What about joy ...specifically? i'm in favor of it.

"What was the sermon about, honey?,"
the wife asked the husband as he returned from church.

"Sin."

"Uh, what did the pastor have to say about it?"

"He was against it."

I told this ancient joke, and probably apocryphal story, about President Calvin Coolidge, the man of few words in my preaching class the other day.

It was to make a point about making a point.

It was a challenge to reach for a more specific focus to sermon than just being generally and generically "about" God, love, faith, prayer, sin etc.. The classic example in homiletics texts is "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection," a Thomas Chalmers message not just about love in general and abstract, but in specific concrete about how a new love replaces others.

But now I am wondering if the simple basics of a message can sometimes be complete and complex enough..

It all started with U2...as usual.

Yes, I have been incorporating lessons from U2 into the preacghing class ("The U2 liturgical plot") How could I not?

But but not having yet attended a U2 concert on this current tour, I have been
folllowing reports, reviews, impressions of the flow of the show...and several have noted
that unlike most tours, the overall flow of the setlist/liturgy/narrative arc is not immediately intuited or obvious. So often we sense we are being taken somewhere. Ironic this time, as this time Bono often remarks in concert that due to the stage looking like a spaceship, the band is indeed "taking you somewhere."

Where to this time? What is the liturgical leitmotif? The messages can seem too multiplex, confued, busy, or too upstaged by the stage. What is this tour's "homiletical plot"?
Where do we find a specific narrow (and thus, broad) proposition (uh, wrong term for postmodern preaching...how about "proposal" Pomo!)?

Or does the leitourgia have or need a name? (I am anxious to read Beth's impressions after having seen her third show of the tour).

Bono himself admits:

"There's not one grand overarching theme, but there is a sense of location, where you're a tiny speck in the cosmos. It's intimate, by the way. The show takes you through all these different worlds and mood swings. Catharsis is the posh word, I think."
Bono

On the tiny speck on the cosmos, perhaps part and parce; of the problem is the band can apprear as such, in the shadow (and lightshow) of the largest stage in all rock history.
Stages, when staged, always steal shows.
Ask the EBay Atheist.

Or anyone whose seen this tour:

At 164 feet high, the “claw” towers, making us all feel small. Many times during the evening, the Claw threaten to steal the show, blowing smoke and making light beautiful.
link

Maybe that's OK, too..anything or body that can make Bono look small is no small genius.
(:

It also seems the band has been hijacked by the space and spaceship themes.
I still think it's a clawthedral.
Even if it is spaced out.
I still think everyone should read Beth's article as an orientation to the claw:

Sound and Light: Contemplating the Claw’s Combination of Surrealism, Sci-Fi, and the Sacred

But framing the show, by way of songs over the soundsytem are "Space Oddity" and "Rocket Man"...such seems a false inclusio, non sequitur, a falsely unifying unifeier, a liturgy misnamed.
(Though the meeting of heaven and earth IS a clear message, if not metarrative, of the current album). Bono started the tour talking about cathedrals, now he's talking spaceships.

USA Today got it; calling it a "sonic temple" and "steel cathedral."
(More on this )

Then again maybe a thesis, theme is too much to ask.
Maybe what they are after is a melody:

The overall melody is that of joy. This is not a band dragging around America what is probably the most expensive stage in history. This is a band enjoying themselves and their music, finding grace inside their sound.
link

And if the melody is "one we haven't heard" yet...so no wonder we miss it.


Either way, I'm so sure USA Today is right in their other articles' headline:


"U2 never lets the massive 360 Tour props dwarf the music "

But maybe melody/message/medium of joy is enough:



"What was the sermon about today, honey?

"Joy"

"Uh, what did the preacher say about it?"

"He was in favor of it."


Maybe that's epic enough for our era.

Maybe that itself will preach.

"There's fun and frolics here. Real joy, and that's the essence, the life force, of rock 'n' roll."
-Larry Mullen

And maybe it has taken a few months on the road for a more specific narrative to emerge.
One reviewer at atu2.com was at the recent Raleigh concert,

There was no “Your Blue Room” – instead “In A Little While” filled the gap, which people enjoyed a helluva lot more. “Man takes a rocketship into the sky” fits brilliantly into the show. Putting “Mysterious Ways” third in the set works beautifully after “Get On Your Boots.” The way they reworked the first 8 songs in the set made sense to me, and based on the audience’s reaction, I wasn’t the only one. I can’t think of one thing about the performance that made me scratch my head and wonder “what the heck is going on here?” It felt like the glove of old…fitting perfectly, warm and snug. This night, they took me on an emotional journey and I was happy to let them take me wherever I needed to be.
I hope that this trend continues in Atlanta and beyond. I feel like the tour started tonight and NOW the gloves are off
atu2

How about you? How does the reworked setlist/liturgy (work in progress?) clarify the sermon's narrative arc/plot...or at least focus the flow:

• Breathe
• Get on Your Boots
• Mysterious Ways
• Beautiful Day
• No Line on the Horizon
• Magnificent
• Elevation
• In A LIttle While
• New Year's Day
• I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
• Stuck In A Moment
• Unforgettable Fire
• City of Blinding Lights
• Vertigo
• I'll Go Crazy - Remix
• Sunday Bloody Sunday
• MLK
• Walk On
• One
• Amazing Grace/Where The Streets Have No Name
• ---------
• Ultraviolet
• With or Without You
• Moment of Surrender

Maybe the point is we don't need to get the point.
Could be the narrative of the album is still embedded in the show...just embedded too well.
Perhaps the process..or the melody...the overtone...is what counts.

If we even have to know what it is, or is about.

m

The show typically serves up seven No Line tunes, three or four played at the top, a defiant refusal to be locked into the past. For Mullen, U2's evolution crystallizes in the techno-twisted take on I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Crazy Tonight, during which he pounds an African djembe drum while strolling the runway.

"We take a pop song and turn it into this dance rave madness — in a stadium," he says. "How did I get here? It's not what any of us expected to be doing 30 years later. That's the guiding light. It's about our need to expand and our audience accepting things they may not even understand."

-link

Granted, wanting an audience/congregation to "accept things it doesn't understand" can be cultish...but it can also be inevitable.

Who fully gets it all? Bono man once preached abiut the "ineffable, unknowable love of God."

