“The Gospel Train” promises:
The fare is cheap and all can go,
The rich and poor are there.
No second class aboard this train,
No difference in the fare.
The song served as a “code song” for the Underground Railroad. They were singing about actual freedom.
Brett Younger
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Life’s Railway to Heaven” tells us to
heed the curves and hills and tunnels,
never falter, never fail,
keep your hand upon the throttle,
and your eye upon the rail.
Woody Guthrie sang:
This train is bound for glory.
Don’t carry nothing
but the righteous and the holy.
This train is bound for glory, this train.
If the train is just for the righteous and the holy, it is a small train — maybe it is a tram bound for glory.
Bruce Springsteen’s train is less exclusive:
This train carries saints and sinners.
This train carries losers and winners.
This train carries whores and gamblers.
This train carries lost souls.
Bob Dylan sang:
They talk about a life of brotherly love.
Show me someone who knows
how to live it.
There’s a slow, slow train comin’
up around the bend.
Trains keep showing up in religious songs. If trains had been invented 2,000 years earlier, they would be all over the Bible, because there is something spiritual about trains.
Trains have a powerful, living, breathing rhythm. No matter how small the tunnel or low the bridge, trains thunder through. Fire trucks on their way to put out a fire will stop at a train crossing. Even emergency vehicles will not take on the Long Island Railroad.
A long train ride is great for reflection. We sit side-by-side. We talk without distractions. Trains slow down time. Unlike the chaos of an airport or the demands of driving a car, trains free us from responsibility. Instead of staring at clouds or concrete highways, a train slices right through people’s backyards. We watch rivers, forests and small towns drift past.
Mandy Moore and Gerald McRaney in “This Is Us.” (Photo via NBC Universal)
When the television series This is Us came to its end, Mandy Moore’s Rebecca Pearson, on the day of her death, imagines herself on a train. She walks past loved ones as they flicker from one age to another. Rebecca has been a phenomenal mother and artist. Her daughter-in-law says her goodbye. She tells Rebecca she imitated her when she did not know how to be a parent.
Rebecca’s OB-GYN is the bartender in the bar car. He assures her she was a great parent.
Miguel is there to say, “I still can’t get over it. After all these years. It’s still you. You’re still my favorite person.”
She walks through the train cars, through her memories, sees her father, herself as a child, her art. When she gets to the caboose, her long-lost husband is there. She hears and feels it all — all the decades, all the change, all the grief. She explores her fears and memories and gratitude for what she has seen and lived through.
Rebecca says: “This is quite sad, isn’t it. The end.”
Her guide responds: “Truth be told, I’ve always felt it a bit lazy to just think of the world as sad. The way I see it, if something makes you sad when it ends, it must have been pretty wonderful when it was happening. If you’re brave enough to allow yourself the gift of a really wide perspective, you’ll see that the end is not sad. It’s just the start of the next incredibly beautiful thing.”
“The train we are on is filled with saints on their way to the next incredibly beautiful thing.”
The train we are on is filled with saints on their way to the next incredibly beautiful thing. None of us have to pay for a ticket. Everybody is invited — young and old, good and bad, upper crust and bottom dweller.
At first glance, some of the passengers look out of place. We have to look carefully to see they are saints: Abraham, father of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, whose son Isaac didn’t send texts on Father’s Day; Joseph, good dreams, good coat, bad attitude; Moses, who wondered at times if he should have stayed in Egypt; Rahab, the kind of loving woman you don’t want talking to your son; David, who had days when he wished Goliath had ducked; Isaiah and the other Jason Momoa-looking prophets; Peter, Paul and Mary, the mother of Jesus. They found something worth living for, gave themselves to it heart, body and mind, and refused under any circumstances to be parted from it.
The train is long. Saint Francis is barefoot on the train, which is not normally acceptable, but he makes it work. Joan of Arc is wearing armor, which does not work.
St. Maximillan, the first conscientious objector, was drafted by the Roman army, but refused to serve, because his only loyalty was to God. At his beheading, Maximillian noticed the shabby clothing of his executioner and asked that his own clothes be given to the man. Max is on the train looking like James Bond in an Armani tuxedo.
Martin Luther, who started the Reformation 509 years ago, had a nun propose to him, married her, and had six children. All of them are on train.
Martin Luther King Jr., who preached that justice should roll down like waters. Dorothy Day, who showed that righteousness is an ever-flowing stream. Mohandas Gandhi, who died because he dared to make peace. Pope Leo, who is changing the church Luther gave up on. The train is so long it seems like it never ends.
The passengers include lawyers who forget which cases are pro bono; business people who care for workers no one else notices; bosses who treat their employees like they matter; mothers and fathers who stay at home because they feel God’s invitation to live out their calling at their own address; teachers who love their students one word at a time; students who have decided to care for rather than compete with the student at the next desk; writers who share a word of grace with people who need a word of grace; saints who ride the train every day.
Brett Younger serves as senior minister at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, N.Y.