind us, respectively, that "life should be fragrant, rooftop to the basement," and "the goal is soul," as well as to Ordinary Community for the links.

Philosophy at 33 1/3 RPM

Probably like everybody else, I've been playing with the brand new "search inside the book" thing at Amazon. And if it's going to turn up interesting discoveries like this mid-90s Robyn Brothers essay Time to Heal, "Desire" Time: The Cyberprophecy of U2's Zoo World Order, I'm all for it. You can only read 2 pages at a shot. However, if you were to "search inside this book" on something generic, like say, "U2," you'd be able to get a pretty good sense of the essay from the Amazon images.

Personal favorite moment: finally seeing someone else (other than me) evoke Bride/Bridegroom mysticism in conjunction with U2. (So frequent in U2 spirituality, so rarely mentioned. Although I would argue at length with anyone who cares to that the immediate influence here is unlikely to be actual medieval mystics.)
Personal favorite phrase: "The sublimation of transcendence is the theme that the band's lyricist repeatedly admits interests him the most."

The essay is from deep inside the mid-90s U2 vision, so it doesn't account at all for anything they've produced since, but I would never have found it without the new search feature. Cool.

A highway with no one on it?

I've had several emails from people saying they can't get to the preorder site this morning. [edit at about 1:45 PM -- it's working for me again now.] The URL is right and the site was available (and viewed by many people) as of Tuesday, so there's probably just a temporary glitch. In the meantime, you can still visit Cowley direct.

"...asserting a theology unique to television."

Folks thinking about the interface between popular culture and faith may enjoy this Beliefnet article on the theology of some current TV shows ("Joan of Arcadia," "Tru Calling," "Wonderfalls," and "Carnivale.")

Update

Thank you as well to Interference and U2 Page for spreading the word about preorders.

Uh, hi everybody

We're the top story on @U2's "bits and bytes" right now, and I've just sent out a whole lot more notifications that the book can be pre-ordered. (Which means not that it is published, but that it isn't yet; last I heard it was at the typesetter.) If you're visiting for the first time, browse around... this blog is run by Beth, and Raewynne and I both welcome all inquiries - as of course does our publisher Cowley.

Preorder info

...So how do you like the cover, over there on the left? Isn't it great?

The dedicated U2 sermon book order site is open for business, and the book is also showing up now at online booksellers like BN.com and Amazon.com.

Remember that sales benefit AIDS work in Africa through the charity TASO, to whom all contributors are donating their royalties.

Friends at the Advent

Well, that was lots of fun. Great people, fun ambiance, fine location, and I even found a parking place a block away. It was also an unexpected treat for me seeing those videos on the big screen. I loved the bartender who went around singing along with everything while we were setting up and proudly told me he had been at the ZooTV St. Patrick's Day U2 concert at the Garden.

After the lecture we had a long Q&A with several very interesting questions, which I should really write down while I still remember them so I can give better answers next time. The one I was the worst prepared for, as those who were there saw, was "what other video should we watch and will you show it to us?" (I realized in the car going home I should have chosen something from ZooTV to highlight a theme about which we hadn't already talked, probably "Until the End of The World" or "The Fly," rather than another Pop one. Of course I know "Stay," which we also ended up watching later, is from Zooropa, but it's still the same thematic stuff.)

Thanks to Alister for his media help, to Jennifer from Cowley for showing up with book flyers, and to Patrick for the invitation. Looking forward to being with the Friends again at the Halloween Mass.

For anyone in the Boston area

Quick reminder that I will be giving a presentation on The Goal is Soul: Pursuing God with U2 on this coming Monday. The talk is part of Friends At The Advent's Theology on Tap series for people in their 20s and 30s. Social time starts at 7 PM.

Raewynne and I have recently put together some other presentation ideas, too...

Care for some poststructuralism with your latte?

