U2's Tainted Love Songs to the Tainted Church..emphasis on "Last Night on Earth"

"Jesus, I love You."

Classic worship lyric.

I know; yawn yada...

Borders on the trite, as true as it is..

...which is why the devout worshipper who penned it (who writes in the liner notes that "hopefully I have expressed my faith without cheesy slogans") followed up in the next line with an abductive (non) non-sequitur :

"...but I don't understand Your wife."

!

Should we continue?

"....She wears such funny makeup, and she always wants to fight..."


This delightful lovetweak  (not torchsong) at the church (the bride/wife/harlot of Jesus); embedded in Brian Healey's lyric, is hilariously serious. The whole song/prayer must be read and reckoned with (here)....though I haven't heard wind of any churches besides ours utilizing it in an official gathering.
For years, it has been my favorite psalm-lament about/to the church.

But now I am asking:

Which U2 songs might be..in part.."love songs to the church"?

Besides the...partly right....answer:

All of them.

..especially if we leave ample room in love for a bit of hate.

In typical fashion these "love songs"...sometimes depending on the era of U2's "long obedience in the same direction", or even the twist in tone laden in a single line with double entendre..may be torch songs, swan songs, all-out worship songs, love/hate songs....

..all in the same song.

Bono, also abductive, loves to wear a pair of doxes to church.

Lovers quarrels are mandatory for honest people of faith who are after the long haul and long obedience.

Tainted love, indeed.

Even though Christianity Today doesn't get it.



One of the most obvious "self-confessed" U2 songs "to the church" is "Crumbs From Your Table, " a lyric Bono has often made painfully clear is from Africa to the West/Western church.

"You ate all your friends."
Yeah, that's a lover's quarrel...
..with many within the Wife who can talk too much..like me..
(Two of Bono's mentors, Bruce Cockburnere and Martin Luther King have relevant and articulate words for our many words).

And there's "Please," a plea with the church to "get off its knees" and quit praying (better yet, continue praying) as one moves into active engagement with the world.

There's "American Prayer," which Bono introduced at World Aids Day as being "just a message to the church...to give sanctuary to the HIV-positive...what's the problem?"

Jesus has a problem bride.
I am sometimes a bitch.

But it was Ben's post (hat tip) which I found through Len (toque-tip) that triggered my wondering what other songs from the U2 canon/cannon were in effect tough-lovesongs to Jesus's unwieldy Wife.

I soon repented of not preaching the full gospel all these years; of not "preaching the (full) U2 catalog"....when that catalog had been shipped (sometimes C.O.D.) to the church.

Ben flat-out stated; as-if-everyone knew it...that one U2 song was a "love song to the church."

"When I read the lyrics of this song as the recipient, as a member of the Church to whom Bono is singing, it strikes a chord with me," he says about...

"One."

Fascinating.

I had never seen it. . I remembered Bono's original inspiration for the defining line "we're one, but not the same" (a note he wrote to Dalai Lama, respectfully declining an invitation to a meeting celebrating spiritual "sameness"); the usual " gay son and his father" or "can we still be friends though divorced" spins, but "love song to the church"?


"Have you come here for forgiveness?
Have you come to raise the dead?
Have you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head?"

If Bono is asking the church this triad, perhaps the expected answer is "yes."

The "we get to carry each other...sisters, brothers" did always hotlink me to Sam's words to Frodo: "I can't carry (your burden) for you; but I can carry you."

That's not only "Lord of the Ring's" thesis on friendship; it's church; it's Galatians 6: 1; 10.

And note how often Bono changes the last line to "Have you come here to play Jesus?...I did."

Maybe instead of/in addition to being an admission of messianic complex; the 'I did' is a humble desire to "do the works of Jesus"; to be "Jesus with skin on"; to get up off ones knees (literally) and be a Sam carrying Frodo.


U2's close friend Guggi offers that "One," though multiplex, is fundamentally about "the breakdown of one relationship and the starting up of another one."

Re-read that quote; and ask if the new relationship might be with the same person
(church). Isn't that the means and media by which all of us accept our marriage to the church/Christ?

So spend some time with Ben's blog on "One." His thesis is worth pursuing.