Tim asks, following some helpful notes on Beth's talk at the U2 Confernce:

Question: What are the implications of people participating in the “leitourgia” when they don’t know they are, when they don’t understand the subtext of U2’s work? (i.e. singing “Still Haven’t Found” or “Yahweh” or “Unknown Caller” but not knowing what they are singing.) A related question: What does it mean historically when people engaged in the traditional liturgy but didn’t understand what they were doing?

Crucial question, since Bono is unofficially leading Christian worship for a congregation in which half may be officially Christian (""Put your hands in the sky/Put your hands in the air/If you're the praying kind, turn this song into a prayer...but note well at 3:14 here that even the unpraying kind experiment with prayer..or at least with hands in air..)

I don't know about the faking thing, the "acting as if it were true" trick.

But that's how I came to Christ.

Maybe that's all of us at all times..



Back to discerning the theme of the theme, Tim posted after the Raleigh concert:

I'm speechless.... I'm exhausted.... We went crazy tonight.
In a nutshell, I'd call it a party of grace and love. More in the next few days.

That's how it is. We have only generic and woefully inadequate words after coming home/down . It takes a few days, weeks, years to find the full flow.
In fact, I am still taking in the implications of a U2 concert I attended a few decades ago.

I am still speechless and exhausted.

I'm not sure what it was about.
(I fumbled a post here).

Maybe joy.

Maybe against sin.
I'm not certain, but I am sure God met me there, and I'm still drawing from it, and drowning in it today.
And exegeting after the fact,
Maybe someday I'll find the sermon thesis I'm looking for.
Or maybe knowing I am less in favor of sin, and far more in favor of joy because of it is all I ever need to know.

the shadow preacher and reconstruction of liturgy

An excellent two-part post from An Unapproved Road on the last movement of the liturgy!
(of course I mean the current U2 setlist).

He helps us rethink what many us have been thinking on (see previous ponderings here
and here ). I can't wait to hear what Beth eventually comes up with on this.

Someone once told me "all of the props you use in worship are prophetic."
I hope so.

But Rev. Bono's props are that.
I know so.
I love the wheel-microphone , and the suit of lights being lifted up (2:08:13).
Of course it's part show.
But it's never just that.

And the post below helps contextualize the liturgical plot...and prophetic props...of the encore/benediction.
Adam Clayton once said of "With or Without You,"
"You don't expect to hear it on radio. Maybe in a church."

When I first saw the Pasadena broadcast of this song, I thought Bono was just tired...but something else may (also) be afoot ( 2:04:19):

That's probably always been true of him, it's just that now the "something" is a little harder to name -- Bono's not trying so hard to put the words in our mouths. He's much better now at letting the songs, and the animating spirit of the songs, speak through him.

Which is why I was first dismissive and then perplexed when I read several fan reviews of different 360 shows that mentioned specifically Bono's performance of With or Without You. They reported that he was "bored with it," "tired of it, like he just doesn't care anymore after singing it so much..." Well, accuse the man of a lot of things, but never of forcing himself to sing something every night that he no longer likes or feels inside! With a catalogue like theirs? With the missionary zeal that they bring to building their concerts? It just didn't make sense. So let me begin my reflections on last night's concert at the end of it -- With or Without You is the second-to-last song in the set.
By now, most fans will also have seen it whether they attended shows or not, since the band so generously put up the entire LA concert on youtube. I avoided the live stream of that show, knowing my own show was coming up just 2 days later.

Now I know what those fan reviewers were referring to, and I forgive those who so completely misunderstood the point of that performance -- because they moved me to take a closer look at the entire setlist and find something there more deliberate than I otherwise might have appreciated.
My head is catching up with my heart...

-An Unapproved Road Part 1

At the end of Wednesday night’s U2360 show, after the conventional encore of Big Hits, the band and their singer reappear -- or rather, a shadow wrapped in a suit of lights where the singer should be -- to sing Ultraviolet. Not a big hit by any stretch, not a selection included “just for the fans.” Not going through the conventional motions. Pay attention, folks.
Sometimes I feel like checking out

I wanna get it wrong, can't always be strong…
Feel like trash, you make me feel clean

I'm in the black, can't see or be seen
Baby, light my way…sings the shadow in the suit of red beams, into a glowing ring of light that amplifies his plea and physically lifts his weight as he dangles out over his audience.

Then the shadow takes on the dark ambiguity of With or Without You –
My hands are tied, my body bruised She's got me with nothing left to win

And nothing else to lose

And you give yourself away

He is tired, cynical, maybe angry … his face is obscured, his voice is drained of feeling. With or Without You has been an emotional centrepiece on previous tours; it was profoundly moving in the concert recorded for the Elevation DVD. It’s a fan favourite, it’s a hypnotic love song, it is all these things, and the band is playing it as sweetly and seductively as ever … but the current rendition of it is a jarring, unsettling deconstruction of whatever we think this song is supposed to be.
As the heartbeat of the song quiets behind him, the shadow removes his suit of lights, methodically places it on its hanger and hooks it to the radiant microphone, and very deliberately bids it goodbye: here we have 3 songs for the price of 2.

On the under-appreciated album Pop is a track called Gone, which Bono dedicated to his friend Michael Hutchence shortly after he died (see the Popmart DVD):
You wanted to get somewhere so badly

You had to lose yourself along the way…

Goodbye, you can keep this suit of lights

I'll be up with the sun
I'm not coming down
And I’m already gone…
This final sequence, really a keening coda to a buoyant, triumphant show, seems to me to be a mini-suite of songs purpose-built to frame the concert’s final number, the new song Moment of Surrender. Months back, when I first heard that this was their show-closer, it made me wonder what was afoot. Oh, it’s a very special song (as I wrote earlier), but certainly an unlikely send-off. (For that matter, MacPhisto closed his little concert with Love is Blindness, an anti-anthem if ever there was one.) It had to be deliberate, designed to provoke. Some reviews (fans and professionals) expressed confusion or a shrugging disappointment in the lack of a Big Happy Finish … not surprising. U2 doesn’t want it to be easy:

they’re asking us to think. Pushing us to feel. Why -- how -- do they make it hurt so much?
-An Unapproved Road Part 2

The U2 liturgical plot

Having taught last night in preaching class on Eugene Lowry's "homiletical plot,"