I learned from Raewynne's essay in Get Up Off Your Knees about applying the concept of intertextuality in preaching -- something I already felt instinctively, but had not ever learned the name for. Well, from Urban Onramps, here's Rudy Carrasco spontaneously illustrating how an intertextually-minded urban minister and U2 fan drives to the coffee shop.

In the Name of Love: Artists United for Africa

Hm. The good folks over at The Promontory Arts & Faith Conversation Forum don't exactly seem to be jumping up and down with excitement over Sparrow Records' forthcoming CCM U2 tribute album.

People who read blogs4God

Thanks to Journey Inside My Mind for the link.

Apocalypse Without the Beasts

Oh, well, as long as we're talking about Radiohead, why not link this new review of David Dark's Everyday Apocalypse? (Thanks to Kathy.)

By the way, David's website includes an old article from 1996 entitled The Importance of Being Earnest: An Appreciation of U2's Dismantled Image.

Thom Yorke and the sound of Nineveh repenting

A nice article in next-wave on Radiohead as sacred music. The author is from Warehouse 242.

blogs4God

For the good of the order: We're newly listed on blogs4God.

$2 billion is not $3 billion

Dr. Alex Coutinho, the Executive Director of TASO, the charity that Get Up Off Your Knees will benefit, recently received the UN Association's Global Humanitarian Award. Bono was in NY at the UNA-USA Global Leadership Awards Dinner to present it.

If you are concerned about AIDS in Africa and you live in the USA, the week of Oct 13 would be a good time to call your Senators (and Majority Leader Bill Frist) about the Durbin amendment to the Iraq Supplemental. (DATA has even set up a toll-free number, 1-877-HOPE-USA, for you.)

The Presbyterians will tell you exactly how to do this, as will Church World Service.

How much is a lot, exactly?

"Seven thousand Africans are dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease -- it's madness. ... Eighty-seven billion for two countries is a lot, but we're looking for $3 billion this year for a whole continent."
--Bono at the UN on Wednesday

Falsani Fridays: God, Bono, the Cardinal, and the Cubs

Whether or not you read her column for any other reason (I do) I'm sure most of the readers of U2 Sermons have enjoyed Cathleen Falsani's insightful and fearless pieces on Bono and DATA in the Chicago Sun-Times religion section and in Christianity Today. This interview with Falsani is great, and if you are at all interested in intelligent talk on writing about religion, you should read it.

And, even if you just want U2 content, yes, there is plenty. Three brief quotes:
I used to tell people, "I want to take Bono to church. I want to go to church with Bono," never thinking that would actually happen. And then I did it like six times in a week.
+
I�m a huge, huge fan. I�d be lying if I said otherwise. I remember exactly where I was standing when this guy I knew when I was 11 or 12 turned to me and said, "Hey, my brother played this great album for me, it�s this new band from Ireland..."
+
I don�t have an ongoing relationship with him. ... I don�t have his cell phone number. ...Let me be very clear: Bono and I are not friends. So anybody who thinks we are can stop e-mailing me.
+

Some great reflections on working with clergy, writing theology that doesn't read like theology, and outing herself as a Christian in the DATA at Wheaton article. And I had no idea she was at Garrett for seminary. I was literally right across the street at SWTS at about the same time.

Kiss of Heaven

I guess it's Australia week at U2 Sermons. If you would like to hear 30 seconds of Christian worship leader Darlene Zschech's cover of U2�s "Walk On," which closes her new solo album, Kiss of Heaven, you can do it at Word Distribution. (If this is representative, I have to say I don't find it an especially appealing take on the song.)

Kiss of Heaven -- Walk On

Google for this link: Nobel Prize+MacPhisto+Watchman Nee+fish

I've mentioned before the book on How Faith Has Influenced 12 Music Icons, which profiles celebrities (unlike our book) and tries to figure out their beliefs (also unlike our book). Steve Beard of Thunderstuck wrote the sections on Johnny Cash and Bono, and he was on Australian radio yesterday to talk about them, along with Scott Marshall who co-wrote Restless Pilgrim: The Spiritual Journey of Bob Dylan -- another profile, obviously.

