SOUL SURMISE

WHY THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO... BOB DYLAN?

(On May 20th at 7pm the Fitzroy Music Collective will do The Gospel According To... Bob Dylan. Why would a Church choose to do such a night...?)

Bob Dylan has been described as one of the most influential people of the 20^th Century. The folk singer who went electric and influenced rock music fundamentally is described by one biographer, "There are giant figures in art who are sublimely good—Mozart, Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Shakespeare, Dickens. Dylan ranks alongside these artists.^” Nor is he limited in his awards to music. He has won the Pulitzer Prize Special Citations and Award and recently President Obama presented him with the National Medal of Arts. Doing the rounds this week on Facebook is a clip of renowned theologian NT Wright singing Dylan’s When the Ship Comes In, in Church, as an illustration of eschatology. Yet, NT Wright, or even us in Fitzroy, are not the first nor will we be the last to look at the work of Bob Dylan from a theological perspective. Dylan’s work has been of deep fascination to Christians and has been the subject of books, “Restless Pilgrim,” “The Gospel According To Bob Dylan,” “Tangled Up In The Bible” as well as a chapter in my own The Rock Cries Out.

My own journey with Bob came in 1979. It was the year that both he and I discovered the Christian faith. I remember sitting at Glen Watford in Scarborough, Ontario, waiting for my cousin to do her swimming lesson, reading Rolling Stone on the grass in the sun. I was a very recent convert and to read that Dylan had decided to follow Jesus too was big news for a rock fan like me. I wasn’t a Dylan fan though. It was a few months before I would borrow Slow Train Coming and fall in love with that voice and those lyrics. The next two albums along with Slow Train, which make up what has been called the Christian Trilogy, were the soundtrack of the first few years of my Christian journey. They were a rich seam of songs of theology, commitment, defiance and Bible story.

Of course as we bring Bob Dylan’s music into Church there will be a healthy diet from these albums. However, in my book The Rock Cries Out, I argued that Dylan was much more prophetic in his earlier albums. His Civil Rights’ influenced songs of the early sixties and the mid sixties songs about the changing culture are powerful comments of truth with myriads of Old and New Testament references. In our Gospel According To... song list you will also find songs from his post Christian career where again the Bible is a rich resource and challenges for personal and social behaviour are common and sharp as the proverbial sword!

Dylan himself is a mysterious human being, giving little away. He has never renounced that Christian faith that he proclaimed in that Christian Trilogy and has kept his interest in the Jewish faith of his upbringing. There is a great quotation on Wikipedia about Dylan’s quirky Christmas album from a few years ago – “In a 2009 interview with Bill Flanagan promoting his Christmas LP, Christmas in the Heart, Flanagan commented on the "heroic performance" Dylan gave of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and that Dylan "delivered the song like a true believer". Dylan replied: "Well, I am a true believer.”

 

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO... JACK WHITE... AND JESUS TOO!!!

In an interview with the Observer Music Magazine Jack White from rock band The White Stripes pointed his finger at the spirit of his age. ““It’s pathetic in America. Everyone thinks they can have whatever they want. They’re really spoiled and gluttonous; they always want more and bigger and better and all that jazz, and the fastest and the newest toy – and it’s not necessary. People in America, especially don’t want anyone to tell them that there’s any sort of rules, or limitations. They don’t want, “You can’t do that,” or “You can only have this”. Everyone wants to eat their dessert first.”

In my sermon yesterday morning ( I opened up the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man which basically damned the Rich Man to hell for his conspicuous consumerism and desire for the dessert first. It is a hard word to a congregation full people who fit the character sketch and CV of the rich man and not one that looks or lives anywhere near Lazarus. It is a story that goes with Jesus comments “blessed are the poor” and “woe to you who are rich.”  We could paraphrase “Woe to those who got their dessert first.”

