I grow more and more convinced that Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus have been wrongly written off as flat and unimaginative. In fact, they offer some of the apostle’s most creative theologizing.

One of Paul’s finest moments is his finding in an unnamed pagan prophet from Crete’s past a diagnosis for which his own gospel is the antidote (compare Titus 1:12 with 2:12).

“We Cretans are (religious) liars,” confesses the prophet. “God’s grace became incarnate to teach us godliness,” counters Paul.

“We Cretans are vicious beasts” admits the prophet. “God’s grace came to teach us justice,” urges Paul.

“We Cretans are lazy gluttons,” bemoans the prophet. “God’s grace came to teach us self-control,” offers Paul.

I wrote all that up in more scholarly form some time ago in “Titus as Apologia: Grace for Liars, Beasts, and Gluttons” (for a copy, click the link), insights from which my friend Phil Towner adroitly worked into his truly outstanding NICNT commentary, The Letters to Timothy and Titus (Eerdmans, 2006).

My main summer project has been completing a short writing project for Baker Book House: essentially fifty-plus words per verse of commentary on these three letters to Paul’s two most trusted lieutenants.

The writing comes on the heels of three lectures and some valuable interchange with University of Florida students at the Christian Study Center (headed up by Richard Horner, himself an exceedingly astute scholar of Western intellectual history) in Gainesville during this past spring semester. My lectures, How Pauline are the Pastorals … and why does it matter?, are available in mp3 format from the CSC website).
That lecture series and this summer’s writing have provided the first chance I’ve had in a while to work carefully through these last of Paul’s letters. It’s been both bracing and convicting.

This summer happens to find us in the midst of a political season. For that reason, when the writing brought me at long last to the beginning of Titus 3 and to Paul’s instructions on civic virtue there, I found myself having to linger a while.

In a word, Paul says that Christians should not only be passively obedient, say, in praying for government (1Tm 2) and in paying taxes (Rom 13), but beyond those duties we should be ready “for every good work” (Titus 3:1). He’s talking about works done in the public square, not in the Christian ghetto.

Moreover, as if to anticipate those who assume he means we should lead with indignant anger and strident denunciations of all that is wrong with the world, Paul urges us: “to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone” (Titus 3:2 TNIV).

I thought those words were worth calling attention to during the summer of a presidential race, so a few days ago I posted some reflections at Glenn Lucke’s Common Grounds Online community, “Paul to Titus: On Christians in the Public Square.” I’d be pleased to have friends drop in there to continue the conversation about what Paul would have us do.

But before I stop keyboarding, I also have to recommend a sobering article by David Brooks of the New York Times, “The Great Seduction: America’s Next Moral Threat Isn’t Sexual — It’s Financial” (NYT, June 10, 2008). Brooks, in turn, refers to Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s “A Nation in Debt: How We Killed Thrift, Enthroned Loan Sharks and Undermined American Prosperity”).

Its Puritan theology and Franklinesque ethic of prudence, opines Brooks, originally enabled the U.S. to be wealthy without being corrupted by wealth. But that legacy has given way to a culture of financial decadence, an explosion of debt, and the division of our citizenry into an “investor class” and a “lottery class.” At our peril, may I suggest, we neglect the prospect of resentment-fueled class war.

Between them, Brooks and Whitehead offer various suggestions for turning things around, e.g., tightened usury laws, raised awareness about debt, access for the poor and middle class to financial planning, re-purposed lotteries, foundation- and church-based short-term loans.

What they leave for somebody else to say is this: What’s going on around us in the collapse of the housing market and in the skyrocketing of personal debt has everything to do with what happens when we do not pay attention in the marketplace and in the public square to the basic values the gospel teaches: truth will eventually out us, and we can only deny the claims of justice and self-control so long (Titus 1:12). If we’re a city on a hill, as it was put by the One who came to teach us to deny ungodliness and worldly passions and to live soberly, justly, and piously, now is a time for shining (see Titus 2:11-12; Mt 5:14-16).