1) Oops!--conflict--upsetting the equilibrium;
2) Ugh!--complication--analysing the discrepancy;
3) Aha!--sudden shift--disclosing the clue to resolution;
4) Whee!--good news--experiencing the gospel; (this is climax, not #5)
5) Yeah!--unfolding--anticipating the consequences. (coda)
link

and looking forward to Beth's presentation on "U2 Live: Where Leitourgia Has No Name,"


Neil McCormick's inside scoop from Bono about the flow of the current show/liturgy was intriguing. It tracks with Lowry's suggested flow of the sermon. It helps us grasp ythe point of two of teh most baffling placements in the set list: the liturgical sense of the "sudden shift" of the "Crazy Remix" (maybe plays the part of the album's midpoint ("Fez-Being Born'); and the choice of "Surrender" as concert closer/downbeat coda:

...Bono revealed that he carries a two act structure in his mind which guides his performance (which he readily admitted would not be apparent to anyone else). The first half of the show features “more personal songs” (which usually features Breathe, No Line On The Horizon, Get On Your Boots, Magnificent, Beautiful Day, New Year’s Day, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, Unknown Caller, Unforgettable Fire, City Of Blinding Lights and Vertigo plus a changing selection of back catalogue classics) in which Bono envisages himself as a young man, struggling to find his feet in life and in search of some kind of personal epiphany. The turning point of the set is a mind-blasting techno remix version of the new song ‘I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight’, with the Claw on full acid house lighting effect turning the stadium into a spinning mirrorball. Given that the audience is not particularly familiar with the song (let alone a dance remix), it is actually intended to create a moment of disorientation and discomfort, ending with Bono on his knees, repeatedly singing the coda “It’s not a hill, it’s a mountain”. If I’ve got this right (it was 3 am when we were having this conversation, and many Marguerites had been consumed) from that point on his protagonist has been taken out of himself, and the second act begins in which he moves from the personal to the political, wrestling with the problems of the wider world in a string of songs that includes Sunday Bloody Sunday (recast to acknowledge the protesters of Iran), Pride, Walk On and Where The Streets Have No Name. There is then a coda (not a third act) which represents U2 at their most raw and vulnerable, stripped to the metaphorical bone, when we have all been exhausted by the outpouring of collective emotion and ready just to get down to the dirty truth. This is a hugely effective if counter-intuitive downbeat encore trilogy from the underbelly of love, featuring ‘Ultraviolet’, ‘With Or Without You’ and ‘Moment Of Surrender’.
So now you know. But whether that makes sense to anyone else or not is not really the point (it is really a performance tool). Stadium gigs are not about subtle pleasures, it is not for laser pin point music and understated expression. It is rarely about the subtext. It’s about big ideas and broad emotions, and it suits band with epic sounds and massive choruses. It is made to be heard and felt by tens of thousands, and unite them in one moment of mass togetherness. Every fan brings something of themselves to the music, and embarks on their own personal journey but (on a good night, with a band we already love, and songs that already mean something to us) we can be taken outside of ourselves, so that we suddenly find ourselves united with a mass of humanity, singing together, all on the same hymn sheet, even if the hymn is a pop song, and the chorus reminds us “we are one, but we’re not the same.” U2 remain the absolute masters of stadium dynamics. Sometimes, size really does matter.
-Neil McCormick, link

name three things that get passed around

One is the "secret" love of Jesus...as in U2's "Ultraviolet".

"Your love is like a secret that gets passed around".

  See  below , though, for a hilarious moment.  Before Bono realizes it, he has mixed his lines up and sung,
"Your love is like a light bulb that gets passed around"1:58-2:03 here:

Anyway, the other two items are announced here below on Family Feud
(HT Scott Lindsey) ...
Like item #1, they are both found in some churches:

the light bulb and the cross necklace

How's THAT for the new U2 album title? rtog

 Actually, it sounds ore like a horror movie title.(:

Actually it's a reminder of how U2 has (at least) twice used a salvific object  (a light bulb in "Ulttraviolet" and a cross necklace in "Vertigo") as the sudden focal point of a narrator experiencing chaos, used to get the narrator/listener to the thematic focus and locus of a song.

I did that once in a college essay.  (:

"Ultraviolet":

"When I was all messed up, and had opera in my head
Your love was a light bulb hanging over my bed. "

"Vertigo":

In the case of 'Vertigo,' I was thinking about this awful nightclub we've all been to. .. It's that woozy, sick feeling of realizing that here we are, drinking, eating, polluting, robbing ourselves to death. And in the middle of the club, there's this girl. She has crimson nails. I don't even know if she's beautiful, it doesn't matter but she has a cross around her neck, and the character in this stares at the cross just to steady himself."

         -Bono, U2 by U2

Lesbians Teach Me To Pray

I know; I am ridiculously late to this party.

Where have Indigo Girls been all my musical life?

Of course, I had heard of them; heard rumors they were God-haunted; knew they were lesbian; one a pastor/seminary professor's daughter(I even have one of his books), etc. It wasn't any of that that kept me from finding them out..it may have been the folk label.

But I repent; and will make up for lost time.

Tower Records going out of business (as tragic a day it was; and read a great piece by Mile Osequeda here about it's historical marker) was great for my business...tapes and Cds at huge discount...so a cassette (remember those) of the Indigo Girls was an easy choice.

Already two songs, "Prince of Darkness" and "Blood and Fire" nail me.

And this is only their first record; I have a lot of make-up work to do!

I am intense, I am in need, I am in pain, I am in love

And blood and fire
Are too much for these restless arms to hold
And my nights of desire they’re calling me
Back to your fold
And I am calling you, calling you
From 10,000 miles away
..

That the next line is "Babe," and not "Lord"is partly okay with me...I know the song is partly/mostly/completely about Jesus, at heart.

U2's brilliant "Ultraviolet" always irked me because of the throwaway "Baby, baby, baby, light my way." I knew the song was about Jesus, (hello,like eleven out of ten U2 songs..
and later discovered it was from a unique angle: Satan addressing Jesus. Sigh of relief; that's not CCM fodder). So I knew they had a flat out worship song in them..

And I need to remember the anticipation and fear years later when it was announced that U2 was releasing a song called "Yahweh"...would it be(wost fear and best hope) " almost like something by Michael W. Smith.".... When it kind was, I wanted to go back to the "baby" era. Bordered on being to...well, CCM. Sorry, that's another story..and it's here..