"The most limber and enigmatic spiritual provocateur that rock and roll has ever had," says Steve of Bono. The program is called The Spirit of Things, and you can listen to yesterday's edition via RealAudio. If you're only in it for the U2, the Bono segment starts at about 20:00.

Do you think Father Benson would like our U2 book?

Got a kind letter today from the head of Cowley Publications (and SSJE), with all sorts of lovely comments, among them "we are very glad for this exciting collaboration." Still, what will really make the gladness meter go up will be when the book actually comes out....

Rick Warren is rolling over in his, I don't know... SUV?

Yes, yes, Wade has just what we need, a kind of postmodern Zooropa update of the much-marketed "40 Days of Purpose" program! Sign me up! All is vanity!

Another "Pop Culture in the Pulpit" reprint

An Akron, Ohio paper just picked up the profile of Raewynne that ran at the end of August. Popular music, shows help ministers connect faith to everyday life; book to use U2 as a link, they say.

U2 sermons: Minor format change

I read that you should have titles in your blog to make things easier for search engines.

Announcement: I will now have titles in the U2 sermons blog to make things easier for search engines.

Well, the God I believe in isn't... [your answer here]

Had email from Bob at The Corner this morning suggesting I link to this quote from Bono's forward to They've Hijacked God. Thanks Bob (and Darren)! I remember this going around in "U2 and Christianity" circles about 18 months ago; but you know what is interesting, I checked to see if the book had ever been published, and the only references on the web I can find to it are to that one article about Bono having written a forward. So maybe it didn't happen.

I also said to Bob in email that it would be interesting, for someone who was motivated, to kind of trace Bono's attitude to the church. There's (and I've now had time to locate it) this NME U2 profile from 1982 where the reporter follows the three Christian members of U2 to a church they've been invited to by fans and clearly can't believe Bono likes it... and then, you know, there's Mirrorball Man and "a preacher on the old time Gospel hour stealing money from the sick and the old" and everything... and then (see that Bono's American Prayer article) there's the more recent chumming around with Bill Hybels and Michael W. Smith....

Maybe it's time for another Get Up Off Your Knees book excerpt. This is from Raewynne's essay " 'Woo me, sister; move me, brother!' What does pop culture have to do with preaching? "

Culture critiques and shapes faith; faith critiques and shapes culture. The relationship is dialectical � as we pay attention to a specific instance of the influence of culture on faith, we become aware of where that influence has itself been shaped by faith, and so on, in a never-ending dance....

Christianity likewise has both shaped and been shaped by the cultures that surround it. In the New Testament period, we see instances of its accommodation to the Greco-Roman world � for example, in discussions of circumcision, women covering their heads, and the eating of unclean meats � and, particularly from the time of Constantine on, its centrality in shaping Western civilization.

But for the most part, this happens not so much on a formal level, in the councils of the church or through direct Scriptural decree, but on an informal level, in the lives and communities of the faithful, from which it trickles up to the structures. People grab hold of their culture in one hand and their religion in the other, and then try to work out how it is that they can not only co-exist, but be in harmony. They ask questions and forge answers, they look for places of genuine coherence, for authentic emotion, for congruity with experience. Both culture and religion tap into the very essence of who we are; they are the building blocks of our identity. It is no wonder, then, that they are integrally and substantially related.

And that is particularly true of the relationship between pop culture, as expressed in music, and Christian faith. Robert Schreiter suggests in his book, Constructing Local Theologies, that �the poet, the prophet, the teacher . . . may be among those who give leadership to the actual shaping into words of the response of faith.� They give voice to the voices that are not being heard.

It is here that U2 belongs: singing the laments of Zion, echoing the prophetic shouts for justice, calling the faithful and the faith-less to action. And with U2 join the many preachers who have heard the band�s work and struggled to give voice to the theologies which emerge from its interaction with the sacred. They give voice not only to their own longings and hopes, but to those of our culture alongside those of our tradition � so that we learn to speak a truly colloquial language of faith.