In sum of this post and of my explorations in the Pastorals over the last few months: we dare not keep our faith in the prayer-closet — and we could do worse than to heed the apostle’s considered judgment as to how he wanted his theology to be applied in the next generation.

The light turned green, and I hesitated — prompted, I’m certain, by some angelic whisper. No sooner did I inch out than a drunk driver going 65 mph (the posted limit was 35 mph) blasted through the intersection — and right through the engine compartment of my Toyota Sienna.

I’m OK. Beyond belief, I walked away from the accident. But I’m finding it takes a while to sweep up all the physical, financial, and emotional debris that comes with an event like this.

So now I’m driving my mother’s ‘92 Buick while I get insurance worked out — and (sigh) I’m selling my 1965 Mustang so I can replace the totaled minivan.

OK. Battery on the Buick goes out yesterday, and there’s something wrong with the hood, so I can’t get it open to jump the car. Reader beware — here comes a parable:

1st AAA vehicle is operated by a Christian (he volunteers this information when he notices we’re in a seminary parking lot) … he offers me a bottle of water ‘cause it’s low 90s and the sun is blazing. But when he can’t figure out how to get the hood up, he says he’s got too many calls waiting and he’s going to have to call a tow truck. Gone.

2nd AAA vehicle (the tow truck) is driven by a Harley t-shirt wearing, chain-smoking, good-ole-boy … it never occurs to me to ask about his worldview motivation (I know that makes me a slacker); still, he just exudes that religion-is-for-wusses ethos. At any rate, he sizes up the situation and says, “Dude, I’m going to get you out of here without a tow.” After some fiddling, he figures out he can unscrew the front grille and manually get the hood up … jumps the battery and he’s off. With what I hope he would consider a worthy tip.

There’s been much to ponder in the last two weeks: the promise that all our days are numbered (Ps 139:16), the reality of “ministering spirits” (Heb 1:14), the strength of Toyota safety-technology — and then yesterday’s little window into the parable of the Good Samaritan.

“If when we die we just go back to the dirt, well, then nothing matters. But if the Christian story is true — that Jesus died and rose again — then everything matters,” says the Newsboys’ lead singer Peter Furler.

If Jesus died and rose again it means every one of us is heading for one of two destinations, according to C. S. Lewis: being “immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”

My friend Greg Davis lost his battle with esophageal cancer this week. But he won a more significant campaign. Greg loved Jesus. And Greg lived as though he weren’t just returning to dirt. He lived as though he were destined to become an everlasting splendour.

I’ve known few people as gifted in so many areas — and so unwilling to trumpet his abilities. Raised in Liberia by missionaries from the U.S. (his dad was a bush pilot), Greg responded to God’s call to the nations by equipping himself for ministry and going to Ireland as a missionary. When his marriage fell apart and he found himself a single dad, he took up counseling. His pastoring was characterized by an unusual capacity to care for the discarded and ignored — thus, I think, our mutual love for French artist Georges Rouault.

Along the way Greg found he had a knack for photography and for wordsmithing — so he published a book of his photos and poems, Windows of the Heart: Poetry & Photographs (Writers Press, 2002). Because nobody else around him seemed to understand how to make their computers work, he learned “information technology” (even figuring how PCs work — to Greg, that anybody would use anything but a Mac was proof of radical depravity). Though he felt his IT ability was as much a curse as a gift, he gave himself selflessly to helping others use digital technology (“Well, the basic reason your computer’s not working is that it’s not plugged in”).

A couple of months after I started leading worship at Orangewood, I felt it was time to bring a little art into our “sanctinasium” (sanctuary/gymnasium/school auditorium). It’s one thing for reformed people to have a lean aesthetic — but gym aesthetics are beyond lean. I’d say more like off-puttingly utilitarian — without even the hauntingly mysterious potential of catacombs. In support of lyrics that particular Sunday I projected some art I use in classroom teaching, and I did so with a singular set of fears: that the congregation would find the art helpful but me unable to find the time to provide the art from week to week. “Lord, I offer this to you — but if it’s going to be more than a one shot deal, you’re going to have to do something.”

