Christian thinking about the world we live in and God’s goals for it wrestles with a tension. What God envisions for the world is already being made manifest in the Easter reality of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and in the body of his church that strives to incarnate this reality in the world. But this reality does not yet fully embrace this world, as even a glance at it confirms.
In the art form of popular music, the Irish rock band U2 renders this tension well. By faith we believe that through Christ what ought to be is already here. But it’s plain to see that the world around us is not yet that, so we still haven’t found what we’re looking for.
That’s not any easy tension to maintain. An over-emphasis on the “already” of the Christian life—what theologians call an “overly-realized eschatology”—can blind us to its “not-yetness,” the unfinished nature of God’s work with us, with the church, with the world. But an over-emphasis on the present “not-yetness” of the world can blind us to the things that ought to be that are already all around us—what 18th-century French Jesuit spiritual writer Jean Pierre de Caussade called “the sacrament of the present moment.”
Also in the art form of popular music, a song from the new album by Portland, Oregon folk-rock band The Decemberists renders well what it means to savor the sacrament of the present moment in the midst of all the things in the world that ought not to be.
I’m fresh off hearing this band, whose music has been described as “elaborate, hyperliterary folk tunes—a cross between a medieval history seminar and an advanced vocabulary quiz,” in concert in Charlotte. It’s not every day that one overhears at a rock concert someone nearby saying “…and for doctoral study I’ll need to pass exams in French and German….” or joins a couple of thousand people in singing along with a four-song suite based on a play by Shakespeare. Which is to say, there’s much about The Decemberists that provides material for theological reflection.
That’s especially true of “A Beginning Song,” the final track on The Decemberists’ seventh studio album What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World released earlier this year. It follows three tracks that tackle head-on the “not-yetness” of the world: “Easy Come, Easy Go,” a delightfully macabre song about the ephemerality of life; “Mistral,” which references the destructive wind storms distinctive to southern France and has the existential impact of the book of Ecclesiastes; and “12/17/12,” which gives voice to lead singer Colin Meloy’s reflections in the wake of President Obama’s speech on the Sandy Hook tragedy three days prior and includes the lyric that supplies the album’s title:
And oh my God,
What a world you have made here
What a terrible world, what a beautiful world
What a world you have made here
(For what it’s worth, I think the ordering of this lyric gets it right theologically: the first thing to be noticed about this world in its present state is that it is terrible, yet the final thing to be said about this world even in its present state is that it is indeed beautiful nonetheless.)
Then the final track “A Beginning Song” repeatedly asks:
I am waiting—should I be waiting?
I am wanting—should I be wanting?
I am hopeful—should I be hopeful?
When all around me…
The last clause is left incomplete until the bridge into the final chorus:
…Is the sunlight, is the shadows,
Is the quiet, is the work,
Is the beating heart,
Is the ocean, is the boys,
Is you—my sweet love
Oh, my love
And the light, bright light
And the light, bright light
Bright light, bright light
Is all around me
Waiting, wanting, hoping—we rightly do these things because the world around us and the world within us are not yet what they should be, and so we wait, want, and hope for the world that ought to be—the world God intends to be. But we’ll draw sustenance for the painful work of waiting, wanting, and hoping if we allow ourselves to savor the sacraments of the present moment that are all around us: light and shadow, quietness and the work at hand, life itself, nature, relationships. These things are light in the midst of darkness, and they are all around us, provided by God to give us life.
Every now and then a small dose of realized eschatology is not such a bad thing.