As Christians we need to be alert to the weaknesses of our conditioning. White’s words are an astute analysis of the soul of our times. We are its victims. It is all around us, sucking us in, moulding us and shaping us. Being the victims does not excuse us. We need to bring to bear on our disposition the challenge of the Gospel. It is not just a marked contrast; it is an antithesis of all that the world would sell us. Jesus birth rings in a new way to live. Here is the King of all Kings on a bed of straw, poor, vulnerable and dependent, soon fleeing like a refugee to escape the political death squads. God has shown us the selfless sacrificial alternative; an opposite way that sees life lived for what is given away not accumulated. It is a life of precarious bravery not comfortable safety, of giving up his rights for the salvation of others, not demanding or even expecting everything to fall into place. This Jesus way is about abundant blessing but not the blessings expected in a world where we want to eat our dessert first. 

And Jesus whispers still; follow me. It is impossible without the daily taking up the cross and heading off no matter what the cost. The cross is not made up off quality silver and bought in the coolest high street jewellers. WWJD is not something to be worn as a fashionable wrist band. What Would Jesus Do is a moment by moment question that inconveniences our lives and leaves us with the nuisance of having to befriend the unlovely, the stigma labelled outsider and the violent enemy.

The revolution that was Jesus birth became his teaching. The Beatitudes are simply ridiculous in the context of the world we live in. In our world the rich are blessed, the promotion is blessed, the expensive car is blessed, the prestigious post code is blessed; they are the way to get voted into eldership certainly! The kingdom of God is upside down. The poor are blessed, the meek inherit, the peacemakers get the kingdom of God. It is time that we as the Church of Christ heard the words of Jack White and then examined the lifestyles of those of us who claim to follow the humble, impoverished carpenter who was tortured and rejected and ask whether we reflect the world or are the torch bearers of a new way, living out the words of the one we say we are following.     

WHY THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO... CHRISTY MOORE

 

(as a Fitzroy collective of musicians perform The Gospel According To... Christy Moore twice this week, in St Oliver Plunkett's, Lenadoon March 15th and Fitzroy 18th, Stocki stops to ask why a group of Jesus followers would do such a thing!)

I will be totally honest and confess that the The Gospel According to... Christy Moore started as a gimmick but over the course of six months turned into a serious spiritual project. Initially I was asking myself how we Fitzroy Presbyterian Church could encourage some of the thousands of students who live around our building into the Church for an event. One of the gentle ways we have been using to encourage people to re-engage with Church and Christian faith has been a series of Gospel According To... events where the Fitzroy collective of musicians play cover version of a particular artist and I draw some spiritual meaning from the songs. We have done U2, Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison. The vast majority of our local residents are students and the vast majority come from the nationalist community where Christy Moore is a hero. If we did a Gospel According To... Christy Moore I thought, they’d maybe come along. 

A change came when I made a hasty decision on an evening event at Fitzroy. An American group from Fuller University were with us and one of their staff said he had been singing Irish songs to the students and I asked him up to sing one. When he started into The Fields Of Athenry I was sitting beside him wondering if this song had any right to be sung in Church. It was then that I had an epiphany. The Fields Of Athenry and some of the other Irish songs that Christy Moore sings are songs of oppression with an Old Testament ring to them and a hope for the liberation from oppression (e.g. Amos 5) that Jesus declared right at the outset of his ministry (Luke 4: 18-19).

This revelation took me to a place of social discomfort. I was born and raised in the Protestant Unionist British side of the tragedy of Irish divide. As a result the oppression that Christy Moore sings about through hundreds of years of Irish history has been caused by those of us intending to sing the songs and commentate upon them. The youth of today would cry “Awkward.” Last year in Fitzroy though we had author Nicholas Wolterstorff who has said, “In taking side of the exploited, Christians find themselves in opposition to some of those who confess the same Lord.”

It is more of this discomfort that the Irish people need if we are going to be honest and authentic with our former enemies, ourselves and our God. In 2 Chronicles 7:14 God promised them people, “¹⁴ if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” This is one of those ways when we humble ourselves and admit to having and turn from our wicked part of the tragedy. That we should be doing this event in a Catholic Church in Lenadoon makes it even more poignant.

