2020, Bruce Springsteen's Letter to You, and Death

One of the indelible memories of my youth is watching the ball drop in Times Square to usher in the new year, with my dear, departed Uncle Willie softly commenting, "Another year passed ..." To my youthful ears, such wistfulness was borderline humorous. New Years wasn't for nostalgia, so I thought, at least for me. It was for celebration, watching Chicago on Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eve, and--especially--for watching multiple college football bowl games on New Years Day.

That was then. It is amazing how the growing realization that one has many more days in the rear view mirror than on the road ahead can change one's perspective, however. Over the years, I have increasingly found myself uttering, if only to myself, Uncle Willie's words when the clock strikes 12 on the 1st of January. 

But not this year. 2020, as we all know, has not been a normal year. Three million Americans have died, including more than 380,000 (so far) in a pandemic exacerbated by a criminally negligent governmental response. Untold numbers of luminaries have passed--from New Testament scholars on my personal Mt. Rushmore (The University of Durham's Jimmy Dunn) to politicians and public servants (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis), to authors (John le Carre), to actors (Jerry Stiller, Carl Reiner, Regis Philbin, Olivia de Havilland, Wilford Brimley, Chadwick Boseman, Sean Connery, Diana Rigg, Dawn Wells), to musicians (Ennio Morricone, Peter Serkin, Lynn Harrell, Ellis Marsalis, McCoy Tyner, Little Richard, Charlie Daniels, Peter Green, Justin Townes Earle, Spencer Davis, Neil Peart, Bill Withers, Eddie Van Halen, Billy Joe Shaver, Charlie Pride), to athletes (baseball players: Dick Allen, Al Kaline, Bob Gibson, Whitey Ford, Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, Joe Morgan, Phil Niekro, Johnny Antonelli, Tony Fernandez, Jay Johnstone, Mike McCormick, Tony Taylor, Bob Watson, Jimmy Wynn; football players: Timmy Brown, Pete Retzlaff, Don Shula, Gale Sayers, Herb Adderley, Willie Davis, Paul Hornung, Willie Wood, Bobby Mitchell, Jimmy Orr, Larry Wilson, Mike Curtis, Fred Dean, Chris Doleman, Kevin Greene, Jim Kiick, Del Shofner, Rosey Taylor, Jake Scott; basketball players: Kobe Bryant, Tommy Heinsohn, K. C. Jones, Wes Unseld, Jerry Sloan, Clifford Robinson, Curly Neal, John Thompson; soccer star Diego Maradona).

Death is in the air, as it were. So, it seems to me, ought serious reflection on the brevity and fragility of life on what Shakespeare's Hamlet, himself contemplating death by suicide, called "this mortal coil" in his famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy (Hamlet 3.1.56-69). 

Enter Bruce Springsteen, the most important American rock and roll musician not named Bob Dylan. Over the years, the Boss, as happens to all of us once we hit our late 50's and 60's, had lost friends (Terry McGovern in 2007) and "blood brothers" (E Streeters Danny Federici in 2008 and, most significantly, "The Big Man" Clarence Clemons in 2011). But it was the death, in 2018, of George Theiss, the frontman in Springsteen's first teenage band, The Castilles--making him the last remaining member of that group--that finally dislodged the writing block that for years had prevented him from creating new material designed for his nonpareil band. A torrent of songs flowed, the result of which is his new album, Letter to You, recorded live with the E Street Band in his Colt Neck, NJ studio in a mere four days in November of 2019.

It hardly needs to be said that Springsteen, at 71, is far past the peak of his commercial success. Nor is it news that his creative peak is likewise but a faint light in the rear view mirror. That peak was a long one, encapsulating the 6 diverse albums he released from 1973's The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle through 1984's Born in the USA, all of which are now part of the classic rock canon. I would personally rate each of them with 5 stars [indeed, the best of the lot, 1975's Born to Run, is one of three albums that, in my opinion, break the scale and deserve six stars, the others being The Who's Who's Next and the Stones' Exile on Main Street]. In the intervening years Bruce has released a number of fine albums and even more great songs. But it is my considered opinion, after listening over and over to the record for the past two months, that Letter to You has supplanted 2007's Magic and should be recognized as Springsteen's finest album since the aforementioned Born in the USA.