A nice article about Johnny Cash by The Edge just came out, and in it he tells about the recording of The Wanderer, the sort of weird Ecclesiastes-spawn on Pop (I referenced it here when Cash died.) It just has all the hallmarks of one of those Holy Spirit events.

I think we all thought, 'Aw, Bono's just trying to create some sort of distraction from the fact that he really has no idea what he wants to do on the song, this is just one crazy idea too far.' But whenever something like that happens I've learned to bite my tongue somewhat, because those crazy ideas often turn out to be the ones that come to pass, and indeed this was one of those. We got on the phone pretty much immediately to try and get through to Johnny, and he said he'd love to come down just to say hello, and, y'know, if it was something he could sing on, great, he'd be up for it.
...[Johnny] did two vocals, that was it, we didn't even get into, 'Could you try it this way?' it was literally a case of, 'I can't quite believe what's going on!' There was a little element of giddiness in the room. After he left and we'd said our goodbyes, everyone just looked at each other and went, 'What just happened?!!'

Uh, yeah... I know that feeling exactly.

Bravo U2log.

I like the line about being "Christian by faith, not by genre" in this article on Switchfoot. Contains bonus "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" reference and funny Bono story. (Thanks to Thunderstruck.)

You can read here about the U2 and spirituality presentation I'll be giving in Boston next month. Scroll down, but not too fast, because the folks speaking before me sound really good.

What I want to know is whether hanging out with "Friends at the Advent" qualifies me to meet the author of their Ask Liesl: Hagiographer to the Stars!

So I've been listening to the CDs of a Eugene Peterson lecture series I bought, called "Eat This Book." And in it he is talking about the rarity of people who actually do that, actually shape themselves by what he calls "the primary text of the Christian life" -- the rarity of people who

...don't simply learn or study Scripture, [but] assimilate it. Take it into [their] lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus' name, hands raised in adoration to the Father.

See, there's our big problem right there. We have way too many people lobbing undigested hard lumps of Scripture at their neighbors, but also way too many people who haven't bothered to assimilate any Scripture before deciding what an act of love even looks like.

The metabolizing image brought to mind a comment by David DiSabatino in his purple prose Prism article on U2: "Bono offers me a living exemplar to diffuse the stereotypes that non-Christians inevitably hold of Christians (By simply dropping his name I can minimize the damage done by televangelist scandals or Harry Potter book burnings). ... he has shown me that the gospel can weave itself into the fabric of my daily life without making me act and speak like a Martian."

See, this is why we need more metabolizers.

Today marked our 3000th visit, which was made by someone from Canada.

Thanks to alert archive reader Edward, I can now link to an actual picture of something I mentioned on August 15: O clement, O loving, O Edge's-equipment-guarding Virgin Mary.

It's nice to learn that @U2's lyric pages are back up. It's not the only place to go for reliable lyrics, of course, but it is the only place to go for Angela Pancella's Drawing their Fish in the Sand, the archive of U2 Biblical references. These include direct Bible quotes, clear conceptual references, and linguistic allusions, and there are a lot of each. How conscious was that? We'll never know.

I grew up in Nashville, so I can harp on this: today my hometown paper covers CCM's professional provocateur Steve Taylor heading up a meeting with Senator Bill Frist on behalf of DATA. Several quotes:

...Taylor said the issue was resonating in many evangelical Christian communities particularly disturbed by the orphans left behind when parents die of AIDS. There are an estimated 11 million AIDS orphans in Africa. ''We believe we represent a large constituency, and we're saying these voters want action on this issue now,'' Taylor said.

...''It just seems like the main crisis of my generation,'' said Matt Slocum of the band Sixpence None the Richer, whose hits include Kiss Me and There She Goes.