No sooner did the service end than a short, bald, bearded guy walked up to me: “Hey, I just started working at the church part-time in IT … but my real interest is art … if you have any interest in doing more of what you did this morning, I think I might be able to help.”

Little in ministry has given me more pleasure over the last four years than brainstorming with a gifted and godly worship team about how readings, segues, songs, prayers, sacraments and sermons can complement each other — and then sitting back to watch Greg create slide backgrounds, videos, poetry, and handouts to make a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. See his corpus at writeclik.com. His visual point of departure might be a Vermeer or a Rembrandt or a Rouault or a cathedral or a train station or a worked-metal cross atop an Istanbul church or a neon-lit cross in front of an Orlando rescue mission. His imaginative capacity and theological depth and biblical breath were astonishing. And his friendship irreplaceable.

A week before his death we sang, “Be Still My Soul,” and I could barely get through it because I knew my friend would soon be departing:

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on your side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
leave to your God to order and provide;
in ev’ry change he faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: your best, your heav’nly Friend
through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul: your God will undertake
to guide the future as He has the past.
Your hope, your confidence let nothing shake;
all now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while he dwelt below.

Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart,
and all is darkened in the vale of tears.
Then shall you better know his love, his heart,
who comes to soothe your sorrow and your fears.
Be still, my soul: your Jesus can repay
from His own fullness all He takes away.

Be still, my soul: the hour is hast’ning on
when we shall be forever with the Lord.
when disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past,
all safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

The second most enjoyable thing I’ve done in the last two years (the first was gator hunting last year) was going to the U2 Vertigo concert in Miami as Greg’s guest (thus the “vintage” post elsewhere on this site, “BB&BB: The Beat Goes On”). So I know the sign-off Greg would prefer is from his favorite Irish theologian, Bono:

Grace
It’s a name for a girl
It’s also a thought that changed the world.
What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things.

This was a summer of firsts, including my first (and hopefully not last) gator hunt. It couldn’t have been more fantastic. We went out on the St. Johns River, between Orlando & Titusville, only a half hour away from my house (there are gators everywhere in Central FL … you know you have to be pretty hardy to live in the subtropics).

So what happens is that we (hunting party of 3, plus 2 guys running the airboat) hit the water at 7:30 this past Tues. night … it doesn’t get dark till 8:30, when you can start hunting. I’m up front with my harpoon (think: Captain Ahab looking for Moby Dick).

The idea is to get a gator’s reflective eyes in a high powered spotlight, run up on him in the airboat as fast as you can before he can dive under, harpoon him, chase down the buoy connected to the rope connected to the harpoon tip in his back, then reel him in, dispatch him with a 45 caliber “bang stick,” pull him aboard, tape his mouth shut (“just in case”), and take care of his spinal nerve (at which point you assume he’s probably actually dead).

By 9:00, after about 5 or 6 unsuccessful runs, but increasingly good harpoon thrusts (it takes a while to realize you have to thrust the harpoon, not throw it), I’ve harpooned a 7-footer (good size for tasty meat). What a man-rush! Entirely primordial.

Now that my partner’s looking for his gator, I’m able to sit back and enjoy the ride, pretty much enamored with the notion of masculinity. You know: being a hunter-gatherer and all, which, of course, the theologian in me can’t help but put in terms of, “Here’s a whole new dimension of ‘taking dominion’ … this part of ‘bearing the image of God’ is pretty cool.” (Of course, as we all know, before the Fall, gators frolicked with dogs & children, and in the Peaceable Kingdom species-concord will return, “the gator will lie with the puppy.” Until then, though, we’ve got to do what we can to make the world safe for Fido and “the little ears” — not to mention for joggers).

