The Dick Staub Interview: Exegeting U2
Get Up Off Your Knees preaches U2
from Boy to All that You
Can't Leave Behind.
posted 04/20/2004
Bono and his band, U2, have been provoking
audiences, including Christians, since they began playing in the '70s.
After making clear their Christian influences early on, the band took on
social justice concerns and explored the depths of pop culture in the
'90s. With their album All that You Can't Leave
Behind, U2 returned to exploring its spiritual roots. Bono then
toured the United States asking Christians to step up the fight against
AIDS in Africa.
All along, however, U2 has been a staple in
sermons across the country, across denominations, and across generations.
Get Up Off Your Knees is a collection of
sermons from the U2 catalogue written by several authors. Co-editor Beth
Maynard is the pastor of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Fairhaven,
Massachusetts.
Your co-author, Raewynne Whiteley, has a
piece on pop culture and preaching. What is the connection between those
two?
Preachers are always looking for effective
cultural connections that help people grasp the meaning of biblical text.
One of the points that Raewynne makes is that not only do we take the
biblical text out into the world, we bring our life experience and our
experience of the world with us when we read biblical text. If you're a
fan of U2, when you come to a situation of discouragement, when you need
to be encouraged to persevere, you may come to that situation with "Walk
On" in your head. There's just a natural connection that you make of these
different texts and these different ways of telling the story of the world
that we're in.
For people that aren't that familiar with U2,
give a brief history of U2 and why it is that their lyrics so consistently
convey biblical themes.
U2 is an Irish band, formed in the late '70s,
out of the punk/new wave movement in Dublin. Very early on in their
formation as a band, three of the members of the band became heavily
involved in a Christian community called Shalom, which was
non-denominational, and one can tell from their later comments was a very
intense, influential experience. They ended up breaking with that
community, it seemed, largely over the question of whether you could
pursue a "secular career," such as rock music, and continue having a
profession as a Christian.
In the '80s, U2 was known for being very
straight ahead social justice, change the world, get out there and wave
your white flag, and by the end of the '80s they were much critiqued for
that self-righteousness. They completely re-invented themselves in the
'90s, borrowing a page from C.S. Lewis's Screwtape
Letters, and became the band of irony. At the end of the '90s, as
the millennium came, they went back, in a sense, to wearing their heart on
their sleeves with their most recent album, All That
You Can't Leave Behind, which retains some of that subtlety and
nuance that we came to associate with U2 in the '90s, but is also much
more straight ahead about basic human values.
Steven Garber writes the chapter "To See What
You See: On Liturgy & Learning & Life," and focuses on Psalm 123. He talks about a meeting in Washington,
D.C., where Bono was going to come and talk about AIDS in Africa.
It's interesting, the actual context that he's
in. He's a scholar and resident at Calvin College, and he was talking to
the congregation of students there about building a Christian worldview,
learning how to do what Bono says he wishes he could do in "When I Look At
The World," to see the world the way Jesus sees, to understand how our
world looks to Jesus Christ. Steven tells this story of his encounter with
Bono at a meeting about AIDS in Africa in Washington, D.C. and then talks
about a few other contemporary examples of people that he knows who also
have worked at trying to build a Christian worldview. And then wraps that
all up by exhorting his students to learn to see the world as Jesus sees
it.
"Grace" has three expositions in this book,
and they're all on different. Two of them are on Romans 5 and the other
one is John 14 and wedding sermon. Talk about
"Grace," and the different ways that the authors picked up on the
importance of these lyrics.
In this book, we tried to bring together
preachers who were very diverse theologically, very diverse
denominationally, to sort of bear witness to the broadness of U2's appeal.
And the sermons on "Grace" are a great way to illustrate that. We have
Clint McCann, who talks about social justice. We have Wade Hodges, who
preaches a very classic Romans 5 sermon about
how "Grace removes the stain of sin." And then another one from Steve
Garber, which addresses a very particular situation of a couple who are
stepping into a risk of trusting each other and opening themselves to each
other's love in a wedding.
It couldn't be more different, all of them are
great readings of Scripture, all of them great readings of the song, but
very diverse. The song itself, "Grace," is one of those U2 songs that's a
natural to preach on. Sometimes you have to work harder at making a bridge
from a song to scripture than other times. This is one which you could
practically open up your Bible�I think probably particularly if you were
reading The Message�and get a text very similar
to this. It's just a straight-ahead exposition of amazing grace, of grace
making beauty out of ugly things.
"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For,"
ended up as an exposition of Philippians 3,
Luke 15, Mark
14. Talk about how those lyrics were engaged in very different
ways.
I think a great example there particularly is
Steve and Darleen. Darleen is a professor at a Roman Catholic seminary.
And Steve is the author of Walk On: The Spiritual
Journey of "U2," from Relevant Books. And he looks at "I Still
Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," in the context of Philippians 3 and the vow to keep pressing forward,
to go on for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ. Darleen has a
very charming, down-to-earth image of wandering sheep. She talks about the
spiritual nature of Generation X and the constant questioning of life and
how that song is used at X-er weddings and X-er funerals.
Anna Carter Florence, who is a professor of
preaching, has a sermon, "The Voice You Find May Be Your Own." She talks
about how the song enabled her to connect with some people who were
outside of her experience and she was able to connect with them because
they both loved the song. And her piece talks about the importance of
having people find their own voice and their own experience.
Talk about your own treatment of "Tomorrow"
in using John 20 and 1
Peter.
I have always thought "Tomorrow" reads very
interestingly together with the story of doubting Thomas. That's a
scripture that comes up in the lectionary, which my particular
denomination happens to use Sunday after Easter every year. One has to
think about this story every single year. "Tomorrow" is one of U2's
earliest songs from their second album, "October." It puts us in a very
similar situation to where Thomas is in a room after a death, waiting to
see what's going to happen and afraid that nothing will ever be the same
again.
What I do in the sermon is I read the Thomas
story right alongside the song "Tomorrow." At the end of "Tomorrow," just
as at the end of that chapter in John, there is a great epiphany of
Christ, an epiphany that some people think is even a little too over the
top for U2. It illustrates how that determination to encounter truth,
whatever it costs (the line that I pick up on in the song is the vow, "I'm
going out there, I'm going to open the door and go out and see what's
there") and lo and behold, when the narrator opens that door, it's the
door that Jesus has been standing at and knocking. And just like Thomas,
he has an encounter with Christ. Copyright � 2004 Christianity Today. Click
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