...''I'm here to tell people in America that the $3 billion money is not even enough,'' said Agnes Nyamayarwo, who was part of the meeting at the Frist office. ''That $3 billion could be used by Uganda alone."

Stephen Shields, who runs faithmaps and whom I bumped into online a few times back when I used to be really involved in GenX stuff (which was back when churches believed in GenX), reveals on his blog emergesque that he was there at the recent USA Today event with Bono. OK, I'm impressed.

Well, even if the mainstream media can't, at least Religion News Service can still figure out what Christian groups people at an AIDS press conference are representing!

RNS also put this in: During the news conference, Bono explained why he joined forces with religious leaders who have been fighting for assistance to address AIDS and other humanitarian needs far longer than he has. "I'm an amateur and they're professionals," he said, standing before reporters in a black jacket surrounded by ministers with clerical collars. "They're my bodyguards and God's their bodyguard so I reckon...it's just the smart thing to do."

I've developed a habit of running searches that brought people to U2 Sermons myself, to see what else they pull up, and somebody was here recently looking for J33-3. (In case they make it back and didn't find it, it's a verse from Jeremiah --"Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things that you do not know." When in doubt, check the FAQs.)

Anyway, I think it's pretty common knowledge that the cover of All That You Can't Leave Behind was doctored to cover over the gate sign F21-36 in favor of that Bible reference. But an archive post on a blog called Waving or Drowning pointed something else out, and it's still true: nearly 3 years after the release of the album, Amazon.com continues to display the undoctored version. (Click to enlarge the cover and see.)

Since we observed another contributor's.... Today is the 16th anniversary of my first U2 show (Boston Garden, 1987). This is not the show where the lighting failed and rather than stop the show, they just played for an hour with the house lights on: it's the night after, where they had just gotten the key to the city. There was a sound problem of some sort with the guitar, though, and Bono just waved the band off and led us in "I Still Haven't Found" a cappella nearly twice through, and I remember sitting there thinking: I cannot believe this is happening.

When I got a CD of this show some years later, I was stunned to discover that Bono's rant/prophecy-thing in "Bullet the Blue Sky" that night had been about homelessness. Not because that was one of the biggest issues in Boston then, which it was -- but because I went to work for a homeless shelter three months later.

There's been lots of coverage of yesterday's AIDS in Africa/ Millennium Challenge press conference with Bono and several religious leaders. A video is at the Kaiser Health Network. The ELCA was certainly well represented by the guy from Bread for the World and another bishop.

Amusing how the press can't even get religious identifications straight anymore -- the CME bishop was referred to as Episcopalian by Reuters, and all the religious leaders were identified as bishops of Bush's United Methodist denomination by Yahoo. (In reality, there was no one from either ECUSA or the UMC present.) Plus, nobody in the secular media was able to figure out that the guy from World Vision was there to represent evangelicalism.

Anyway, as usual, Agnes Nyamayarwo, an AIDS nurse from this book's charity, TASO in Uganda, stole the show. "People are coming to me asking me, where is the money? Where is the promise that Bush made? We are dying." Apparently she is about to go on tour again, appearing in Tampa tonight at the University of Southern (or is it just "South"?) Florida, and in Nashville on Friday at Vanderbilt University Divinity School (with what they're calling "DATA artists," which I assume means Christian performers.) More power to her.

For readers in the USA: Numerous organizations, including Bono's DATA, are sponsoring a global AIDS call-in day to the White House tomorrow, September 16th. You can read about how to participate here.

One day I'll die; the choice will not be mine.

That, and the recent post about Henry VanderSpek's sermon mentioning the value of contemplating our deaths, is probably my only excuse for U2 content here. Still, I want to share this link to an extraordinary art piece on the Internet. After Life: Streatham Cemetery, the Four Seasons by Jonathan Clark is a series of photos of a cemetery, taken over 2 years, with slight Flash enhancements and a sparse soundtrack. The four seasons can be clicked on at the top left; selecting any cross within a season leads you to a different photograph, some of which are still and some of which respond to mouseover.