This has been part of our DNA in Fitzroy for thirty years. Winners of the Pax Christi Peace Prize, Fitzroy’s relationship with Clonard Monastery on the Falls Road is of worldwide renown. I was called to be minister in a Church filled with very brave people who met with a great deal of criticism and all kinds of vicious lies about their faith from their own community and also put their very lives in vulnerable places to make a significant contribution to the peace process in N. Ireland. This event is a very gentle follow up to that tradition.

Christy Moore sings a lot about his dissatisfaction with the Church. On Gospel According To... evening we look for hymns and prayers in the artists we choose and then we seek to unpack any of their work that caresses with the Christian faith. It took a little bit longer with Christy but hymns and prayers we found. The beautiful Listen has a call to be aware of God feel that is a lovely opening prayer/hymn. Jimmy MacCarthy’s Bright Blue Rose is a deeply holy hymn and I shared a very spiritual communal sing of it at Christy Moore’s recent gig in Belfast. The Least We Can Do is a commitment calling closing prayer/hymn. In between we will look at how Moore sings about oppression in Ireland and beyond and find a few clues as to a better Ireland and a better world. This is no longer a gimmick but a religious mission!

THE HOLY ALL AROUND...IN VAN MORRISON; PAUSE FOR THOUGHT (28.2.12) original script

1912 will see the world turn its eyes to East Belfast. There, just a few miles from where I live, Belfast shipyard workers built the most famous ship that ever sailed... and sank; The Titanic. Half a century after Titanic, in the shadow of this shipyard, in the myriad of narrow, drab and claustrophobic streets a piece of art was created in the most inauspicious of all small two up, two down houses that has had rock critics using words like holiness to describe it.

Van Morrison’s iconic record Astral Weeks is like the rarest of meteorites appearing in a night sky without warning. It is an acoustic, ambient blues and jazz fusion with pain, death, love, romance and transcendental yelping that draws from a legacy of Woody Guthrie, evangelical Christianity and a transvestite called Madame George among many other things. Within its genius it is easy to trace the themes that would keep Van Morrison in muse for the rest of his career; childlike visions, his Belfast upbringing, religion and these continual moments of spiritual epiphany even in the middle of dark nights of the soul. As you listen to Astral Weeks you can feel one young man’s pain and as you are pulled into the slipstream and viaducts of his dreams you journey with him towards redemption. In the midst of the common and most ordinary Van Morrison captures a vivid vibrant vision of the sacred and holy. That same Hyndford Street where Astral Weeks was written became a song in its own right in 1991. Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary Morrison calls it dreaming in God. As yet another songs says, it is an ability to transcend the ritual and find the spiritual.

Holiness is all around us. As William Blake put it,

“See the Lord in a grain of sand

And heaven in a wild flower

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour”

Or cleric, poet and author Mike Starkey put it:

 “The place you are is full of wonders

Even if that place is a wilderness

Open your eyes wide

Look for long enough and you will see.”

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN... ROCK'S CATHOLIC BISHOP

A few weeks ago Neil McCormick wrote an article about Bruce Springsteen in The Telegraph. This is my commentary on that article, bringing out Springsteen's Catholicism and social justice agenda. It anticipates the release next  week of Springsteen's new record Wrecking Ball. 

 

I’ve always declared Bruce Springsteen my Catholic Bishop to Bono my Protestant revivalist Preacher. While publicizing my second book The Rock Cries Out I found myself in a classroom of Messiah College in Pennsylvania. I was sharing one of my theories about Bruce Springsteen from my chapter on him in the book and I said how there had been an obvious change in Springsteen’s attitude towards Christianity in the early nineties and I genuinely wondered if that was to do with his interactions with Bono and U2; they were the topic for my first book Walk On. Someone in the class then shared how his aunt had once been in a relationship with Bruce Springsteen, they were still in touch, he called for dinner the previous summer and basically shared how what I was surmising was true!