The album begins with a bit of musical misdirection, with Bruce's finger-picked acoustic guitar and hushed vocals performing a melancholic song that wouldn't have sounded out of place on his 2005 album, Devils & Dust. Yet the lyrics set the tone for the album to come: 

Big black train comin' down the track

Blow your whistle long and long

One minute you're here

Next minute you're gone

"One Minute You're Here," and the album to come, are about the transitoriness of life and how one should respond to death and the nasty fact of its inevitability. Once he has made this clear, the collection's musical focus takes shape with the second song, the album's title track. "Letter to You" is classic Bruce, with the E Street Band, recorded live, sounding more powerful and vital than ever. Though the song may owe more to Springsteen's finely-honed craft than to inspired creativity, it is a definite, and welcome, return to form. Then comes the best newly-written song--more on that presently--on the album, "Burnin' Train," a barnburner that recalls Bruce's "glory days," with a marvelous Phil Spector-styled Wall of Sound production, including the use of a glockenspiel that recalls the aforementioned Phantom Danny Federici's work on Born to Run:

Immediately following this formidable one-two punch, the Boss takes a detour of sorts, one in which the Springsteen traditionalist in me takes unmitigated delight. "Janey Needs a Shooter" is one of three songs--the others being "If I Was the Priest" and "Song for Orphans," both of which, in acoustic form, were presented to the legendary John Hammond, Jr. in his Columbia audition in 1972, and both of which provide ample evidence of why he was so often deemed "a New Dylan" in his early years--written almost 50 years ago that, to me, are the three best songs on the album. "Janey," its tune reminiscent of the classic outtake "The Promise," would not have sounded out of place on 1978's great Darkness on the Edge of Town: 

As I said, however, the emotional weight of the album is found in four songs inspired by the death of his friends and bandmates that deal with death and the proper response to that inestimable loss. Besides the opener, there is the bookend closer, "I'll See You in My Dreams," as well as the tribute to Theiss, "Last Man Standing," and another rip-roaring classic, the hard-rocking "Ghosts," its melodic line reminiscent of the foundational riff of Springsteen's late friend Tom Petty's "Free Fallin':" 

How, then, does Springsteen respond? Bruce is not a practicing Christian. Indeed, he frankly acknowledged, in his 2016 memoir, Born to Run, that he is a lapsed Catholic, though he maintains that he is "still on the team." As such, thankfully he doesn't pretend, as is fashionable in some circles today, not to be afraid of death because it is simply "part of life." The deaths of his friends and bandmates have clearly affected him, and his sense of loss is palpable, even in the ostensibly optimistic, harder-rocking songs.

Melancholy he might be, but brow-beaten by death he emphatically is not. "I'm alive!" he shouts in "Ghosts," experiencing their ghosts moving in the night as he plays the music they used to perform together, and affirms he will "meet" them "on the other side." In the closer, he confesses "death is not the end," as he "will see [them] in [his] dreams."

The constitutionally melancholic theologian in me can gladly share the sentiment while realizing that it isn't sufficiently robust intellectually to salve the psychic wounds of human mortality. Death, as the Apostle Paul acknowledges in 1 Corinthians 15, has been universally victorious since the dawn of time. Even so, it must not be supinely accepted, but raged against. Years ago I wrote a piece reflecting on Jesus' response to the death of a friend in the famous story of Lazarus's resuscitation in John 11. Famously, Jesus is said to have "wept" (John 11:35). More significantly, using language elsewhere used of horses snorting when enraged, the Fourth Evangelist writes that he became indignant, internally raging at the depredations and oppression caused by death as a (personified) usurper in God's good creation (11:33).