Many of the photographs are stunning in themselves, but I found entering into the whole ensemble a moving and numinous experience. It seems to me to be a sort of Christian digital-age equivalent to the classic Buddhist meditation on the corpse.

The site repays attention and does not repay inattention, so I would advise you not to bother visiting if you aren't willing to invest perhaps 10 minutes in contemplation, moving slowly through several pictures.

I've mentioned the U2-CORE-Dublin connections from Cathedral Church of the Advent before. This announcement by their Dean made me laugh out loud (you must read all the way to the end).

I bought that Eoghan Heaslip CD, by the way. The best track is #10, which I've been tooling around my little town singing along to in the car: "Lord it's your selflessness/ that covers my weakness/ Lord it's your mercy/ Lord it's your mercy."

If you want to do something in memory of Johnny Cash, you could do worse than re-read the lyrics to the song he sings on U2's Zooropa.

I'm proud to say that I worked with Johnny Cash, and when he came through the studio door for the first time it was like Moses himself had arrived. He is a character of truly biblical proportions, with a voice, all wailing freight trains and thundering prairies, like the landscape of his beloved America. Before I got to see it with my own eyes, I had a picture of it through Johnny Cash's singing. He has a soul as big as a continent, full of righteous anger mixed with human compassion. A true individual in a land founded on individuality. There will never be another like him, and he could have come from nowhere else.
--The Edge

Raewynne and I were chatting by email tonight about search strings that land people here. One I've seen a few times is "Eugene Peterson Bono," and I clicked on it out of curiosity to see what else would come up. Well, interestingly, something that did was a Google-Words ad for "Eugene Peterson courses and lectures on CD and tape." Really? I thought.

Yes, really. Regent College, where he used to teach, has a slew of them (as well as lots of things by other people). It made me miss seminary. I even ordered one, although no matter what I do I can't get the thing to link to an individual product. I bought Eat This Book: The Holy Community at Table with Holy Scripture. Now, of course Eugene Peterson wrote the introduction to our U2 book, Get Up Off Your Knees, but apart from that, I'm not sure how to argue that my discovery has U2 content - other than, a big stretch, that there is a lot about David, earthiness, and the Psalms (including one lecture with the great title "Why did Uzzah die? Why did David dance?")

Even if you have no interest in buying anything, you can listen to excerpts on Real Player of lectures. Cool!

"Their lives are bigger than any big idea."

One more reprint of the article on Raewynne and preaching pop culture, from a few days ago in Bismarck ND.

We did not receive any sermons using U2's scathingly self-aware meditation on celebrity, "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me," which is a darn shame. However, U2page has just put up a long, informal piece which wanders through the lyrics in three possible readings: if they were sung by the self-consciously manufactured '90s public persona "Bono," if they were sung by the character MacPhisto, and if they were sung from Jesus' point of view.

A sample, from the commentary on the last line in the jaw-dropping verse
They want you to be Jesus/They'll go down on one knee
But they'll want their money back/If you're alive at thirty-three
And you're turning tricks/With your crucifix
You're a star


Earlier in the song, [the "Bono" character] expressed the idea that his fame was forced on him, or at the very least unexpected or even undeserved. But here he turns that concept on its head by saying he is actually abusing or desecrating that position (�turning tricks�, which places the blame squarely on his own shoulders). If he had ended the verse with �alive at thirty-three�, it would have been a bitter resentment of the position celebrity thrusts upon him. But by continuing it with the �turning tricks� couplet, he takes the blame back on himself. He calls himself a charlatan and a fake.

Read the whole thing here.

I'm not sure I've ever linked to the blog of our contributor Wade Hodges, whose sermon on Grace is part of the closing group in Get Up Off Your Knees (we've tried to arrange the sermons to draw a very loose redemptive plot line - you know, like a U2 concert - but who knows if we succeeded....) Anyway, Wade is into the Kingdom of God these days, which in Jesus' book is a very good thing to be into.