Back to our gator tale. In such a state of mind, even the cigarette smoke and the “mf this” & “mf that” of Sean & Ray our, um, rustic airboat drivers seem right. Oh, yeah, there’s finally the conversation between Sean & Ray, on the one hand, and our threesome, on the other, during a lull:

SEAN or RAY: So what do you mf-ers do?

BUDDY 1: I’m a firefighter.

BUDDY 2: I edit TV shows about hunting & stuff.

SEAN or RAY: (to me): What about you?

BUDDY 1 or 2: Oh, well, he’s a musician & stuff.

ME: You don’t want to know what I do.

RAY: Really? What?

ME: I train people to minister the gospel.

(general pause)

SEAN: Well, I guess somebody has to.

(Murmers of general agreement, and finally, from somebody, “Let’s go find us one more gator.”)

By 11:00 my partner has his gator too (his is a 6-footer, which should be even tastier than mine … plus this gator has a beautifully mottled hide). By 11:30 we’re back at camp skinning them. Yeah, skinning them. Normally suburbanites will take their recently-deceased gators to a meat processing plant. But for my buddies (one of whom is a trapper, and both of whom hunt everything, all the time, together [seriously, their conversation is like the nonstop repartee between Raymond’s parents in “Everybody Loves Raymond” ... all I can do all night is offer marriage counseling]) … where was I? Oh yeah, but for my buddies, skinning is vital to the experience. We figure we have a good head for mounting out of mine, a really fine skin and head from the other, and some excellent meat to divide among us from both (jaw meat’s the best, then tail meat … leg & just-outside-the-chest-cavity meat is pretty much “grinder” stuff you’d make into jerky & stew).

By 3:30am we’re done … meat’s on ice, carcass has been returned to nature, my buddies are headed for the showers (they’re camping), and I’m headed home for a couple of hours of sleep. And at 8:00, I’m in class, which I survive with the aid of an “if anything doesn’t sound quite right today…” disclaimer. Decent nap in the afternoon, and since we bagged our limit on the first night, we don’t have to go out for a second. So I’m sound and mannishly contentedly asleep on the couch in front of the Little League World Series by 9:00pm.

It was a good day.

As all my friends know, because I can’t not talk about it, my youngest son and I have been studying a form of Japanese swordsmanship for a little over a year and a half now. Well, we were finally invited to do our first testing this summer, and we both passed. My son did so somewhat more respectably than I. To mix metaphors (well, to mix sports), I hit a single just inside the baseline, while my son hit a double off the wall. Regardless, we’re now both “first rank” (in the U.S., not the Japanese, association), though that’s not something you’d ever actually mention — which is one reason this whole sword thing is so cool.

The predominant lesson is one I’ve ruminated about before: the “way” of submission I’ve seen in my Scottish-bred, Key West-born sensei. He doesn’t cut corners. He has given himself in humility to learn what his Japanese sensei wants him to know. He has no patience with “know it alls” and self-promoters. He’s learned a power of greatness that comes from taking the lowly path. For my son and me, what we learned from testing is something we already knew: testing isn’t the deal — making progress in the art of the sword is.

A second lesson has to do with the cumulative power of little acts of obedience when combined with a master teacher’s powers of observation and timely guidance. It has only been since the spring that the sword thing has become enjoyable. That’s because there have been several “breakthroughs” for me recently — that is, finally “getting it” about certain mechanics of the discipline.
What it’s taken to finally understand things I’d merely heard for months was a combination of my doing the best I could over and over and over again even though I was doing things wrong, and my sensei’s sensing the timely moment when an individualized word could be heard — that is, his recognizing “teachable moments”:

“Throw the tip of the sword as though you were casting a fishing rod, like this….”

“Keep the pad of your left palm on the sword all the time, like this ….”

“On the left-to-right side cut, keep the right wrist cocked, like this….”