That would short circuit my theory and I hope that it is indeed a true story. I have no reason to doubt the young man. Let me take a longer way round though. In an article in last week’s London Telegraph, Neil McCormick a very balanced commentator of U2’s dynamic of faith quotes Springsteen about faith on his new record Wrecking Ball, “The album shifts towards the spiritual uplift of gospel music in its rousing finale, evoking Jesus and the risen dead. “I got brainwashed as a child with Catholicism,” joked Springsteen, who says biblical imagery increasingly creeps into his songs almost unbidden. “It’s like Al Pacino in The Godfather: I try to get out but they pull you back in! Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.” He told the Irish Times something similar, Springsteen told the Irish Times, “I got completely brainwashed with Catholicism as a child. Once you’re a Catholic, you’re always a Catholic . . . It’s given me a very active sense of spiritual life and made it difficult sexually, but that’s all right”[i]

This half joking confession of Catholicism’s continued influence on Springsteen’s life is not new. It first raised its head during the tour after Devils In Dust during his introduction of Jesus Was An Only Son. You can hear that text on the Storytellers DVD. Indeed that line by line commentary suggests an influence of Martin Scorsese, another artist whose work is deeply minted by Catholicism. There seems a few of the lines from Jesus Was An Only Son could be taken as straight commentary from Scorsese’s controversial The Last Temptation of Christ. Of course Scorsese wasn’t the only Catholic artist that Springsteen was listening to. He had been a fan of novelists Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy for some time. Walker Percy actually wrote to Springsteen to tell him how he admired his spiritual journey and  Percy’s son Will interviewed Springsteen for Double Take magazine.

Like Bono, Springsteen’s Catholic spirituality is not individualistic. The transformation that Bono and Springsteen are aiming for is both individual and social. In that same interview with Neil McCormick Springsteen says, “I enjoy artists who like to take on the world as well as entertain their audience. I write to process my own experiences and if I can do that for me, I hope I can do that for you.” For Springsteen he is a rich mollycoddled rock star who struggles with his privilege in an American nation struggling with recession. He believes that, “An outrageous theft occurred that struck to the heart of the American idea,” and wants to highlight the consequences of the crime to power and pauper in his new album Wrecking Ball.

JESUS TEACHING IN LUKE AND IAIN ARCHER'S FROZEN LAKE

" I wanna be someone who makes you feel beautiful

I wanna be someone who does

I wanna be someone who makes you feel beautiful

I wanna be someone

Who covers you with love..."

- from Frozen Lake by Iain Archer

This is now officially the most written about lyric on my blog. I find it profoundly spiritual, doing what all good teaching should; it challenges to the core but with an inspirational push for transformation.

This morning as I preached on the counter agenda of Jesus life and teaching in the Gospel of Luke I couldn’t help thinking of Iain’s performance of this last night at the Crescent Arts Centre. In reading the entire Gospel According to Luke as we did as a congregation this week I was struck by lessons of humility, service and Jesus counter agenda of how we use our wealth and possessions. I found strong echoes in the lines of this tender song are so humble and utterly selfless. The identity of the singer is no longer in what he attains for himself. He wants to be a someone who gives to the other. His life is driven by making beautiful and covering in love.

We ended the service with a prayer that asked us to ask ourselves in our careers are we seeking to make others beautiful or to cover others in love... in how we use our money are our decisions made on how to make people beautiful or cover others in love... in how we spend our time are we driven by how to make others beautiful or cover others with love.

Deep soul critique.

IS BONO A HARRY POTTER READER (and maybe Dora The Explorer!)?

As someone who has spent the last dozen years, if not the twenty before that, saturated in the work of U2 it shouldn’t surprise me when I hear quotations in books and movies and immediately think, “ah that’s where Bono got that line.” I have spoken at Festivals and Universities about  my theory that he was reading Dora The Explorer to his younger children when he wrote Vertigo hence the Spanish numbers and Dora’s favourite word “Hola!” I use that more as a humorous way in and wouldn’t stand over that too much, though if I ever meet Bono in a lift it might now be my opening line! I would be a bit more convinced about another children’s read that has seen its way into the U2 lyrical canon.