A notice from Steve Stockman, who has a sermon on "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" in our preaching U2 book, and is also the author of Walk On, about the fall return of his radio show:

after a summer in hibernation
RHYTHM AND SOUL
from Sunday September 7 at 8.03pm (UK time)
and for the entire week after when you want to listen
www.bbc.co.uk/ni/religion/rhythmandsoul
Steve Stockman brings you the best in contemporary music with a spiritual twist, music that is not just good but good for something...
keep the door of your soul ajar...
likely to feature Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Neil Young, Mark Heard, Radiohead, Gillian Welch, Denison Witmer, Switchfoot, Pedro The Lion, Over The Rhine, Spiritualized, Joni Mitchell, Rich Mullins, Willard Grant Conspiracy, U2, Bebo Norman, Johnny Cash, The Waterboys...

A new sermon excerpt, as promised. This is by Henry VanderSpek, who traces the theme of mortality in U2 with special attention to their most recent work.

Perhaps part of the problem is that Western culture has lost the thread of reasoning and motivation to contemplate death. "Why bother with such a depressing task? Leave it to medieval monks to keep a skull on their desk for meditating on life�s brevity! I�ve got things to do, places to go. Life is too short to walk around moping and being depressed. I need to make my mark in life."

It is interesting that "Kite" asks the question of life, "Did I waste it?" What allows one to really make a mark in this world? Those obsessed by beauty and youth are rarely remembered for their life�s work. Only those who are freed from the fear of death � often hidden in an obsession with beauty, youth, wealth, or power � can really go on to accomplish great things. Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King will be remembered years after the most fashionable stars of their day. It is an ironic paradox that only once we get over our fear of death can we then begin to produce something significant and memorable.

Thanks to Darren Friesen for the link. His post reminds me that sometime soon I do need to post another book excerpt - so much of the news this past week has just been about press the book is getting.

As an American, I've not surprisingly never been to Greenbelt. I do occasionally check Jonny Baker's blog, though, and followed his link to read the liturgy from the closing Greenbelt communion service (PDF file - description here if you don't have Acrobat). Interesting (to me: this may be real old hat to Greenbelters) to notice that one of his collaborators in writing the liturgy was Martin Wroe, the editor of U2's official website.

While looking around for what else Wroe had done (he's a journalist and an old hand at Greenbelt, apparently) I was suprised to find out that the sort of fresh, questioning spoken meditation with music that was going around on the internet last Christmas (I think: "welcome to the body, God; thank you Jesus Christ for being body among us") was also written by him. (You can see the whole CD and hear a couple there.) And he also wrote that Seven Last Words meditation on re:jesus. (I do the re:jesus online daily prayers a few times a week.)

My UK readers are probably smiling condescendingly at this point and saying "well, everyone knows that." But I didn't.

Reblogger anesti! Alethos Anesti! You can comment again!

Oh, I forgot to say: thanks to Ramblin' Man for the link.

On a personal note, I'd just like to say that the past week has been going really well for us: the disposable mobile phone, the three-blade razor... and over 450 visits to the blog since the Inquirer story came out.
(For anyone who can't tell, that was a U2 Grammy acceptance speech joke.)
The only thing that isn't going well is Reblogger. We need a kind of Lazarus event here.

I'm told the U2 book and Raewynne were in the Washington Post on Saturday, but I can't find it online. If anyone does, please send me a link. (So sorry about the lack of commenting ability.)

Just for completion's sake, there were also reprints in the Columbus Ledger-Inquirer, the Pew Forum on religion and public life, Oklahoma Daily, ChristDot, the Montgomery Advertiser, the Anniston Star, and the St Augustine Record. This doesn't count people who just linked to the story rather than publishing it.

Incidentally, if you're here because you saw it somewhere other than the above list, emailing me a link or a reference -- to u2sermons (at) comcast (dot) net -- would be really helpful.