Lament!

As I’ve been reflecting on lyrics of the songs that I have been listening to I guess there has been a few themes emerging. Putting to one side the frequent topics of love and loss, I’ve previously commented on those lyrics that are searching for meaning in life - either with a spiritual dimension or the desire for wholesome relationships.

Another theme that runs throughout popular music is that of lament or protest. In the 60s, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez et al cornered the market in protest songs about war and peace, justice and the threat of nuclear Armageddon - to mention just a few (‘where have all the flowers gone?). Such concerns continue to be explored by present-day lyrical poets. Now of course there are other issues such as the disparity of wealth and power between western nations and the two-thirds world; ecological threats/disasters and increasingly the emergence of new threats coming from fundamentalist interpretations of religion.

In his slim but powerful volume ‘Subversive Christianity’ Canadian academic Brian Walsh writes about ‘Imagining God in dangerous times’. The first edition came out in 1992 and was set against the backcloth of the demolition of the Berlin Wall and the ‘end of communism.’  Walsh looked at the complacent writing of US bureaucrat Francis Fukuyama who believed that the world was entering the era marked by ‘the end of history’ where consumerist, materialistic, western democracy would spread across the globe.

Walsh critiqued this view with reference to two prophets. The contemporary Canadian songwriter Bruce Cockburn and the ancient prophet Jeremiah. Both prophets used the culture of their times as a vehicle to express anguish at complacency, exploitation and injustice. Both point to the catastrophic effect of deserting the one who provides stability, justice and hope; whose rejection leaves a void that is filled by forces of evil.  Jeremiah is speaking to God’s people in exile and to some extent God’s people are still in exile. The holistic view of the Jewish faith of course means that when the prophet condemns the religious leaders he is also speaking out against political authorities – there is no distinction. Prophecy, Walsh concludes still has a part to play in life today and popular culture.

The particular aspect of Walsh’s thesis that I wish to take up is the need for lament:

The church is called to mourn and only out of our lament might hope be born.  Only in a context of lament will we find a path of faithfulness in the midst of collapse (119)

Walsh makes a strong case that the church has been ‘sucked into our secular culture’ (29):

The dominant world view, the all pervasive secular consciousness, has captured our lives… While we were fighting with each other […] we were asleep to the secularisation of our lives and of our most fundamental values. We simply bought into the materialistic, prestige-orientated, secular values of our age without ever noticing that that (sic) is what was going on. The church is asleep, to her own cultural entrapment. (29)

He suggest that the church has become numb to its real situation and it needs to be ready  to critique and face opposition and thus rediscover the prophetic task of cutting through complacency and numbness:

Prophecy refuses to allow those who say ‘peace, peace’ or those who say ‘the-Church-is-OK-so-don’t-rock-the-boat’ to keep us in the perpetual numbness of a dream world where everything is OK and nothing ever changes. (37)

He considers that the church’s task is to give public expression to pain and grief, very much following in the footsteps of Jesus when he taught ‘Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh,’ and ‘woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.’ (Luke 6: 21,25)

Public expressions of grief, mourning and tears are of themselves radical critiques of the present order in the way they confront brokenness, oppression, failed expectations and empty promises. That’s why the church has a part to play when there are national and local disasters - and long may this continue.

Walsh wrote a postscript in 2014 when the world was of course a very different place from 1992. The predicted benign conquest of western-style democracy spearheaded by USA looked very different after 9/11. The economic crises of 2008 brought new threats to global security. Reading this in September 2015, with the daily stream of refugees crossing our TV screens and the various political blandishments that follow, the need for lament is surely even greater.

So how does this impact upon my theme of encountering spirituality in popular culture?

One reaction to Walsh’s work is to ask whether the church, its preachers (and me?) are taking our prophetic role seriously? Are we too complacent about the state of the church, the state of the world, of our communities? What’s the role of lament in our worship and church life? Are our internal preoccupations making us numb to real needs, threats and pains?

It occurs to me that to some extent, the task of prophecy has been outsourced to those outside the church. I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the lyrics of the bands I listened to over the summer again. I didn’t have to search too far to find words of lament and prophecy.  Surely one thing that we (I) can do, should do, is to discover what are the current issues that concern people in our culture? What makes people lament today?

I just took a walk through the checkpoint

Past columns of poor Arab sons

They queue through the day for a chance to make pay

For something to put in their mouths

He can’t sleep at night without gunfire

The lullaby puts him to sleep.

(The Eight Stations of The Cross Kebab House – Belle and Sebastian)

While were living

The dreams we have as children/ Fade away

(Fade Away – Noel Gallagher)

Images of perfection, suntan and napalm

Grenada – Haiti – Poland – Nicaragua

Who shall we choose for our morality

I’m thinking right now of Hollywood tragedy

Big mac: smack: phoenix r: please smile y’all

Cuba, Mexico, can’t cauterize our discipline

Your idols speak so much of the abyss

Yet your morals only run as deep as the surface’

(IfwhiteAmericatoldthetruthforonedaytehworldwouldfallapart – Manic Street Preachers)

Libraries gave us power

Then work came and made us free

What price now for a shallow piece of dignity.

(Design for Life – Manic Street Preachers)

Don’t leave me here this place is for savage

Shot to pieces back in the heaven

Back in hell fire and running the gate

Starting a riot and plan an escape

Babies growing up asking questions

Looking for help for life and lessons.

(The Wonderwhy – Wolf Alice)

I predict an earthquake up in here

Cause we throw bombs on it.

(Earthquake – Labrinth)

And this was just a random selection! Plenty of lament but sometimes (often?) without much hope. Today’s prophets are quite open about the perceived failure of the church to address their concerns:

Just looking for a protector

God never reached out in time

There’s love, there is a saviour

But that aint no love of mine.

(Silk – Wolf Alice)

Cause somewhere in the bible says that we’re all sinners

Now far away from what I believe, the world is fade

And I’m with the sheep

So recreate me, and make me pure

Maybe I’ll be half the man I was before.

(Under the Knife – Labrinth)

Remember these are the songs that are joined in with gusto at Festivals, danced to and listened to on ipods. The words of our modern prophets are the soundtrack of our generation. But where is the hope?

Turning again to Jeremiah, Walsh points out that even in the desperation of captivity and the hopelessness of Israel’s situation, he did a simple thing – he bought a field in enemy territory. This was a powerful symbol of hope that one day that land would be restored. The prophet also offered the sign of a new relationship with God, the new covenant that would be written on people’s hearts:

We live our lives in terms of hope. And if there is no possibility for renewal, return, reconciliation, if there is no hope for redemption, then in the face of exile, despair is the only option. (88)

God calls God’s people through the words of Jeremiah to make the best of their exile by buying land, building houses, marrying and having children; but at the same time they are never to lose sight of the promise that one day they will be restored to become again the people they were destined to be.

Such engagement with the culture of our day is I feel essential if we are to make sense of what it means to be Christian people in 21^st Century. We need to listen to the lament of popular culture, we need to rediscover the importance of prophecy; we need publicly to shed tears for what the world has become. But at the same time we must make connections between what is, what might be and what can be, as we live out the hope that is within us.