At the close of Indigo Girls' "Blood and Fire", when Amy Saliers belts out the "And I'm calling you (You) from then thousand miles away, it not only made up for the 'babe" but chilled me like few vocal moments have .

It was an answer to prayer.

It taught me to pray.

It is passionately and hoarsely belted out,prayed out, cast out...I have no verbs...except if feels like the reversal/"elevated" version of Ann Wilson's famous sex-charged line "kick it out" that ever male my age remembers making them feel...well, nevermind...

It's prayer.

Even if it is about a girl.

I need to read "God and breasts on the beach" again.

Does MacPhisto have a prayer?

l



"Jesus laughed in the Holy Spirit; and prayed, 'Daddy, I thank You that You have hidden Your secrets from the professional and the religious; and instead embedded them as gifts to the children and the childlike."
-Jesus' prayer in Luke 1o:21

So many Christians..especially those that Christians like U2 call "squeakies,"
didn't get (or "got" and didn't like) U2's 1990's incarnation as prophetic subversive, over-the-top satire and commentary-kitsch: ZOO TV/POP MART.
Disappointingly, but predictably, it was pastors who in particular who didn't take the time or imagination to get the point; they often "slid down the surface of things" and concluded U2 had backslidden, and unfound Who they had been looking for.

Of course, Bono dressed as the devil would raise a red flag (:

But only for those who haven't read Screwtape:

Bono's 'Satan' persona, Macphisto, has probably raised more Christian hackles than anything else U2 have ever done, with most Christians failing to understand what Bono is up to. In an interview with a prominent Irish paper earlier this year Bono commented that the whole concept of the Macphisto character was one of mockery - taking his idea from the adage 'mock the devil and he will flee from you.' Such irony and tongue-in-cheek humour is common throughout the work of the band and is a very effective way of bringing people to think about the good and evil in the world. Bono mocks to make his point - and this point is transferred to thousands of people with an effectiveness that preachers can only dream about.

The Church has never coped well with its artists and U2 are no exception. They have refused to play by anyone else's rules, and have frequently overstepped the tight boundaries of 'permissible behaviour' drawn up by the church. As a result the church has often viewed them with suspicion. Even one of their most explicit songs of Christian faith and longing for a better world, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" was taken by many Christians as evidence that U2 had lost their faith..

..Bono: One night I was doing my Elvis-devil dance on stage with a young girl, in Wales, and she said "are you still a believer? If so, what are you doing dressed up as the devil?" I said "have you read the Screwtape Letters?" Which is a C.S. Lewis book that a lot of intense Christians are plugged into. They are letters from the devil. That's where I got the whole philosophy of mock-the-devil-and-he-will-flee-from-you. So she said "yes" and I said "so you know what I'm doing." Then she relaxed and said "I want to bless you."
link

The MacPhisto character as "obvious" a devil persona as one could create (red horns), but is also in a very postmodern way far more fluid as to exactly "who" he represents and re-presents. The Elvis connection was intriguing, as was MacPhisto's earlier pre-incarnation/cousin: Mirrorball Man, the televangelista (Follow the "obvious" and ancillary matches between "Matrix" characters and who they partly portray: For example, Neo is clearly a Christ-figure, but he is also every Christian; Trinity is obviously a Trinity figure, but also the Holy Spirit; Morpeus morphs between John the Baptist and Peter; Cypher is Lucifer..Hello? Lu-Cypher.. and Judas; etc.).
The history and evolution of the MacPhisto has been well-traced here.

But a conversation with Ryan yesterday (a link to his blog here for no other reason than a shameless plug) got me rethinking why I almost always use clips of MacPhisto when I teach my Ministry Skills Institute courses for pastors and leaders longing to engage culture; and especially when i am asked to teach on spiritual warfare.

The final night of the ZOO TV tour, in particular, raises several points.

For one, Bono makes explicit the devil typology; and to get a jab, apologetic and word to any squeaky pastors still listening (drawing a fish in the sand), he digs deep theologically into the sovereignty of God (see the important "The Devil is God's devil" connections here)...and in/directly alludes to the critiques: "People think I've forgotten about Him, but I haven't"...

Not to mentions talking points around theodicy; fallenness, free will and just about everything else systematically brings up; but is more helpfully addressed in systemic theology....and courses for pastors on U2.

Here it is; exegete it:



As a bonus to fans/fanatics, here's a rare clip of Bono singing "Desire" in full MacPhisto character. The band soon dropped this
song from MacPhisto's repertoire (though Vincent Price , Alice Cooper, and St. Schizoprenia would like it), moving into some fascinating and telling theological territory. Why were certain songs appropriate for MacPhisto to sing? There was "Daddy's Gonna Pay Your Crashed Car," of which Bono has said, "Daddy" could be God or the devil (See Tim's helpful commentary here)....and "Ultraviolet," long rumored to be the "prayer" of Satan to Jesus; wanting to know if he can be redeemed. I think "Acrobat"(a sort of commentary on Romans 7, among other things) was also sung a bit by MacPhisto; amazing theological lessons there; my son has always seen the "bastards" as demons and/or religious "squeakies".

Maybe the two are synonymous.

Which is why MirrorBall Man (the televangelista)=MacPhisto=Elvis=us.
And there "is no them; there's only us."

Shudder.

Maybe I am a squeaky bastard.

PS.Here at this link is some fan discussion on theology U2 1990s style.. I have thought more about MacPhisto in my older article copied in red below. Read on at your own risk. But I do make the claim that not only is 1990s U2 consistent with what they were before (more obviously Christian); but what they did for at least two tours in the 2000s (more obviously Christian).

Which means MacPhisto still inevitably shows up; though not in drag.

Bless you, Ryan!
----------


CHECKMATED BY MACPHISTO?

