Bleed into One

People sometimes ask me what I would have been if not a pastor. A number of options leap to mind, but I often joke that my first choice would have been “rock star.” I have always loved the energy and the emotion, the raw driving power of music, the euphoria of the crowd. It transports me. It always has. Alas, I have no real musical talent, which I’m guessing would have proved a difficult obstacle to overcome. I picked up the bass guitar a bit in my twenties and blundered uninspiringly along for a while, but that was the extent of it. Also, I probably would have needed hair to be a decent rock star. So, you know, the odds were always against me.

Speaking of rock stars, a friend recently introduced me to a podcast called Broken Record hosted by mega-music producer Rick Rubin. Rubin famously founded Def Jam records in his NYU dorm room and has worked with a who’s who of famous bands and artists over the last forty years or so. His guest on the podcast recently was none other than U2’s The Edge. Surprisingly, Rubin has never produced U2. I think they tried once, but it didn’t work. I was eager to listen to this interview, sucker as I am for anything related to U2. I think The Joshua Tree might have been the first cassette tape (!) I ever bought, and my twelve- or thirteen-year-old self was utterly captivated as I listened to it over and over and over again in my parents’ basement.

The conversation between Rubin and The Edge is a wide-ranging and interesting one. It’s fascinating to hear two legends talking shop, even if most of the technical stuff goes over my head. But my ears predictably perk up when the talk turns to God and spirituality. Rubin strikes me as kind of “typical California,” in many ways. Plenty of talk about yogis and mystics and transcendental meditation and the creative energy of the universe. He’s dabbled in all kinds of Eastern traditions and practices. He’s very spiritual and even ok with using the word “God,” as long as it’s not too specific.

And so, God is light and energy and possibility. God is complexity and creativity. God is the divine spark, the flash of inspiration. God is the music. God is beauty and connection and desire. God is mystery and transcendence. God is the highest high. God is what exists out beyond our intellect, at the edge of reason. God is the vague cloud of undemanding goodness that hovers benignly over all our awkward particularities and stubborn contradictions. God is always and only “as you understand him,” forever and ever amen.

When Rubin and The Edge had meandered along this familiar terrain for a while, Rubin eventually opined, “All streams lead to the same river.” This is sentiment that has always stretched credulity for me. I get the impulse behind it—we want to be tolerant of other viewpoints, we want to be nice, and respectful. We don’t want to offend. And God knows it’s hard to sort through all the religious and spiritual clutter in the context of pluralism. But statements like “all streams lead to the same river” can only proceed out of ignorance or naivete about what various religions and philosophies actually teach. Yes, there is wisdom and truth to be found in all kinds of religions and philosophies. But there are real differences between Christianity and Buddhism and Islam and Rick Rubin’s California mysticism and every other belief system on the planet. Differences that can only be made to sing the same song by reducing them to less than they actually are. There are different diagnoses of the human condition, different solutions offered, different expectations for the future, different things hoped for.

This is nowhere clearer than during Holy Week. This is when the scandalous particularity of Christianity is most plainly seen. God Incarnate, inhabiting the flesh and blood of Jesus of Nazareth, a first century Jewish rabbi, betrayed, denied, mocked, abandoned, and executed by those he came to save. God on a cross. God dying the shameful death of a criminal. God exposing the ugly rot of human wickedness and idolatry. God telling the ugly truth about his image-bearers. God, emptying himself of divinity, taking on the form of a slave, humbling himself, going to the very outer reaches of love’s possibility in place of, for the sake of his wayward daughters and sons.

The words from one of U2’s most famous songs evokes the beautiful hope offered by this scandalous specificity:

You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Oh my shame
You know I believe it

And then, of course, God bursting forth from the grave. Life out of death, light out of darkness, hope out of despair, victory out of defeat.

This is not one way among others of expressing a universal truth. This is not one more or less inspiring tributary feeding into a more beautiful and universal river. This is either the truth of God and of the human condition or it is not. But Holy Week and Easter will not politely take their place at the religious smorgasbord. This story is far too holy and wild and devastating, too soaked with suffering, too shattering in hope for that. God on a cross does not say, “How do you understand me?” but “Forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.”

There’s another line I love in that famous U2 song:

I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one

Perhaps the key word in this beautiful lyric is “bleed.” The Christian conviction is that if all the colours are indeed to become one, it will be because of the blood of the One whose kingdom comes.

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About the Artwork:
Christ the Grapevine
Ulyana Tomkeyvch
2021