When No Line On The Horizon was released I was immediately taken by the modern worship song Magnificent. It was a nod back to the energetic praise of October some three decades earlier. A couple of lines puzzled me, however. Not the meaning or impact but why the choice of words:

“Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar”

What was the mark I wondered? Was this clumsy? Was there a meaning I was missing. Well, last summer I got it. I missed the Harry Potter books but last August my daughters gave us a crash course as we watched a movie a day for a week. And there it was at the end of the first film. Dumbledore is talking to Young Harry and he says:

Dumbledore: "Harry, do you know why...Professor Quirrell couldn't bear to have you touch him?...It was because of your mother. She sacrificed herself for you. And that kind of act leaves a mark... This kind of mark cannot be seen. It lives in your very skin. 

Harry: "What is it?"

Dumbledore: "Love, Harry. Love."

Now you see, having spent all those years immersed for one reason or another in everything that Bono has said or written or sung, I could see why these lines would jump out at him as they did to me too. This kind of sacrificial love as the big lines of a big movie can only but send your head spinning towards the cross of Jesus and his dying for others. That act leaves a mark. Love! Is that not the perfect way of talking about that love in a new song of worship about the God who left the ultimate mark of love. If that meeting in that lift ever happens I’m sure I’ll get a Bono smile on this one... and he’ll probably say something like... “well that one was obvious Steve, I hope your book came up with a whole lot more than that.” And I’ll get out on the next floor, if I need to or not!

More on U2's Magnificent

THE FACEBOOK INTERVIEWS - Peter Rowen; The Photograph Who Became The Photographer

You wouldn't recognise Pete Rowen if you met him at a U2 show, or more likely a motorcycle race, and yet he may have been in your home for twenty five or thirty years. Pete was the face on the cover of the U2 albums Boy War and the 80's Greatest Hits. The younger brother of Bono's mates from the Virgin Prunes Strongman and Guigi.

Thirty years after those Boy shoots and Pete is now a photographer and he who was on the U2 T-shirts of the eraly eighties now has photographs he took on U2 T-shirts. Along with other regular banter I threw a few questions to Peter on Facebook and he gave me a few quick answers about photographing U2 and, another former Virgin Prune, Gavin Friday. Peter's new website has just been launched - http://www.peterrowen.com/

Soul Surmise: You were the U2 photograph who ended up a photographer. Do you think there is a link?

Peter Rowen: Em, I don't think so... I think my interest in photography came from the fact that I loved art and grew up drawing a lot. Funnily enough one of the regular things myself and my brother Jonny would draw was an album cover, but not the one with me on it!! It was David Bowie's Aladdin Sane!!

What do you remember about those U2 photo shoots?

Very little! The only two things I really remember are not liking the soup the photographer's wife made us on the WAR shoot but being too shy to say I didn't and almost being in a car crash with Bono at the wheel on the way back!

How has it, if anything, effected your adult life apart from people like me reminding you!?

Apart from the fact that I'm contacted by media on a regular enough basis it probably hasn't really affected me too much!

When did you think of a career in photography?

I bought a good camera at 17 and by 18 I was working as a full time Assistant Photographer....

Do you have any formal training?

I worked as an assistant for 3 and half years, I don't have a degree or anything but yes I guess I was formally trained..

You r new web site shows the work of a photographer doing a whole range of stuff.. magazine shoots, rock star shoots, fashion, weddings... what d you like best?

I love shooting documentary best... Live music, Motorcycle Racing... I love most of it actually!

You did a great shoot with Gavin Friday this year. When a shoot like that comes about how do you choose location? How much is what the artist wants and how much do you have to create?