The story is told that in the painting "Checkmate," the MePhisto character (an alternate name for Satan that we have already eluded to Bono co-opting and tweaking the spelling a bit to MacPhisto) is gloating over his winning chessboard move over the only other character in the painting, Faust (Hello? Recognize that name from operas) The "Bomb" CD is a virtually a tribute to Bono’s dad, Bob Hewson, who is "the last of the opera stars," Bono sang on "Kite" on the "Elevation tour; and .the "reason why the opera is in me," his son sings in "Sometimes You Can’t Make it on Your Own"); which is also the name of the painter. The point of the piece is that sometimes man is checkmated by the devil. The legend accompanying the painting is that one day, a Russian chessmaster (in many versions, Gary Kasparov), noting the theme and the title, but having scrutinized the chessboard to the sudden realization that by the artist’s accident, the game does not have to end in obvious checkmate (He sees a possible move that Faust could take and win), yells out in the museum to the shock of the other observers: "It’s not true! It’s a lie! He’s not been checkmated!" Of course, this story "preaches," and has for hundreds of pastors over the years(one example here ), that:

Though it may look like the devil has won, Jesus (and the Christian) do indeed have the victory after all.

Nice story, you say? Good point, even if a bit cliché? But it is the same story and same point as the "Vertigo" song/sermon. Christ’s love is "teaching me to kneel" and defeat the satanic temptation to make "all of this" mine. So the joke is on the devil, God used the enemy’s plans and temptation to make me stronger, invoking God’s sovereignty, just like Jesus did in the wilderness "vertigo" temptation in the elevated place of the temple pinnacle. It was tough, taxing; swaying and dizzying; and I may have escaped by the skin of my teeth (or the crucifix around the neck), but I made it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ….that’s how the song and the Scripture and the story ends..The devil does not have us checkmated after all.

By now, all intelligent readers, the kind who dig for profound symbolism sometimes occurring in Bono’s more spontaneous/singing-in-tongues (the band calls it "Bongolese"), scat singing moments; those sections that don’t always make the lyric sheet and show up in concert in varying versions; will have already answered the question: "What moves this theory about a direct connection between the "Checkmate" painting and that deceptively simple IPOD-selling song? Note well, even the "official" CD lyrics, for once, quote Bono’s spontaneous scatting lyrics in the midsection of "Vertigo." And they agree with what he seems to be clearly (!) saying in live television versions so far: "CHECKMATED!" (usually followed by "Hours of fun!" and something else not as easily decoded. Some have heard, in alternate versions, "shots fired/shots fall or "gospel!" Interpretation of scat-tongues-art references, anybody?)

Oh, it shouldn’t go without saying that Bono, as an avid chess player, who surrendered dreams of being a professional chessmaster years ago, as those passions were channeled and steered towards… I should say elevated (But remember the Rabbi Cohen would warn that "elevation is not sublimation," so "chess" references are allowed to resurface)… into rock stardom and Kingdom-preaching. And in a very fun and perceptive article, Angella Pancella goes as far as to suggest that chess strategy is Bono’s overall life-strategy. "No really; that’s my theory," she winks. Pay this perceptive ‘hours of fun" article a visit here.

All this to say: It’s a spiritual sequitur, a logical syllogism for all of life: Elevation leads to vertigo. And as we flow with that process, we find that Christ, and those of us in Christ on this ride, win and checkmate life and Lucifer through hard-won kneeling persisteverance. It does flow. Yet it’s not a shoe-in that we "go with the flow" of all that the Bus Driver has been hired to rabbinically teach us through the crucible and crisis of vertigo, and thus come out stronger. Passing the twin tests of elevation and vertigo ; and the truth itself , is designed to set us free; but sometimes it is sovereignly destined to first make us miserable. Freedom, though free indeed, has a pricetag indeed. And on this particular temple-bus at the pinnacle of the elevated Andes , that freedom had a scent which, though in reality the aroma of heaven, had me begging for a barf-bag and a miracle drug. And a "fast car" off that mountain (Oops, yet another new U2 song relates here! More in chapter four)

VERTIGO HAPPENS! HALLELUJAH!

But when the reason is righteous, and the season is right, one should invite and even invoke vertigo! "If it be Thy will," of course, but more times than we have guessed or gambled, the will of God WILL will it.

I occasionally enjoy playing devil’s (uh, I should say "angel’s") advocate when I preach and teach. I often ask a group "shock-value" questions as a wake-up and shake-up call to the necessity and validity of the vertiginous (yes, it’s a word!) encounter; the test of temptation. In light of the fact that "sometimes we can’t make it on our own, " and need to go with Jesus to hear, and experience, a challenging and dizzying "Sermon Way Up the Mount," disciples need to remember to remember that in those disequilibrating times when elevation gives birth to vertigo, let the Spirit be midwife, and what will mercifully be born again and again in you is untold freedom and hilarious strengthening. Here, then is the first question I might cast out: "How many ever pray the Lord’s Prayer, including the line ‘Lead us not into temptation?’"

And since all answers are a nodding "yes and amen," the subsequent question has earned a hearing: "Would, or could, GOD ever lead anyone, then, into temptation?; especially since we have been taught by Jesus Himself to pray it would never happen?" Since most have detected that, by my mischevious inflection and sly smile the expected right answer is "Of course!," it’s an appropriate time to take holy advantage of the stunned to silence room and have them turn from their shock to either Matthew 4:1 or Luke 4:1. Either verse reads right on the lines that "God, the Holy Spirit" is without apology recognized; indicted as the Agent leading someone into a very real and literally demonic temptation.

And just who that Someone is, is telling and is troublesome: "Then the Holy Spirit lead Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." Granted, and important to highlight: God does not do the tempting; the tempter is clearly the devil, but in God’s stunning sovereignty, he has personally arranged the time and place of the temptation; He Himself has set the boundaries and parameters of the boxing ring; He himself is out in front ushering Jesus..and often us..right into a head-on . What in heaven’s name and hell’s court is verti-going on?

THE DEVIL IS GOD’S DEVIL

"The devil is God’s devil!," a much better theologian than me, but one also famous/infamous for "shock value sound bytes" quipped a few hundred years ago. By that biting byte, Martin Luther has not more than he could chew in hand..er, mouth. He meant simply that God is so supernaturally and sovereignly ‘in charge’ that he is even in charge of, Superintendent of; in fact he created, "Ol’ Scratch."..Satan himself. Which is why the Spirit can risk, allow, even set-up our wilderness temptations with Satan. He can trust, that like Jesus, who "at the end of this satanic temptation, came out of the wilderness stronger and more full of the power of the Spirit, and more prepared to minister than ever, " (Luke 4:13-14).