The solution, of course, is found in the already/not yet structure of New Testament eschatology. In the Gospel story, Lazarus's resuscitation is illustrative of Jesus' role as "the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25-26), such that those who believe in him will "live," even if they die, precisely because of his resurrection later narrated in chapter 20. Paul is even more explicit. Because of Christ's resurrection as the "firstfruits" of the eschatological harvest (1 Cor 15:23), death's victory has been overturned (1 Cor 15:55) for all who are "in Christ" will, at the last trump, be "made alive" (1 Cor 15:22, 51-54).

Death hurts. Lets not forget that, let alone pretend it isn't true. And well it should. But the more important truth is the sequel: those who are in Christ have, as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer puts it, the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Death, as the Boss realizes, is not the end. But the Christian hope is not merely an ephemeral sight or experience of our deceased love ones in our dreams, but rather in an embodied existence with them on the new earth in the presence of the One who loved us and gave himself for us (Galatians 2:20). Soli Deo Gloria!

Jesus the Radical

 Per Peter Wehner:

First-century Christians weren’t prepared for what a truly radical and radically inclusive figure Jesus was, and neither are today’s Christians. We want to tame and domesticate who he was, but Jesus’ life and ministry don’t really allow for it. He shattered barrier after barrier ...

For Christians, the incarnation is a story of God, in the person of Jesus, participating in the human drama. And in that drama Jesus was most drawn to the forsaken and despised, the marginalized, those who had stumbled and fallen. He was beloved by them, even as he was targeted and eventually killed by the politically and religiously powerful, who viewed Jesus as a grave threat to their dominance.

Indeed, every scholar involved in the constantly waxing/waning study of the so-called "Historical Jesus" acknowledges Jesus' friendship with the religiously/socially ostracized and marginalized as a defining characteristic of his "ministry." After all, the story of his calling of the tax collector Levi is recorded in the bedrock, Markan "triple tradition" found in, inter alia, Mark 2:13-17. Jesus' and his disciples' dining at Levi's residence elicited a peeved, self-righteous accusation masquerading as a question from certain Pharisees, described as "teachers of the law:" "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" "Sinners," here, is as much a sociological designation as it is a theological one. Like "liberal" or "socialist" in many circles today, it was a smear word, used to denote anybody whose adherence to the Torah didn't meet the standards of the accuser (and with the Pharisees, concerned as they were to keep the Torah strictly so as to hasten the advent of the long-awaited Davidic Kingdom, these standards were rigorous indeed). In such circles, association with such people wasn't merely personally damning; it was detrimental to the prospects of the Jews as God's covenant people.

The same accusation is likewise found in the "Q" passage dealing with Jesus and John the Baptist found in Luke 7:18-35//Matthew 11:2-19. Jesus' closing salvo against the "people of this generation" was as follows: "For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners." But wisdom is proved right by her children (Lk 7:33-35)."

My concern today is not so much why Jesus made this such a central concern. Wehner's NYT column does a good job with that question. Rather, my concern is why this acknowledged Jesuanic radicalism has been marginalized almost completely in much of what passes for white, "evangelical" American Christianity today. "Evangelicals," as strict Protestants, wholeheartedly affirm that membership in God's covenant people--what the Apostle Paul, using a forensic/legal metaphor, refers to as "justification"--comes by "grace" alone. "Grace," as John M. G. Barclay has argued in his already classic Paul and the Gift, refers to an "unconditioned gift," one given without consideration of worth, be it ethnic or moral; hence, as the apostle famously affirms, grace excludes boasting, whether such pride rests in ethnicity (Romans 3:27) or moral performance (Ephesians 2:9).