Every shoot is different. If it's a commission then the location and type of shot are often determined by the client. With the Gavin Friday shoot it was a case of me approaching him and asking him could I do it. We shot it at his house and yea I guess the shots were all my ideas. After a quick look around I decided on three locations within his house where we would shoot then it was just a matter of asking him to sit in and giving him some direction.

You’ve been doing the U2360 Tour. What is that claw like from a photographer’s perspective?

Yea I shot four legs of the 360 tour in Dublin, Rome, Paris and Montreal CA. It was a pretty tricky show to shoot because even though I had a full press pass I was actually still pretty far away from where the band were ( with the stage being so massive ) so I had to use some pretty long lenses to get the shots I wanted... That combined with tricky light, jet lag & some dodgy weather made the whole thing quite hard. I really enjoyed doing it though... Epic stuff!!

What is the aim at a live show? How does it differ from a publicity shoot?

For me shooting a live show is all about trying to capture the atmosphere... You're obviously trying to get great shots of band too so it's all about trying to capture tiny moments. A split second where maybe the lighting is perfectly picking out one of the band members and you shoot maybe 10 frames. Then it's gone. The lighting changes and the moment has passed. Out of those ten frames you might get one or two really good ones if you're lucky! The control at a live show is very much out of your hands. You've really just got to work with whatever is happening in front of you. A publicity shoot on the other hand would be completely controlled and in many ways a much easier thing to do.

Does the photographer get a chance to enjoy the show? If so any highlights?.

Yes and no. As a Photographer you certainly get to enjoy being there and little moments here and there but at the end of the day you’re there to do a job and I suppose the more time you stand around enjoying the show the less time you have to shoot. Me, I tend to shoot as much as I can and enjoy looking at the results afterwards!!

So in the end which is best; being the photograph or the photographer?

Good question! I love taking pictures but I gotta admit that it's pretty cool to have been photographed for those records too!! :)

DANIEL LANOIS - SOUL MINING; A MUSICAL LIFE

“Being an artist is, in and of itself, an incredible parable for having faith.You’re in this position where you have to step into the unknown without hesitancy, with all your resources and with every intention of seeing it through and you know it might be disastrous”

My good friend Scott Jamison put this quotation from artist Linnea Gabriella Spransy up as his Facebook status as I was reading Daniel Lanois’ biography and it might be a review in a nutshell. Lanois’ memoir reaks of a man who lives and breathes his own art, whether songwriter or producer . He is so committed that love and family life never seem to be in his picture. It seems as though one night as a child that music stood at his bedroom door and said “Follow me...” and Daniel did. This is a book that flits about like Lanois’ life, the book from past to present and everywhere in between, the life from Quebec to Ontario to California to New York to Mexico to New Orleans with Dublin and various other spots in between.

If the reader is looking for lengthy detail about his work with Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Brandon Flowers, Robbie Robertson, Neville Brothers, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris and particularly U2 then they might be a little disappointed. Lanois writes about them all but it is merely moments and never too detailed. The key to the whole thing is most perfectly described when he is working with U2. It is during the Joshua Tree sessions and Lanois is waxing lyrical about Bono improvising and thus transforming a song. He writes, “This is a wonderful magic place to get to, the room of splintered metal I call it, where you can only respond to what is thrown your way. Years of knowledge and life experience exorcised out of mind and bodies. The room full of splintered metal and shattered glass is the birthplace of some of my U2 favourites...”

This quote, and indeed the very title of the book, betrays the spirituality at the heart of Lanois’ life and work. Throughout the book Lanois speaks of his pedal steel guitar as his “Church in a suitcase.” He writes of seeing God as a little bit like that room of splintered steel - “This is the same way that I see God, as little pieces flying by, tiny molecular pieces of information constantly flying by. Some people see them, some people don’t.”  In the end he thanks God for the ability to get excited and ends the book by encouraging other artists to find belief and passion.  God lurks everywhere and his belief in the transcendent is taken as read. We are back to Spransy’s quote. As I read about reflections on art I felt that it was spiritually informative and nourishing.

