This is the third in a series of essays leaping off from Creepy Jesus Music collected over a couple of decades.

“Sleepytown” from Jim White’s Wrong-Eyed Jesus album.

Jim White “Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus” from shadowdistribution.com

 

I whisper beautiful secrets into
The drainpipes at night
For the old folks while they’re sleeping
Something to help them with their dreams.
I climb the wall to the cemetery,
Lay down on the grave of my father
I hear him asking me for forgiveness,
So I close my eyes in prayer.

And then a rainy-rainy-rain falls down
A cool rainy-rain upon my head.
It makes the river overflow it’s banks,
And wash my cares away to Sleepy-town.

This hymn opens with a picture of the search for purpose. This is grunge folk’s version of “I awoke and found myself in a dark forest” from Dante. The reversal here of parent-child reconciliation is so rich and profound, but coming too late after death for a “life alone” version of morality. The baptism of rain always awakens in me this hope of a life that is lived and even redeemed beyond the bounds of death.

Perhaps this is all too profound for a folk album from 20 years ago, but I find myself constantly returning to this album for moments like this (and far darker ones) that seem to capture some more profound truth than Madonna’s “Vogue.”

In gospel music as a genre, outside of the simplistic pop that dominates most of our experience, there is a recognition of the bloody nature of the gospel and the cost of redemption. Baptism is both hope and a flood that wipes away the town.

I pour whiskey in the honeycomb,
It makes the bees all turn to angels.
I watch ’em fly off into heaven
Disappear where I can’t follow.
And I would write Jesus a letter,
But I hear that he don’t speak English…
So instead I’ll just throw these cobblestones
Until I ring that old church bell.

Until the rainy-rainy-rain fall down
Cool rainy-rain upon my head.
It makes the river overflow it’s banks,
And wash my cares away to Sleepy-town.

In Sleepy-town, you let the wild wind blow away your name.
In Sleepy town, you let the healing rain just wash your pain away.
If there is a better summation of the post-modern/modern distance from religion, I don’t know of one. Note that I didn’t say distance from faith. There is faith here and a longing for relationship with the divine presence, but the distance is impossible: “But I hear that he don’t speak English . . . “

As a pastor I can’t tell you how many people don’t know how to pray, don’t know how to cross the perceived cavern between them and a living Abraham’s bosom of comfort and peace. Their chasm is often not an experience but the rumor of experience, something they have heard or remember being taught in their childhood that puts God out of reach, so they end up standing outside of church throwing stones at the bells, hoping to ring up the old feelings of presence, grown adults with ouija boards and angel stories, but not practicing any religion that would put flesh on their faith.

Yoga can be this for many people who have given up on Jesus as a reality that they can return to or Christianity as a reality that they can enter into. The practice of self-care and groundedness they find on the mat and in classes moves the practice of faith from worship of a God who is “out there at a distance” to an inward practice. The question that I wrestled with in classes East and West was is this self-care, self-love, or self-worship. I was often told by well-meaning people in spandex that I could find all truth within my self, that I could recognize my self as divine, and that I could even worship my self on the “altar of your mat.” My little reserved space was an altar, where sacrifices are made to gods, a useful concept in a more complex reflection of spiritual discipline, but here the object of my worship was me.

I am not sure that post-modern/modern Christianity moves much toward holiness from here. Much of our sermon and worship practices point to a reality that is entirely self-defined. Belief in God is a choice that determines what is real for you. This particular philosophical bent is evident in versions of Christianity that focus on declarations of belief in realities that are there for you to grasp if you only intellectually ascent to them and in versions of Christianity that simply disregard the Bible and tradition as no longer applicable.

But what we claim is that Jesus is reality, the epitome of God’s intent for the world. You may not have thought of the incarnation that way, but think with me for a moment. Jesus makes a claim by his life and teachings, that God loves the world and made it for a purpose and placed us within the world to bear His image in our care of the world and creativity, our love and worship. We claim something is true about reality.

That truth is Jesus. It is the Jesus Claim of our faith. When we become disconnected from that claim, we are left lost and trapped in a world without a deep purpose and longing for our deep connection to God as his heirs and children.

I see a light on in the station,
Yeah someone is waiting for a train.
And I envy them their leaving
As I turn to head back home again.
For soon the morning sun will rise
And this little town will open up its eyes.
And return from the land where I’ve never been,
From a Sleepy-town, that’s free.

From all that rainy-rainy-rain fall down.
The cool rainy-rain upon my head
Make the river overflow it’s banks
And wash my cares away to Sleepy-town

In that City of God that Augustine writes eloquently about, working from Revelation chapter 21, God is present to us directly, and our lives are rooted in that presence and the promises of the Bible. According to Paul, we live in the Resurrection Reality as ambassadors in Christ, the forerunner of that reality. We know it now in how we live and love and pray.

This song represents a broken hearted longing that I often experience when I choose otherwise and become disconnected from the Real Life of life in Christ. And then grace comes like rain sometimes and washes my cares away.

They are not washed away to an imaginary place, but to the foot of the cross, that ultimate sign that stands as a evidence of two worlds of meaning: the world where Rome wins and we wander among the crosses of history looking for forgiveness and redemption, throwing stones hoping for angels, and the world of God, the kingdom where we finally are washed of our sins, given a name in the book of life, and set to our true purpose of redeeming the world.

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