At long last, when I do my forms, I don’t feel like a klutz, and when I approach a tatami to cut it, I expect to cut it cleanly and with an angle that’s at least close. I’ve had to do mongo-numerific repetitions, but sensei had to offer timely corrections, otherwise I’d still just be doing things wrong.

By my daily practice, I put myself in the line of fire for illumination. By his attentiveness, my sensei metes out his best instruction when it can be heard. The whole dynamic is, for me, a window into the way God relates to those he’s adopted into his family through Jesus.

Lectionary Devotions. Not unrelated to the above has been my use of the lectionary for personal devotions. For years I’ve done Bible reading on a “read through” basis, trying to get through the whole Bible in English every year and through the Greek NT once a year too. The latter’s been fairly consistent, the former pretty spotty.

A few months ago I changed over to following the Presbyterian Church (USA) lectionary, where the typical daily pattern is: a psalm or two, an Old Testament passage, a paragraph or so from a New Testament epistle, and a Gospel pericope. In recent years, I’ve picked up more friends from a liturgical tradition, and I’ve been intrigued, first, by how much more actual reading of Scripture there is in their Sunday worship services (a topic for another day!), and, second, by what an oddly satisfying thing it seems to be to them to be reading Scripture daily in concert with a vast number of fellow believers around the world. They seem to have a keener sense than I of being caught up in a shared story with a worldwide, heaven-and-earth-transcending communion.

At any rate, I’m giving myself to the daily lectionary readings for now. To facilitate that for myself and anybody else who cares to join in, I’ve posted an RSS link to the daily lectionary from my website (in the left hand column of this page).

A few observations.

Every day I have at least one psalm to meditate on (I usually use the chants from the Book of Common Worship). The psalms — especially as sung — sort of force a more personal engagement, and remind me that Scripture promotes doxology and authenticity. Lex canendi, lex credendi. Sing praise. Understanding will follow.

Old Testament stories come in smaller bits. Following the lectionary, I’ll read about half a chapter a day instead of, like, three chapters in the annual “read through” track. That means the stories unfold a bit more leisurely, suspense building from day to day. Tracking Samson’s sorry tale over the course of several days, for instance, is quite a different matter than running through it in a day. You come back to him each morning waiting for him to wake up from his spiritual stupor and ethical torpor — but he doesn’t, until his days on this earth are spent. You see yourself in a mirror, and you cry out, “Lord, have mercy!” The Old Testament has suddenly become more like what it actually is, the poignantly dramatic unfolding of God’s story of his reclamation of this out-of-control planet he nonetheless loves.

No matter what, in the lectionary you always end with a gospel reading — that means (like any good children’s sermon) you always end up with Jesus. In the Protestant tradition that has shaped me, we prize the epistles (especially Paul’s), where the implications of Jesus’s coming — his death, his resurrection, and his guidance via the Holy Spirit — are spelled out. But the actual person — the one Martin Kaehler liked to refer to as the “historic Christ” of the gospel accounts — can go relatively unattended in our tradition.

It takes far more intuition and imagination on your part and far more illumining work from the Holy Spirit’s side, to go daily to the gospel accounts and get your bearings from Jesus. Today, for instance, I was reminded that it isn’t in Scripture as such that “eternal life” resides (we’re a religion “of the book,” so to speak — but the book isn’t the religion); rather, “it is they (the Scriptures) that bear witness to me. And you aren’t willing to come to me to get that life” (John 5:39-40). I realize the gospel writers are no less mediators of the “actual Jesus” than are the epistle writers. Nonetheless, through them I’m being reminded more directly my Jesus’s meddlesomeness, not to mention his refusal to be refashioned in my likeness.

For almost a year and a half now my son and I have been pursuing samurai swordsmanship. Finally, next month my son and I will undergo our first testing, aiming for our first “rank.” It’s taken a year and a half of tutelage for our sensei — our sword teacher — to think we’re decent enough to show in public.