If you are a fan of the artists Lanois has worked with as listed above then you’ll be intrigued. If you are an artist yourself then I’d say it is an obligatory textbook. He brings such wisdom to the process. If you are a techie either to do with guitars or recording processes then this will be your Christmas come. Some reviews I’ve read speak of Lanois’ ego coming through. I didn’t see it. I saw a man who believes that he was created to do what he does and that his creations are dependent on much more than himself. He is more in awe of what he has been privileged to have been a part of than arrogant. I found it fascinating. An artist writing about the mystery of art in a beautifully creative and artistic way.

THE ART OF PREACHING; A WEEK IN A ROOM FULL OF SPLINTERED STEEL

I am uncomfortable about this blog entry. I hate talking about me. My built in inferiority complex is always fearing the backlash! Anyway, here goes. Yesterday morning I shared how this week’s sermon, and for me every sermon, came together. Some said they were fascinated by the process, so I thought I’d share it. It is not a blue print for sermon preparation, no way. It is the way that God has led me to prepare. It is how he has used who I am and what my life, personality and life journey bring to the art of sermon preparation. For others I imagine that it is a desk, in an office with commentaries cluttering up the surrounds. I imagine it is two or three hours every morning locked in that office sculpting the shape or exegesis. That is good. Yet, I have found that, though some weeks that is where I end up, most weeks it is rather more fluid and flowing. This week, as I was creating the sermon, I was reading Daniel Lanois’ biography Soul Mining; A Musical Life and he was sharing how songs and records come together in a room full of splintered steel where you simply respond to whatever is thrown at you. That about sums up the muse of this week’s sermon.

I begin, at the start of the week, with the foundational steel girder of the Scriptures. In Fitzroy, my colleague Jonathan and myself, are working our way through Hosea and this week I was in Chapter 6. I read that chapter a few times and then Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase The Message which is oftentimes, though not all the time, helpful. So, as I drive around and walk about I am pondering and waiting for the splintered steel to fly. Then maybe the next day I will read some commentaries. I shared the humour of my Facebook status last Thursday, “I am on the iPad reading Calvin.” There will be some splintered steel flying there and I respond to context, historical situation and maybe cross referencing other Scriptures that commentators point me to.

The real art, or as I believe the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is the splintered steel of the things going on around my life as I ponder the Scripture. That gives it contemporary relevance, context and impact. Pastoral visits, listening to other speakers, some news item, blog, Facebook status, movie, TV show or very often for me songs will spin around my head and soul and I’ll grab what sticks. This week I had a song that Dave Thompson, one of our songwriters in Fitzroy, had written about Hosea 6. This splinter had been flying about my head for some weeks and I was sure it was going to hit. During this entire process I will be typing the Scriptures, a commentator's thought, a quotation or an illustration onto the lap top page. Late in the week, often times as late as Saturday night, I will see what the splinters have formed and ask God help for final shape. Dave’s song splinter ended up giving me the title and the punch line, Dave’s paraphrase of this Scripture, “Let the mercy I show, be the worship I bring to you.” It is a lovely poetic line that skips off the tongue as you sing it BUT for weeks it has been pummelling my soul with its prophetic power.

Yesterday’s sermon (Nov 20, 2011) was the perfect coming together. When I got to look down the splinters noted I found not only a perfectly built sermon but perhaps the sermon that most defines my own Christian life. It was thirty years of spiritual journey right there on the screen. I was almost frightened to preach it, I sensed it so holy. In that room full of splinters I had given control of the shape to the higher power, I simply responded.  Never before had God given me such a potent message, laid it out so clearly and given so much Scriptural proof texts and all so ordered. This was the song, the record, the poem, the novel of the preacher. You might listen and wonder what I am talking about! That is also the vulnerable place of the artist or preacher. When it goes public it may not be reviewed as that good. I guess for the preacher the hope is that the God who inspired it will use it in whatever way he chooses. The sermon itself then becomes a flying splinter of steel...

LISTEN TO THE SERMON