But if boasting is excluded, that necessarily means that self-righteousness and pride are antithetical to what it rightfully means to be a Christian. Unfortunately, however, I hardly need to inform anybody that, in poll after poll, descriptors such as "self-righteous" and "judgmental" appear at or near the top in respondents' answers when asked their views of "evangelicals." Indeed, I would argue that it is not merely moralism, but selective moralism, that all too often marks the public posture of "evangelicals" in America today, much to their shame and the hindrance of the gospel of grace they profess to stand for. Some matters--in a constantly shifting environment, currently it seems that abortion and LGBTQ issues are high on the list--are emphasized, while others--not surprisingly, issues popularly associated with "liberal" or "progressive" politics, such as greed, lust for power, pride in "achievement" or even the country of our birth--take a back seat, if acknowledged at all. Meanwhile, egregious sins committed by Christian "leaders" like Ravi Zacharias and Jerry Falwell, Jr. are downplayed, if not conveniently ignored. I write this to our shame.

This is not new. I myself am what might be described as a "cradle evangelical." My father was a Bible Professor of some local renown.  I have been a Christian as long as I can consciously remember. I have a terminal degree in New Testament from a famous evangelical Seminary, have taught at an evangelical college and been a member of the Evangelical Theological Society for decades. Even so, the disconnect between the inspiring example of Jesus and the parochial example of the evangelical church has troubled me almost from the beginning of my faith journey. In my youth, I was vocally criticized for playing my trumpet in my high school's jazz band. It would be preferable, so they said, that I use my abilities to play "Christian" music rather than the "Devil's music" written and performed by people with sinful lifestyles. Certain activities and habits--drinking, smoking, dancing, movies, rock music--were deemed too "worldly" for Christians to participate in, without considering that "worldliness," in New Testament perspective, cannot be limited to such relatively trivial matters, but rather refers to the frequently unexamined structures of a world still operating on the stage of the "present evil age." 

Such an attitude manifests what I refer to as "ethical desiccation." Moreover, such contempt for the non-Christian world and for the "sinners" that inhabit it is theologically incongruous, not only with the example of Jesus, but with the acknowledgment that we, though "children of wrath," have been "saved by grace" (Eph 2:1-10). Grace received from God demands grace proffered to others. Why don't we? 

The Coventry Carol and the Massacre of the Innocents

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Lullay, thou little tiny Child,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do,

For to preserve this day

This poor youngling for whom we do sing

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Herod, the king, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day

His men of might, in his own sight,

All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!

And ever mourn and sigh,

For thy parting neither say nor sing,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Tomorrow, in the Western Church, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, commemorating the boys of Bethlehem who, according to the Gospel of Matthew, were massacred by Herod the Great in his vain, paranoid attempt to eradicate the "threat" to his throne posed by the birth of Jesus, the one "born King of the Jews" (Matt 2:1-8, 16-18). 

This horrific story is one event narrated in the Gospels whose historicity has been regularly challenged (for example, see the back-and-forth a few years ago between James McGrath and Tony Jones here, here, here, and here). Without delving too far into the discussion, the historian in me acknowledges that there is no external (non-biblical) attestation of the event. Nevertheless, anyone who has ever read the first-century Jewish historian Josephus sympathetically (cf. Antiquities of the Jews 15.5-7, 50-87, 173-78, 232-36, 247-52, 260-66, 289-90; 16.361-94; 17.42-44, 167, 182-87) must acknowledge that the story is consistent with what may be known of Herod's character. Herod, though raised as a Jew, was ethnically an Idumean, and this nasty fact was never far from his mind as King. Although he was, in many respects, a cultured man and renowned for his architectural achievements, his rule, commencing in 37 BCE when the Roman Senate conferred on him the title "King of Judea/King of the Jews"--here we can discern Matthew's great skill as a story-teller--was increasingly a despotic one, punctuated by scores of massacres. Indeed, any ruler who had no compunction murdering his favorite wife (Mariamne I, in 29 BCE) and three of his sons (Mariamne's sons Alexander and Aristobulus in 7 BCE for high treason; Antipater II, his firstborn from his first wife, Doris, in 4 BCE; upon learning of this, Octavian is reported by Microbius to have commented, "It is better to be Herod's pig [hus] than his son [huios]") would have had no ethical qualms, even at almost the age of 70, about killing a dozen or so baby boys in a small, insignificant Judean town of no more than 1000 people.

