Friday Pick of the Week

Today's pick is from a few years ago, back when I had the time and schedule that afforded regular viewings of Late Night with Conan O'Brien.  The song's intro immediately captured my attention.  I watched with building anticipation as the barefoot, unkempt band from Louisville drew me into the screen.  Even years after the performance, My Morning Jacket's "One Big Holiday" remains one of my best television memories.  I've followed them through the subsequent years, and I am pumped about their upcoming album Circuital, which will be out May 31.  Without further ado, I present the Friday Pick of the Week.

Easter

Happy Resurrection, friends.  So here's something you may not have known about me: there is music perpetually playing in the background of my mind.  I think that places me somewhere on the spectrum of schizophrenia.  Thankfully, the music doesn't tell me to hurt myself or others.  Anyway, this morning's selection of the subconscious was appropriate for Easter.  Enjoy:

Good Friday

"I'll tell you this, and I bet you never had anyone tell you this before, Jesus is gangster."

Protesters at Five Points. Photo borrowed from Gordon Bell.

Over the past few months, Rachel and I have gotten to know a group of people that are different from anyone I've known before.  These folks love Jesus, and they talk about Him like he actually matters.  Shelly Douglass, who I've mentioned before, lives out one of the most consistent theologies I've come across.  I've learned a lot from our new friends, but I've yet to develop the conviction (or is it the courage?) to stand with them as they cry out for justice, at least at a protest rally.

A group of them that regularly stages protests at Five Points South in Birmingham's Southside, typically holding signs against war or nuclear weapons.  Commemorating Good Friday, they've staged a Station of the Cross today as an objection to the death penalty and state-sponsored killing.  One of the protesters is dressed in the white jumpsuit of an Alabama death row inmate, and he is strapped to a cross with an IV running into his arm.  They hold signs that say things like, "Execute Justice, not People," "Let Him Who is Without Sin Start the Injection," and "Blessed are the Merciful..."  Though their numbers may be few, the scene is a powerful statement against capital punishment on a day remembering the execution of Roman criminal.

While I am terrified of protesting, I did stop by and say hello to my friends who were there.  And in dropping by, I had the good fortune to meet Johnny, a conspicuously intoxicated but remarkably congenial man who introduced himself as "a street-person."  Johnny is 5 days removed from a 25-year prison term, and is celebrating his release by partaking generously in libations.  Given his state of mind, I unsuccessfully tried to dismiss him.  His persistence was unshakable.  And then something interesting happened: Johnny started to preach.

Rachel works at a homeless shelter, and I am familiar with the ways in which addicts and panhandlers can manipulate religious "heart-strings" to get something out of us.  But I decided to hear Johnny out, and I shortly realized he knows Jesus in a way I don't.  In spite of the alcohol slurring his speech and giving Johnny a slight attention-deficit, he rattled off in colorful language what he'd done, ranging from theft to homicide, with a wide swath in between.  "And I know God was with me the whole time," he continued, "because that's who Jesus was with.  He was with the whores and the homeless and the criminals - the people like me.  I'll tell you this, and I bet you never had anyone tell you this before, Jesus is gangster.  He didn't play.  I'm telling you, he didn't play the radio.  Jesus is f*cking gangster."

Amen.

Friday Pick of the Week

Happy Friday, friends.  This week's artist is described as an "art rock band from Brooklyn," which guarantees their popularity among the hipster crowd.  I first came across TV on the Radio when they performed "Golden Age" on Saturday Night Live a couple years back, and I loved their energy.  Others love their energy, too, as Spin magazine named Return to Cookie Mountain their 2006 album of the year, and Rolling Stone called their last album, Dear Science, the best of 2008.  They've just released a new sampling, 9 Types of Light, from which our pick of the week is selected.



The band is currently in the process of mourning, as bassist/keyboardist Gerard Smith died this week only a month after being diagnosed with lung cancer.  He was 36.

Find more TV on the Radio songs at Myspace Music

John M. Perkins

Recently Rachel and I had the opportunity to see Dr. John M. Perkins speak at South Highland Presbyterian Church.  Perkins was born to a family of black sharecroppers in rural Mississippi.  After his brother was shot by a sheriff, Perkins realized he needed to get out of Mississippi and headed to California.  In California, he became a Christian and soon realized he was being called back to Mississippi in the heat of the civil rights movement.  There he has labored for years, fighting for civil rights and community development.  He has played an integral role in Christian Community Development Association.

Now in his ninth decade, Dr. Perkins remains vibrant and sharp.  His message was particularly challenging in his charges of how we have shaped Christianity to fit within our culture.  I am a white southern Christian, he is black southern Christian.  We use our faith to support our -isms: capitalism, communism, socialism.  We pick and choose what scriptures we need to endorse our political party.  In the words of Jesus, this should not be so!  Dr. Perkins calls us to Christianity first and foremost.

I wrestle with this: how can I engage my culture in a redemptive but a-political way?  So many political issues are tied to the gospel.  How do I stand for for these issues without attaching myself to the machinery around them?  Currently Rachel and I are reading through Ched Meyer's Binding the Strong Man in a book group.  Meyers argues that the gospel is absolutely political in nature.  We are called to challenge American imperialism, to advocate for the poor, to fight for a consistent ethic of the sanctity of life, and to stand (and ultimately die) with the oppressed.  Meyers shows how Jesus's fight was not only spiritual in nature, but also political.  My immediate inclination is to attach myself to a political system that advocates for these issues.  But Perkins pushes back, as politics will inevitably tempt me to mistake my politics for my faith.  Apparently fleshing this out is a bit more difficult than I hoped it would be.

'Living Christ is a living cross. Without it is a living death.' Guess the theologian.

'Each of us are hipocrites. We must establish the boundaries of our hipocrisy that they may be narrowed perpetually towards consistency.' -S. Claiborne