We who follow in the footsteps of Christ, even and especially when they lead to the devil’s door and an "elevation plus" vertigo test, we pass the test! And the joke is on the dumb devil, Ol Scratch scratching his damned head as we..the eternally undamned and newly undammed…come out stronger in Spirit. And if Romans 8:28’s al- inclusive sweeping claim that "God works all things together for good for those who love God, and are the called according to his purpose" is taken at face and faith value, that "all things" includes "all" all things, including satanic temptation, and Satan himself. With that Romans verse in mind, a more modern theologian, one who is in league with Luther (and U2) in that she was also earthy in a heavenly way, one tested and tempted in the evil vileness and extreme vertigo of Ravenbsruck concentration camp, one Corrie Ten Boom, offered this prescription, "When the devil sticks his gun of accusation or condemnation in your face, just stuff Romans 8:28 in the barrel of that gun, and turn things around by stuffing it back in his face."

THE MOST SHOCKING SCRIPTURES IN THE BOOK

Let’s take the test. Only two possible answers for each question below: A)God or B)Devil. Choose only one each time. Sounds easy, so take the test, without looking up the accompanying Scriptures until you have turned in your exam. (Number two pencil only, please):

1.)Who sent an evil spirit to terrorize Saul? (1 Sam. 16:14; 18:10)
2.)Who sent a deceiving and lying spirit? (1 Kings 22:22)
3)Who authorizes satanic harassment of Job (Job 1:12)
4)Who can destroy both body and soul in hell? (Matthew 10:28)
5)Who sent a deceiving influence, so that wicked people are damned? (2 Thess. 2:11)

How did you do? Isn’t it obvious that the only correct answer to each of the above is..God!?
Huh? Is that the good news or the bad news, you ask? Whose side are you on, anyway? Cool down, mama! Now you can look up the Scriptures, and triple check that I am not just making this up, or nuts. I think the lesson, though so much more should be said to be sure our theology is biblical and balanced, is: God is so sovereign that he uses..and even though we are not as comfortable as these Scriptures sometimes are in saying so, He is some sense "sends"…. evil, and wrings good purposes out of them. He is not evil, nor the author of evil; and does not enjoy our suffering and evil; he does not want AIDS, cancer, rape, slavery, etc…...but the devil is God’s devil. God is either good and sovereign or not. These Scriptures, stretching and shocking as they are, actually steer us towards his radical "in charge-ness," He is ridiculously sovereign. The devil is active, but he is on a leash…a long one, granted..but God’s grabbing the other end.
OK, four more questions. Ready? Of course not! Same two possible answers, God or the devil, for these below:


1)Who sees to it that a sinner is saved? (1 Cor. 5:5)
2)Who is the god of this world? (2 Cor 4:4)
3)Who helps keep Paul humble? (2 Cor, 12:7)
4)Who teaches Paul not to blaspheme? (1 Tim 1:20)

All done? You got an "A" of course, if every answer above is, as verified by the verses, .the devil! Don’t get me wrong, the devil ain’t good, but he works for God at the end of the day. Church folks don’t get this. Bono gets it. As much as he hates, and campaigns against the devil’s evil (and he and we should) …God uses evil. He wins. Satan is trumped and checkmated in the End. This is the full-orbed gospel, an the message of Elevated Vertigo.
Yes, these are the other shocking questions I love to ask at church gatherings. Did they work?

HOLY LINGERING OR LUNCH WITH THE DEVIL: THE WISDOM TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE

"This generation will be remembered for three things: the Internet, the war on terror, and how we let an entire continent go up in flames while we stood around with watering cans. Or not," Bono preached to evangelical congregations on his Africa awareness tour, hoping for crumbs from our generous spread and table. "Let me share with you a conviction," he often challenged a hushed church, " God is on his knees to the church on this one. God Almighty is on his knees to us, begging us to turn around the super tanker of indifference on the subject of AIDS."

He is right.

Even though we can lean back on the lavish and wild sovereignty of God to work good out of evil, nowhere does that justify us doing nothing so that evil (temporarily) prevails because we know that it will (at the End) be vanquished. And there is enough evil and suffering in the world..and in us; we don’t need to ask for any additional of either, even if we know they force us to grow. Yet, when it is a God-thing, and a "Holy Spirit set-up," there is wealth and wisdom in a holy lingering and loitering at "a place called Vertigo," again, as/ if/when God leads. This is not a passive indifference, this is an active trust that when we are forced, by God and/or circumstances, we can fall to our knees (of course, a wise theologian/activist is quick to add there is a time where God calls us to "please, please, get up off your knees" and butts, and battle evil) in know Who is in charge..

But these activist times to be an enemy of evil in practical ways, is not what I mean by lingering in Vertigo. Even though the unease and suffering we submit to, and absorb there, might feel the same brand as the evil we are to fight, it is not. Another caution: the lingerer in a personal vertigo season of testing, must be prayed up in Vertigo , or s/he will be preyed on. A "just passing through" temporary resident of Vertigo Heights must be intrinsically and insistently motivated in that lingering by a Holy Spirit-inspired calling and quest to plunder and sqeeze and seize life-lessons about oneself that can be learned at no other locale. The joke is on the devil. His bomb is defused and dismantled. It is of course easy to cross the line, and stay too long, as St. Bono has often admitted; either because it feels like God is still wanting you there; or just because "swaying to the music" is fun. "I might sit down with the devil, but I’m not going to have coffee with him". More recently quoted in context of raising AIDS awareness and taking teasings and flack from mates for courting of politicians, popes and presidents , "I’d have lunch with the devil, if it meant money for Africa." Bono is characteristically first to admit "I’m not the best commercial for Christianity", and readily owns up to the truth that his discernment radar has not always tracked, especially in the disorientation and dizziness of fame and spotlight. Fame might be a gift from God that the devil is quick to distort (remember Mirrorball Man…or MacPhisto to the fans: "You’ve made me very famous, and I thank you"); but "celebrity is (also) currency," Bono tells Oprah, the church, and anyone who listens. The devil’s jokes always backfire, Corrie. Every good gift comes from God. Including one of the often dissed and dismissed gifts of grace: Vertigo.

DUELING DEMONIC DUALISM

C. S. Lewis, as previously mentioned, is such a lamppost for Bono (What other theologian is referenced in an animated music video for a "Batman" movie song…only U2 could be behind that! ) that we probably don’t need to link you to any more examples, except to say if you don’t know the story about the "dancing Squeaky" and how a common love for Lewis saved the dance and day for her, and her dancing partner, a Mr. Paul Hewson with horns, here’s the scoop.