Be that as it may, the story is one with powerful theological significance. Oftentimes in the West, we Christians have sentimentalized Christmas with saccharine pictures of quaint manger scenes with shepherds and Magi accompanying Mary and Joseph. But it is instructive to keep in mind that the early spring of 5 BCE was, like today, a troubled time, racked by violence, pain, and unsavory political machinations. Indeed, as N. T. Wright has written, "Before the Prince of Peace had learned to walk and talk, he was a homeless refugee with a price on his head" (Matthew for Everyone, Part One [London: SPCK, 2002] 14). But it was precisely that situation he came to reverse.

Scholars have routinely noticed that Matthew narrates the story of Herod and the Magi in a way that accentuates the tyrant's parallels with the prototypical enemy of God's people, Pharaoh, and highlights Jesus' own parallels with Israel's first deliverer, Moses. His implicit point is hard to miss: Jesus would "save his people from their sins" (Matt 1:21) by enacting the long-awaited "New Exodus" promised in Isaiah 40-55 that would, once and for all, bring an end to the protracted exile in which the Jewish people still languished. The Evangelist makes this point explicit in his oft-misunderstood quotation of Jeremiah 31:15 in Matthew 2:18. The slaughter of the baby boys in Bethlehem, writes Matthew, "fulfills" what was said through the prophet Jeremiah:

A voice is heard in Ramah,

    weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children

    and refusing to be comforted,

    because they are no more.

The typical lay reader of scripture would assume that the Evangelist is claiming that the massacre fulfills a direct prophecy/prediction of its occurrence almost six centuries before it happened. But any serious reading of Jeremiah 30-31 should disabuse anyone of such naivete. These chapters are classics for the promise of Israel's restoration to divine favor and, consequently, the land after exile. Ramah, located just north of Jerusalem, was one of the villages through which the city's residents passed on their journey to Babylonia (see Jer 40:1). "Rachel," Jacob's favorite wife and the matriarchal personification of the people, refuses consolation because "her children are no more." Jeremiah, however, immediately relates Yahweh's comforting promise of "return from the land of the enemy," because of which she need no longer weep (Jer 31:16). Most significantly, this promise is the prelude to the great promise of a "New Covenant" which God would establish with the people, forgiving their sins and writing the Torah in their hearts (Jer 31:31-34). In Matthew's theological understanding of history, the massacre of the innocents was the "eschatological" "fulfillment" of Rachel's (the mother of the Jews) weeping in Ramah over the deportation of the tribes to Assyria (and, later, Babylon). In other words, it was the climactic act of Israel's exile and the prelude to the deliverance to be effected through the life--and, as is clear in Matthew's unfolding narrative, through the death and resurrection--of the one newly born "King of the Jews" in Bethlehem. As was promised in Jeremiah 31:16, "Rachel" need weep no longer because the long night of exile was soon to be over as God establishes his new covenant with the people (cf. Matt 26:28). The "consolation of Israel" (Luke 2: 25; cf. Isa 40:1-2) had arrived with the birth of this Jesus.

But the genius of the Christian faith is that it has no illusions that the world in which we now live is a perfectible one, let alone a perfect one. Yes, the New Testament teaches that God has, in Messiah Jesus, brought the promised "age to come" to bear on the world we live in. But this new age as yet exists in tension with the "present evil age" which will not meet its ultimate demise until the baby of Bethlehem, the crucified and risen Lord, returns to consummate the promised kingdom, where God's will shall be done "on earth as it is in heaven." This means, of course, that indescribably awful events such as we continue to experience daily will continue. But praise be to God that he has spoken truth to worldly power, that he has met the world's evil head-on in the person of his only Son, who bore the weight and consequences of that sin on the cross, and gives his followers the sure hope that one day in the not too distant future, we will experience the renewal for which we all hope, fully and forever. Soli Deo Gloria!