Beautiful, Real and Universal

Bruce Cockburn, of all people, changed my spiritual imagination. It happened in a concert hall in New York City in the mid-80s, when Cockburn joined a drummer, a bassist, and a (I’m not making this up) very attractive blonde who played the conch shell, to offer a three-hour artistic feast. His music was ineffable, a sophisticated blend of rock, folk and religion expressed through original poetry. I can still quote the lyrics of his first song:

All the diamonds in this world
That mean anything to me
Are conjured up by wind and sunlight
Sparkling on the sea.

I ran aground in a harbor town
Lost the taste for being free.
Thank God he sent some gull-chase ship
To carry me to sea.

Two thousand years and half a world away.
Dying trees will still grow greener when we pray.
Ship comes shining like a crystal swan in a sky of suns,
Ship comes shining.

Silver scales flash bright and fade
In reeds among the shore.
Like a pearl in a sea of liquid jade
His ship comes shining.

Like a crystal swan
In a sky of suns
His ship comes shining
His ship comes shining.

With no explicit reference to faith, Cockburn captured my spiritual sensibilities better than any ‘Christian’ artist I had encountered.

In recent years, artists who reference spiritual truths obliquely have become quite popular . Not long after the 9/11 attacks, Bruce Springsteen offered nothing less than a testimony to hope and redemption with his single, “My City of Ruins,” which became a best-seller:

There is a blood red circle
On the cold dark ground
And the rain is falling down
The church door's thrown open
I can hear the organ's song
But the congregation's gone
My city of ruins
My city of ruins

Now the sweet bells of mercy
Drift through the evening trees
Young men on the corner
Like scattered leaves,
The boarded up windows,
The empty streets
While my brother's down on his knees
My city of ruins
My city of ruins

Come on, rise up! Come on, rise up!
Come on, rise up! Come on, rise up!
Come on, rise up! Come on, rise up!

It was exactly what our nation needed.

Now a British folk/rock band is taking the baton. I first heard Mumford and Sons live in Asheville, N.C., (where I was the youngest person on the floor, thank you) and upon leaving said to my 19 year old daughter, “I promise you one of them was raised in a minister’s family.” At first she doubted, then she Googled, and afterward she stared at her father wondering how he could know.

How could we not know? With lyrics such as “It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart, but the welcome I receive from a re-start.” Hadn’t she been raised on the parable of the prodigal son? Or these from “Thistle and Weeds,”

Spare me your judgments and spare me your dreams
Cause recently mine have been tearing my seams
I sit alone in this winter clarity which clouds my mind
Alone in the wind and the rain you left me
It's getting dark darling, too dark to see
And I'm on my knees, and your faith in shreds, it seems.

But I will hold on
I will hold on hope.

What’s more biblical than that?

Still, some wonder whether these references are specific enough, Christian enough, and even pressure the artists to clarify their particular convictions. When asked if his band was "Christian," Marcus Mumford responded rather helpfully: “I think faith is something beautiful, and something real, and something universal, or it can be.”

Yes it can, especially if we’ll let the artists lead us.

That’s one reason we’ll hear from Marcus Mumford in our contemporary service on Easter Sunday, because on Easter we proclaim something beautiful, something real and something universal.