1 post tagged “pearl jam”

U2honolulu

I'm a fan of bootlegs.  Despite their somewhat illegal nature, I am an addict of the live concert experience.  All those people singing the same songs I sing, all part of the same atmosphere, all paying outrageous prices for seats so far away that the bands look like ants with instruments (What did we do before Mega Screen?).  I most recently got my hands on a U2 boot that was from a show in Honolulu in '06.  On that particular ticket were The Kings of Leon and Pearl Jam.  Not bad warm up acts, but anything is possible when you're U2.  I remember going to see Heart in the 80's and the band Honeymoon Suite opened.  Despite their unknownness and lack of hits (although "New Girl Now" would chart), they were better than the headliner.  The same can be said about a lot of shows, can't it?  We are surprised by the gifts of the unknown while the star almost always delivers exactly what one could expect.  

While considering the line up of this show, I was caught up in the rock concert's similarity to church.  From the U2 "sermon" to the Pearl Jam "worship" to the Kings of Leon "passing of the peace", Sunday morning looks like an event where we come to hear the star, sing the songs and have plenty of time on the front end to be late.  Who's heard of the Kings of Leon?  I don't remember who opened for the Replacements when we used to go see them, but I think that's because we were late (and intoxicated).  

Much has been written, preached, spoken, and painted about the strange predominance of the sermon and star likeness of preachers.  As Bono said, "You don't become a rock star unless you've got something missing somehwere, that is obvious to me.  If you were of sound mind you could feel normal without 70,000 people a night screaming their love for you."   Even more energy has been spent examining the need for community among followers of Jesus.  AND then, even more comment has been made in regards to worship, it's role, the function of liturgy and order, and response.  

After listening to this supremely superior bootleg I felt something strange.  The very same sensation I experience after a rock concert, I experience at the end of a typical worship service.  At the end of the show, I want somehow to breathe in the presence of the music, the lingering rhythm, the after effects of sound.  I want to swim in those lyrical seas and lay in the melodic pastures.  During worship, the audience sits captive to the liturgy waiting for the star, sermon, to take the stage.  Everything is geared in that direction.  I was a worship pastor once, but couldn't reconcile worship as the opening act.  Many times the sermon meandered and could never touch the honesty and simplicity of "Amazing Grace."  Many times I was carrying the baggage of the week or the preacher didn't have a grip on the material and so it felt as though the Spirit was left waiting in the wings.  I have a hard time not thinking of worship and liturgy as a kind of spell used to evoke the Word of God, much like opening acts evoke excitement for the star.  After 45+ minutes of late arrivals, bathroom breaks, refills, side bar conversations, the star is a welcome relief, even if the openers were better.  

Thomas Long wrote,  "We go to scripture then, not to glean a set of facts about God or the faith that can then be announced whenever and wherever, but to encounter a Presence, to hear God's voice speaking to us ever anew, calling us in the midst of the situations in which we find ourselves to be God's people."  
The Witness of Preaching, p 45.

The Word is a rock concert.  It is the experience.  It doesn't need an opener.  It doesn't spring forth because a worship leader sings "He Knows My Name" enough times.  It beckons us.  

It leads us into the post performance, into the space between where the music stops and the response begins.  

It is there that we can tell the difference between master and servant, pauper and pop star, God and idol.  The experience of the Word is an act of transformation.  "The word of God we encounter in the scripture does not attack idolatry in general; it dethrones our idols, severs the bonds of our old and crippling loyalties [55]."  

What would it look like if worship led with the Word?  If idols were smashed before we worshiped them.  What if the whole of worship was a response to the offensive idol smashing Word?  This would be a tough and terrible transition for many.  We'd have to be on time (a challenge for my family in particular).  As it is, church runs like a rock show, or movie, or theatre:  Lots of stuff you can miss early on like the Kings of Leon, movie trailers, eight extra minutes of curtain, praise songs and announcements.  Only Television has the brass to require that the viewer be there on time, BUT...there's TiVo.  

Perhaps we should wait for the bootleg, skip the experience and go straight for the podcast.  Keep our idols right where we likes 'em.