I have another song in mind.

I needed to do a quick googling to see if anyone else was crazy enough to interpret this particular song as "to the church." I immediately found:

"Could this song be about the church?," (as JPrentice asked).

And Beth Maynard wondering (in response to Rudy Carrasco's question) if it could be a "stewardship song" (Help me, Beth, the original post is no longer online).

As I listened to different live versions of this song on YouTube; I also heard--for the first time-- the haunting, daunting refrain in some versions:

"Could you believe in something/Would you believe in someone?"

Of course that sounds evangelistic; but as questions to the church, they penetrate deeper.

The single version of this lovesick song includes this line; as does the official video.

Both cause me to consider the "she" in "Last Night on Earth" as  (as much as she may appear to be instead/also an addict) the very Bride of Christ: the SheChurch.

For a number of reasons, if the girl in the video is the church, theological implications abound and astound. We first meet her veritably hijacking the band's car; as they pick her up and immediately navigate a speedy U-turn (metanoia?) , Bono pleading at 2:45; "Could you believe in someone?" And watch as she assumes a fairly obvious crucifixion pose, and a subsequent death-resurrection. (maybe two of each):


U2 - Last night on Earth by Angkor
(see also 'Last Night On Earth' video meaning?)

In the Edmonton version he confesses (or confesses on behalf of the "she")
that the last night on earth "feels like a bird flying high in the northern sky...but my feet are sometimes tied to the ground." Church!








Eventually on tour (see opening of the Sao Paulo clip), he began nightly introducing the song with a rant culminating in "I wanted to meet God, but you sold me religion.."




Of course that's addressed to the church. Who else sells their soul and kills their birthright in order to sell the seeker some useless religion?

"She's at the bus stop with the 'NEWS OF THE WORLD' and the sun/ sun, sun,here it comes" can be spun several ways. Note the following:

-"News of the World" is the name of a British tabloid. "Sun" is used all over the U2 catalog as symbol for God/Jesus ("Sun"). So she could be the informed and appropriately worldly church Karl Barth hoped for; the 'she' with "the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other."

-"The Sun" is also a tabloid; so she may instead be ODing on cheep and cheesy news sources. As in one reviewer's take:

He even manages to take a detail another singer would use against her -- her love of tabloids -- and turn it into an image that quotes one of the Beatles' loveliest songs: "She's at the bus stop with the 'News of the World' and the 'Sun,' sun, here it comes." As befits an album named "Pop," U2 is both acknowledging the discontents of a disposable culture and rushing headfirst into its pleasures.
-Charles Taylor's review of "Pop" for Salon Magazine

-The Beatles reference is surely intentional. No accident it is the one Beatles song ("Here Comes The Son") that many agree is about the "Son" . It has been song in churches as such.

Speaking of cheesy; let's address what at first glance is the cheesy pun of sun/Son. One wonderful video (skip church and watch it here; 3rd video from top) even suggests that Jesus himself is tired of that corny connection..But I believe (along with no cheesy evangelical: the Mormon philospher Mark Wathrall) that "sun" representing "Son" is so clearly and consistently in Bono's mind and lexicon ("The sun is sometimes eclipsed by the Moon/ I don't see You when she walks in the room...", "Staring at the Sun..happy to go blind", "I'll be up with the Sun/I'm not coming down" to give only three examples) that we cannot not consider it a candidate here. She's at the bus stop with a tabloid and Jesus.


I ponder as well "She feels the ground is giving way; but she feels we're better off that way."

At her best, the church recognizes that the "ground" she has long trusted (modernity, koinonitis, the good-old-boys club, a "just preach Jesus; none of this liberal social action stuff") is no longer tenable..which is good news as God is desiring to re-build the church on more solid (ironic term; as this "new" solid ground will often feel more fluid, free, flexible...and "more malleble than you think," as Bono has said about history) ground: postmodern, missional, multicultural, holistic (I know, all buzzwords; forgive me)

At her worst, the church is in covenant and in bed with, and embedded with, the decidedly wrong foundations:

"If the foundations are destroyed, what will the righteous do?" (Psalm 11:3)

Maybe the righteous Wife will default to "not waiting for a savior to come...she'll be dead soon."

