By the time I knew who Bob Marley
was, it was too late. Funny thing was, I
had my chance to see him. On November 4,
1979 he played two shows at Memorial Auditorium in Burlington, Vermont. You can buy an original poster for the
concerts for a thousand dollars on the internet. But at the time the tickets sold for
$7.50. I was a sophomore in High School,
not quite fourteen years old, and not yet in the habit of going to rock
concerts. And Bob Marley was not a rock
musician, exactly. He and his band, the
Wailers, played reggae, music from the urban slums of Kingston, the capital of Jamaica,
that fused American Soul, Gospel, and Rhythm and Blues, with traditional folk
music from the countryside with deep roots in African culture.
I read about that in the free
weekly paper, the Vermont Vanguard, which published an interview to promote the
concerts. It was the first I’d heard of
him, and I was intrigued. But I didn’t
drive yet, and neither did any of my friends; there was no bus out to where we
lived, 15 miles from Burlington, and the 4th of November was a school
night. So I didn’t go, but I might have
made more of an effort if I’d known then what I soon came to know. I didn’t know that Bob Marley was a legendary
live performer who was on his way to becoming a global superstar. I didn’t know that the following year my
brother Ben was going to go away to boarding school and come back for Christmas
a fan.
When I found out about that, I bought
Ben a cassette tape of the album Survival
and put it under the tree, but it turned out he already had it, and he gave
it back to me. I still remember putting
it into a little portable tape player one Saturday morning to listen to while I
did my weekly chores. It was unlike any
music I’d ever heard before, and I didn’t know what to make of it at first. But I kept listening, and pretty soon I was playing
it over and over again. It wasn’t long
after that I went over to my friend Fred’s house and discovered that his mother
had a bunch of Bob Marley and the Wailers records. So I rode my bike to Burlington the next
weekend, and bought a bunch of blank cassettes, and I taped every one of those
albums. Over the following months I spent
the money I earned mowing lawns at the record store, filling in the rest my
collection.
I might have made more of an effort
to get to the Bob Marley concert that night if I’d known he was about to die. I was on the staff of the high school newspaper
by then, and I wrote a heartfelt obituary and we published it, bordered in
black. The chance I’d missed, to see him
in person, would never come again. But
in the long run, his impact on my life wasn’t any less because of it. Unlike most of the music I was a fan of in
those days, I still listen to Bob Marley.
It makes me proud and happy that now my wife and daughter like him,
too. I guess that’s because the messages
that made his songs so meaningful to me when I was a teenager still matter to
me today—loving and giving thanks to God, brotherhood and sisterhood with all
human beings; outrage and sorrow at violence, injustice, and war; faith in the
power of truth to overcome greed and delusion; championing the right of the poor
to stand up and resist their oppressors; joyful celebration of love, culture,
community, and the basic goodness of life.
The Gospel of John doesn’t say
whether the Greeks who came to Jerusalem for the Passover ever got to see Jesus
in person. It seems like they
didn’t. And maybe in the short run, it
felt to them like a missed opportunity and a grave disappointment. But events were moving quickly for Jesus at
that time, according to a different agenda than the one those Greeks had in
mind. The time when they asked to see
him was exactly the moment for Jesus to begin the final movement of his destiny. The things that those Greeks were hoping to
get from him—new insight into the working of God in the world and in their
lives, a transforming experience of the power of truth and love to overcome
alienation and despair—these things were about to become available to them and to
everyone, in a new way that did not depend on being in his physical presence.
But in order for that to happen
Jesus had to die. Why that is, and how
that works, and what that means, are questions that never go away. They are involved with the questions about why
there is so much evil and suffering in the world, and what is the purpose of
human life, and why things never measure up to the potential we can see they
have. I think the church has sometimes
done a disservice with its overly tidy explanations for all of this, and how it
is that Jesus’ being “lifted up” on the cross speaks to the heart of the matter. We have held these questions at a safe
distance, for philosophical analysis and theological speculation, or we have smothered
them with pious sentimentality.
What is clear and indisputable is that
Greeks did embrace the Gospel of Jesus, by dozens, and then by hundreds, and
thousands, and hundreds of thousands.
And so did Romans and Syrians, Egyptians and Mesopotamians, Ethiopians
and Arabs, and Irish and Mexicans and Chinese. Why a religion that centers on the agonizing
public execution of its founder could spread across the world like this is another
puzzle that people like to try to solve.
They explain it in terms of social psychology and cultural anthropology,
comparative religion and politics. But maybe
the most satisfactory explanation is the simplest one—that people simply
recognize it as true.
The death of Jesus tells us
something true about this world we live in and about ourselves. It tears away the veil from the ruler of the
world, revealing the terror and violence behind the lofty propaganda, idolatrous
religion, and mockeries of peace and justice.
It shows us how we acquiesce to these manipulations, how we crave the
security of the herd, and love to be told that we are the ones who play by the
rules, and so we are the ones who deserve the rewards. It
shows us how the spirit that lays false claim to rule the world holds sway in our
own hearts, seeking to be admired and honored, seeing rivals and enemies
everywhere, loving to play the game of blame and shame, because the humiliation
of another is the best defense against our own.
The cross is this world’s moment of truth, and as much as we might want
to shrink from it, there is something in us that recognizes it for what it is.
This attracts us, because deep down
we long to be free. And the world’s
captivity to sin and death is only part of the truth that Jesus knew. The other side of the truth is that the world
is worth dying for. Because all
pretensions of the false ruler of the world aside, it is God’s creation. God, who is the only source of its life and
light, loves this world and means to save it.
The Gospels tell us that the Jesus understood this and gave himself
completely to the truth of it, letting the Spirit of healing, liberating, and
recreating the world be his guide in all things. It wasn’t like he wanted to be crucified, but
he knew what he was up against well enough to realize that that was where he
was headed. And he was willing to go, if
that was what it would take to show the world that only love and truth and
faith in God can save us.
Jesus tells the crowd that “now is
the judgment of this world” but that hour is always now. He is the seed that fell into the ground and
died, so that he would bear fruit in countless men and women like you and me. He is always lifted up before us, drawing us
to himself, calling us to see the true glory of the world, which is his path of
love and service. The choice is always ours.
In the immortal words of the great Robert
Nesta Marley,
“Could you be loved? Then be loved.”
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