Lewis was at his best at reminding us of everything we should’ve known: there are not two gods, God and the devil, who have always existed and are opposites in the all-American "good guy, bad guy" scenario. This ridiculous theology, though, is often our default, unconscious understanding. Many evangelicals will actually suggest that the devil has always existed, and always been bad; forgetting that "Evil is only fallen good," and God made Lucifer; made him good; he simply chose to fall and attempt to claim God’s throne.

That is Christianity; the "good and bad eternal opposite" jive is dualism, related to the hell of extreme Hellenism. But the radical monotheism of Christianity, in which we and three forth of U2 live, move and have their being there is by definition , and design a one-God deal; and He so big that the buck stops with Him, meaning laments like "Jesus.. I know You’re looking out for us..but "sometimes Your hands aren’t free?" are doubts cased in honest faith, which can stand up in Gethsemane, Vertigo or hell-on-earth.

It is no coincidence that both signature songs we have been feasting on here, "Elevation" and "Vertigo" have been accused of being throwaways, musically and lyrically. The deceptively simple rockroots music and fun melodies/riffs, and our inherent Western lens of dualism, may cause some to altogether miss the glorious depths of the lyrics of each, and the holy linking of the two: Elevation leads to vertigo. I hope it doesn’t take the bus ride from hell..I mean Lima to Huancayo…for many to make the link and leap.
link

U2’s central preoccupation is...

Great article in New Yorker, The Church of U2:

...almost every U2 album contains a song about their decision to belong to a band rather than a church. (“One,” for example, is about the challenges of joining together with your friends to try and find God on your own.).. 

...The tension in spiritual life—between discipline and vulnerability, order and openness, being willful and giving in—became U2’s central preoccupation, and gave it its aesthetic..

...most of the time, when Bono uses the words “love,” “she,” “you,” or “baby”—which he does often—a listener can hear “God” instead..

..People sometimes sway to “With or Without You” at weddings, but the “you” isn’t a romantic partner (the line about seeing “the thorn twist in your side” should be a giveaway); the song is about how the intense demands of faith are both intolerable and invaluable (“I can’t live / With or without you”). “The Fly,” on “Achtung Baby,” seems a little overwrought as a love song, but as a song about the writing of the Gospels it’s surprisingly concrete (“Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief, / All kill their inspiration and sing about their grief”). “Until the End of the World” is meaningless until you realize that it’s a love song for Jesus, sung by Judas, as portrayed by Bono. (This becomes especially obvious when the song is juxtaposed with scenes from “The Passion of the Christ.”) The best of these songs may be “Ultra Violet (Light My Way),” which sounds like it’s about a desperate romance, but is actually about the cruelty of God’s reticence:

You bury your treasure where it can’t be found,
But your love is like a secret that’s been passed around.
There is a silence that comes to a house
Where no one can sleep.
I guess it’s the price of love; I know it’s not cheap.

In the chorus, Bono alludes to the Book of Job (“Baby, baby, baby, light my way”), while the Edge offers a metaphor for the near-invisibility of God (“ultraviolet love”). On their recent “U2 360°” tour, the band came up with a clever visual metaphor for the song’s big idea: Bono wears a jacket trimmed in red lasers that point out into the crowd. It’s a pained, incomplete aura—trashy, but beautiful.

U2’s best songs were written during these years—roughly from 1986, when they began recording “The Joshua Tree,” to 1997, the year “Pop” (which is actually very good) was released. But there was a problem: the songs depended for their power on the dramatization of Bono’s ambivalence about God. Onstage, he theatrically performed his doubt: on the “ZooTV” tour, in support of “Achtung Baby,” Bono regularly dressed up as the devil, singing songs of romantic-religious anguish in costume. That anguish was genuine, but there was something unseemly about his flaunting of faith and doubt. It was a peep show in which, instead of showing a little leg, Bono teased us with his spiritual uncertainty. In a song called “Acrobat,” on “Achtung Baby,” he accused himself of hypocrisy: “I must be an acrobat / To talk like this and act like that.” He quoted Delmore Schwartz: “In dreams begin responsibilities.”

U2 have continued to write songs of doubt (“Wake Up Dead Man,” off “Pop,” is especially good). But they are no longer wild, ludic, and unhinged in the way they talk about God. There used to be something improvisational and risky about their spirituality—it seemed as though it might go off the rails, veering into anger or despair. Now, for the most part, they focus on a positive message, expressed directly and without ambiguity. The band’s live shows have a liturgical feel: Bono, who regularly interpolates hymns and bits of Scripture into his live performances, leads the congregation with confidence.

On their most recent albums, including “Songs of Innocence”—which Sasha Frere-Jones, the magazine’s pop music critic, reviewed last week—Bono sings about religious subjects with the kind of unfussy directness that, perversely, makes the songs less open to the resolutely secular. Two songs on the new album, “Every Breaking Wave” and “Song for Someone,” express rich ideas about God—in the first case, the paradoxical idea that, to really sink into faith, you have to stop questing after new experiences of it; in the second, the idea that fleeting moments of religious feeling, even when they don’t make sense in your own life, might be a “song for someone” you don’t know, perhaps someone in need, or some other version of yourself. These songs aim for clarity but end up being uncommunicative; they aren’t rough enough around the edges, and so there’s nothing to grab on to if you’re not already interested. If you aren’t listening carefully, it’s easy to think they’re about nothing.

The story of U2 might be this: having begun as a band that was uncertain about the idea of pursuing a life of faith through music, they have resolved that uncertainty. Their thin ecclesiology has become thick. Today, they are their own faith community; they even have a philanthropic arm, which has improved the lives of millions of people.  

The Church of U2

You always love me too much

Many fans consider "Mercy" the best U2 song on "How to Dismantle.."

But mercilessly, it got cut last minute.

Man, between this song and the other classic that was relegated to a hidden track on the Japanese release("Fast Cars," previously recorded as "Xanax and Wine"), what wild and wonderful prayers.

Yeah, you read that right.

Of course Bono himself in interviews and in song lyrics (in yet another dropped song, "Always", ) invites us to "turn each song into a prayer." Yet this can be done too cheaply and cheesily.
But here it works creatively and counterintuitively..

How so? Experiment.
Test drive it as prayer in progress, and in process.

All prayer is.