From our first class to the time we were allowed to handle sharp swords and cut tatami (reed floor mats rolled up, rubberbanded, and soaked), it was six months. Six months of tutelage in how to take a dull sword out of its sheath and put it back in without losing a finger. Six months of trying to do “forms” that require our bodies to move in stylized, ritualistic, awkwardly Japanese ways. And then another year before being deemed ready to try to earn our first rank. In all, eighteen months of waiting to do “the good stuff.”

Our sensei’s attitude? “We’re not interested in students of the sword who are not students of ‘the way.’” He’s made it clear that if you’re going to be exasperated at “a long obedience in the same direction,” you’d be better off elsewhere.

Really, though, it’s been remarkably easy to submit to a man who himself has submitted to another.

Our sword teacher doesn’t come by his finesse with the samurai sword any more naturally than my son and I do. We share our sensei’s Scottish descent, as well as his deference-deprived Florida upbringing. For heaven’s sake, our sword master hails from the Conch Republic (Key West, to non-Floridians), which makes my Miami Vice South Florida seem positively Stepfordesque.

But he recognized that when his (Japanese) sensei came into his life sixteen years ago, the man’s claims on him were total. The Japanese sensei knew everything, the American student knew nothing. As obvious as that was on the first day, now that the student has himself become a sensei, he believes and acts and teaches as though it were still true that he knows nothing. That’s why his teaching is so commanding, his bearing so arresting.

I ask myself, “Isn’t this the power of Another who taught “as with authority”? What penetrating insight into the true state of things there is in the first-century Roman centurion’s words, “I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Only say the word and my servant will be healed. For I am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it” (Mt 8:8-9; see also Lk 7:6-8). This representative of an occupying power recognized that in this lowly rabbi he was dealing with Someone who himself had learned an obedience unto lordship.

A little while back — and well enough into our apprenticeship to appreciate what we were seeing — my son and I got to help out at a competition meet. There we watched various sensei and their students from all over the country. The difference between groups where teaching and learning had been done out of a posture of submission and those where “self” was in charge was palpable.

It was at that event that my sensei was promoted to some preposterously high rank in the Japanese version of our U.S. sword association. It was a big deal (though the ceremony was sort of hard to follow, since it was conducted, appropriately enough, in Japanese). During the proceedings, one of our senior students whispered to me: “You know what this means, don’t you? They now count him one of them — they consider him Japanese.”

Here’s to the day when everything about me breathes the atmosphere of the City of God. Here’s to the day when people will look at my life and see nothing but the Master who has mastered me. It all seems so far off — still, I count on the promise of the “Son who learned obedience through what he suffered, and being made perfect became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (Heb 5:8-9). And I’m grateful for such a vivid picture of that promise in as unexpected a place as a samurai sword class.

What I wish for each of those who come into the orb of my life and ministry, perhaps especially for those who come to my seminary to train to do ministry, is a “coming under” someone like my sensei. All these aspiring servants of that other Kingdom are as much citizens of our submission-bereft, obedience-challenged world as I am. What I covet for them is the chance to be shaped by the power of a self-abnegation like my sword master’s. Everybody could use a sensei.

•

(This post first appeared at Common Grounds Online)

Part of the “singing” side of Jesus’ story is the celebration of his many voices, which, as my friends and readers know, I parse in terms of Bach, Bubba, and the Blues Brothers (Chapters 8-10 of With One Voice).

Recently and unexpectedly, God allowed me a special hearing of each of those voices.

• Bach’s Voice: The Gloriae Dei Cantores
• Bubba’s Voice: “Life is Like a Mountain Railroad”
• The Blues Brothers’ Voice: U2’s Vertigo Tour

A few Saturday nights ago, the Gloriae Dei Cantores, (GDC) offered a free concert at 1st Presbyterian Church in downtown Orlando (sponsored by United Arts of Central FL [UACFL], and others). The Gloriae Dei Cantores (= “Singers to the Glory of God”) are a splendid sacred music choir from Cape Cod, MA. High points of the GDC program were pieces by composers new to me: Samuel Adler’s “Psalm 146” (Oh, did Ps 146 dance!), Bruce Neswick’s “I Will Set His Dominion in the Sea” (powerful organ, soaring voices), and William Matthias’s suite Rex Gloriae (”Sing praise with joy, you mountains, for our Lord will come, and he will be merciful to his poor”).