But could it be that "not waiting for a savior to come" is a positive pose, if one is not seeking only "pie in the sky when we die," and "so heavenly minded that we're no earthy good." If it entails interceding and activating the Kingdom and its healing and justice in the here and now; not waiting on the there-and then.

I long for the streets to have no name on earth as it is in heaven.

Charles Taylor again:

If skepticism creeps in about the state of things, so does a conviction about the necessity (and the thrill) of living in the moment. "She feels the ground is giving way," Bono sings about the young woman who's the subject of "Last Night on Earth," "but she thinks we're better off that way." ... As befits an album named "Pop," U2 is both acknowledging the discontents of a disposable culture and rushing headfirst into its pleasures.
-Charles Taylor's review of "Pop" for Salon Magazine

"Necessity and thrill of living in the moment."

Of course it would take a notoriously non-Christian magazine writer to interpret Bono's prophecy to the church. Like deCaussade and Brother Lawrence, to love mentally/sacramentally and quietly/quietistically in the present moment; yet not deny the sensual, perhaps sexual "thrill" of such a quest is to be false to biblical faith.

Or as Bono himself said about Elvis in a stunning and overlooked Rolling Stone article:

It seems a dangerous place, to have belief and longing in the same heart. It can only be at the point of desperation that mystery can have a seat at the table. This is the space where U2 has lingered in for years, drawing people to their passionate story and a longing for a different Kingdom here on earth. It is only natural that many would resource this voice to find a prophetic word for the world we live in now.

When Elvis was upset and feeling out of kilter, he would leave the big house and go down to his little gym, where there was a piano. With no one else around, his choice would always be gospel, losing and finding himself in the old spirituals. He was happiest when he was singing his way back to spiritual safety. But he didn't stay long enough. Self-loathing was waiting back up at the house, where Elvis was seen shooting at his TV screens, the Bible open beside him at St. Paul's great ode to love, Corinthians 13. Elvis clearly didn't believe God's grace was amazing enough.
(source, big thanks to Mother Beth)

"Self-loathing was waiting for," and often found in the closet of, the she/church of "Last Night on Earth." And its often fear of our sexuality that causes us to sublimate; not elevate.
Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen (Keep in mind he likely knows nothing of U2):

Prayer is not something the pray-er just recites...it is an
experience he enters into. There is no room for inhibition; singing and dancing
are essential means by which he expresses his emotional cleaving to God….but
such ardor/desire for God has to be so overwhelming that any extraneous thoughts
are excluded…If distractions are erotic in nature…and he faces up to the
predominance of the sexual urge at both conscious and subconscious levels, and
its capacity to intrude even during prayer...then he has learned to take
measures…by introducing the (ancient) doctrine of the "elevation of strange
thoughts." This is a Chasidic Jewish technique not of sublimation, but of
thought conversion, whereby the beauty or desirability of the woman is latched
upon and used not as a sexual but rather as a mental and spiritual stimulus. We
are taught to "elevate" these thoughts by substituting the beauty of God for the
physical beauty that is currently bewitching us. The praying person has learned to
immediately contrast the pale reflection of beauty that humans are endowed with,
on the one hand, and the supreme Divine source of authentic and enduring beauty,
on the other…This is not sublimation; This is elevation. (source)

.



Of course the rabbi was unknowingly commenting on yet another U2 song here: "Elevation."



"Elvis was happiest, " Bono proffers, " when he was singing his way back to spiritual safety. But he didn't stay long enough."

I want to stay in the song long enough; tethered to Jesus and the rest of his Bride; safe as I risk engaging the world; free to live as if this were the last night on earth.

I am, as Gavin Friday commented on the song at hand, part and parcel of the flawed, addictive "wild woman who gives you a charge of energy."
Sometimes I prefer to be "in the church but not of it."



And to come full circle to Brian Healy's song, as part of the Holy Wife, I plead:

So don't mistake my anger for bitterness and strife
Because on bended knees I'm begging you please
Jesus, talk to your wife .

So I pledge to get up off my bended knees, and do something about the problem:
the church.
That is:  me.

She is me.