The lyric may feel orthodox in an unorthodox way. Or the other way around.

All prayers may be such.

Some lines will be more obvious than others..
but especially the more obtuse and unobvious ones work well, and ring/wring true.

A few clues from the lexicon:

- it has been suggested that the rarely resorted to "Baby" (or "Sugar") often translates to "God" (as in "Ultraviolet") in U2ese. Of course, it doesn't take detective work to realize "Love" reads "God."...

-As often in 'real' prayer, the lines move and morph from the praying one speaking to God speaking... at interesting times.

-capitalize the pronouns if it helps: "We're binary code, a One and a zero/You wanted violins, and You got Nero."

Besides, don't you wonder if anyone has never wailed "what's the use of religion" or complained to/thanked God that "You love me too much" has ever really prayed?

Enjoy. Here's a "devotional" of sorts on the song, if you like...but see how it works and speaks to/speaks for/speaks through you.

"Mercy"

I was drinking some wine and it turned to blood
What's the use of religion if you're any good
I know I'm weed killer, honey, and you're sugar
If you're the prosecution I get away with murder
If you were ice, I'm water


And with your telescope I can see further
We're binary code, a one and a zero
You wanted violins and you got Nero
You're gravity searching for the ground
You're silence searching for a sound
Your heart is aching, your heart is my home
It's fascinating, I know Ill never be alone

I'm ripping the stitches
We've got two hands to rub
I'm digging the ditches
Of someone else's love

Love heals when I lie
Love puts the blue back in my eye
Love will come again
I'll be gone again
Again

If you hunger, baby let me feed it
If your heart is full, baby let me bleed it
And happiness is for those who don't really need it
You love me too much
You always love me too much

When I was ripping the stitches
We've got two hands to rub
I'm digging the ditches
Of someone else's luck

Love heals when I lie
Love puts the blue back in my eye
Love has come again
I am gone again

Love has got to be with the weak
Only then love gets a chance to speak
Love will come again
I'll be gone again
Again

I, I can't escape myself
I'll hear you talk
Fear nothing
I fear nothing
Fear
How can someone fear nothing
How can someone fear nothing

Love is come again
I am gone again
Love is the end of history
The enemy of misery

Love is come again
I am gone again
Love is justice, not charity
Love brings with it a clarity
Love is come again
I'm alive again
Alive
I am alive
Baby, I'm born again
And again and again and again
And again and again
Again

U2 devotionals: "It's the way you don't pay that's okay.."

U2 song lyrics often work on several levels...and one level in most (all?)  every song is, of course, the spiritual, God/Jesus story.

It's ironic that in U2's ironic era (the 1990's), many fans thought they had lost the faith, and ditched the spiritual lyrics.

 But just check out "Discoteque."  Read the lyrics BEFORE watching or listening to the song. 
What's it's ultimately about?    What..or Who..is "it" in the lyric? (see"What the hell is IT"?)
 How obvious..and evangelical..is a line like  "It's the way you don't pay that's okay, 'cause you can't earn it."  Any card-carrying evangelical knows the "saved by grace and not by works, salvation can't be earned"  motto (Ephesians 2:8-10).

Bono has said the song is "a little riddle about love."  And it works on  that and other levels, as Bono admits in the same interview.  Just google the song interpretation; is it about  music?  U2's style? drugs? romance? the search for salvation?  All that and more..

The haunting background vocal, "you want heaven in your heart" is really brought up in the mix (and therefore the meaning) in some remixes of the song

Cleverly disguised as a disco song, it subverts the genre; making fun of "bubble gum" music/salvation while using bubble gum music and scenario.  But, as if to sneak "fish in the sand" yet again, Bono sneaks in some more soteriology in the outro: "I can't get in, I paid, it's not enough"

(Interesting that in some "live" versions, Bono adds a litany about things that enslave..even that we are  "slave to Rome")

Also note: this is pretty much the same story as "Vertigo."  Bono has said that song also takes place in a club, and the temptations along the way to salvation.  ("I was thinking about this awful nightclub we've all been to. You're supposed to be having a great time and. and the character in this stares at the cross just to steady himself").

Bonus: "you want heaven in your heart....but you take what you can get" connects to U2's "The First Time"..another controversial 1990s song.. in that the character doesn't choose salvation; settling for something else/less, and the song almost celebrates that poor choice, even as it mourns it  (see  cursing God's staff and revisionist U2 history and  Well-Ended Stories That Don't End Well).  Not to mention the "I want to get it wrong/Can't always be strong" of "Ultraviolet"...

Bonus: a reference to The One, two years before The  Matrix popularized that phrase (BTW, Not a bad translation of "Christ" ..." the Messiah, or the one;   "the one called the Messiah" as  NLT translates) .  How about a use of "Boom!" years before that became common slang..

Let's go to the discoteque:


You can reach but you can't grab it
You can't hold it, control it, no, 
You can't bag it
You can push but you can't direct it
Circulate, regulate, oh no, 
You cannot connect it

You know you're chewing bubble gum
You know what it is but you still want some
You just can't get enough of that lovie dovie stuff

You get confused but you know it
Yeah, you hurt for it, work for it, love, 
You don't always show it

Let go, let's go, let's go, 
Discothèque
Let go, let go, go go, 
Discothèque
Looking for The One 
But you know you're somewhere else instead
You want to be the song
Be the song that you hear in your head
Love

It's not a trick 'cause you can't learn it
It's the way you don't pay that's okay 
'Cause you can't earn it

You want heaven in your heart..

You know you're chewing bubble gum
You know what it is but you still want some
You just can't get enough of that lovie dovie stuff
Let go, let's go, 
Discothèque
Go go, go go
Discothèque
Love, love
Looking for the one 
But you know you're somewhere else instead
I want to be the song
Be the song that you hear in your head

Love, love, love
You want heaven in your heart
Heaven in your heart
The sun, the moon and the stars
But you take what you can get 
'Cause it's all that you can find
And you know there's something more 
But tonight, tonight, tonight

Boom cha, boom cha
Discothèque
I can't get in, I paid, it's not enough
Boom cha, boom cha
Discothèque
I paid, get in I can't, it's not enough
Boom cha, boom cha
Discothèque
I can't get in, I can't, it's not enough
Boom cha, boom cha
Discothèque
Boom cha, boom cha
 ) ) ) )