In With One Voice, I write about the way “Bach’s voice” (classical music in service of Christ) promotes, what, in the spirit of Aristotle, I call “greatness of soul” and, in the spirit of Paul, “the weight of glory.” That night in Orlando , I heard Jesus singing “Bach’s voice” full-throated, and I felt greatness of soul.

That same night the Doobie Brothers were giving a free open air concert a couple of blocks away — there’s a sermon somewhere in that juxtaposition! I walked out of the building onto a street reverberating with the Doobie Brothers’ question: “Without love, where would you be right now?” Indeed, without the Savior’s love, where? And without brothers and sisters like the members of the Gloriae Dei Cantores, how could we hear his splendid song of love?

Not long after that, I took my 80 something year old mother to East Tennessee to visit my father’s burial site. Hosting us was my favorite cousin, Frank Kidd, retired educator and lover of Jesus. He was ebullient about his recent trek to Greenville , SC , for the Southern Gospel awards ceremony. I think our relationship went to a new plateau on this trip, because he played me two recordings of his all-time favorite hymn, “Life is like a mountain railroad, with an Engineer that’s brave” — one version by Patsy Cline, the other by Burl Ives. I had no idea this earthy sort of music touched my cousin’s spirit so. It was unimaginably endearing — his love for the song and for the way it made him love more earnestly the brave Engineer of his soul — well, it was irresistible. Jesus grew up in Palestine ‘s equivalent of East Tennessee . He was an artisan’s son who got dirt under his fingernails — and he’s not above the simplest of songs. I rejoiced to hear Him sing Bubba to my cousin’s soul.

And then, just to round out some sort of cosmic dance and thanks to my friend Greg Davis , I unexpectedly got to take in U2’s Vertigo Tour in Miami last week. A transcendent experience in many respects. Adam (bass) and Larry (drums) lay down such a solid, tight foundation — though he might never warm up to the idiom, Bach would appreciate the language. The Edge plays a lead/rhythm guitar that to me is the rock equivalent of Arvo Pärt’s chiming “tintinabulli” — ethereal and soul-piercing all at once.

Bono embodies his own musings about David being “the Elvis of the bible” [sic]: “unlike most rock stars, he had the humility of one who knew his gift worked harder than he ever would.”

F-bombs aside, here’s a voice that knows it’s been given a gift, and has accepted the gift as a stewardship and a call to service. So Bono’s not afraid to say thanks to folks “for standing in line, and giving us such a great life.” And rather than using his platform to glorify Ego or Bacchus, he calls a generation (actually, a couple of generations) to live for something more, and to unite around things that should concern people “in coliseums and churches — rock stars and preachers, right and left.”

Remarkably, “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” isn’t just Ireland ‘s song; in a world of suicide bombers, it’s America ‘s (and Iraq ‘s and Israel ‘s?) song. And with slave trafficking in Asia and AIDS in Africa, “Love and Peace or Else” and “Miss Sarajevo” aren’t just America ‘s songs, they’re the world’s. I wish churches — for Christ’s sake! — could tap into the eagerness U2 senses in their audience to have more than Ego or Bacchus to live for. Here’s Jesus’s Blues Brothers voice (popular music in the service of Christ) — music that’s rooted simultaneously in a larger, ancient story and in its own culture.

Yeah, OK, I was hoping for the concert to end with the prayer songs “Yahweh” and “40” (as happens often on the Vertigo tour, and as captured on the Chicago DVD). Still, when the band walked off after (a drop dead gorgeous acoustic version of) “Walk On” and “Bad,” leaving the crowd chanting “People got the power,” I still felt like I could hear “a real though far off song that hails a new creation.”