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
for reprint information.
>> |
Click to print
