On this Holy Saturday, the Easter Vigil, we turn our attention to unlikely devotional leaders, but as my friend, Michael, said many years ago, the music of the band Live is often more overtly engaging on spiritual questions than many Christian bands.
I go back to MTV’s “Around the World in 180 Minutes” Tour of 1991 when I saw Live as the second on the bill, just hitting the airwaves but still relatively unknown. (The opener was Blind Melon, definitely before their album was out and anyone knew much about them. And in case you’re wondering, the concert went downhill from there: PiL and Big Audio Dynamite II).
When I saw Live take the stage with such passionate songs built around hard-hitting rhythms, I realized this was where you could take folk music. It’s electric; it’s hard rock at times; it’s even screaming vocals at times. But pare it down, and you see that Live is doing folk music, protest music, political music, and spiritual music.
Which brings us to “Operation Spirit (The Tyranny of Tradition)” from their debut album, Mental Jewelry. Here Edward Kowalcyzk sings that he has heard about a lot of the positive things in the world, the ocean, his spirit, his soul, but “I decided that anxiety and pain/were better friends/so I let it go.”
That’s the kind of lyric that cuts right to the heart of the matter; that’s the kind of lyric that Christian bands and preachers only wish they could write and sing/say with such passion. Because really that’s the problem, isn’t it? We’re surrounded by things that can point us to hope, but we choose to let those things go. For pessimists and depressives like me, this is exactly what we’re tempted to do on a daily basis: choose pain and anxiety over any hope that is being offered.
Set to a charging guitar riff over a drum/bass beat that’s akin to a dance beat, these lyrics draw you in, thinking, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I feel.” Then you’re ready for the chorus, the chorus that once again opens up Live to charges of being preachy or something, but hey, this chorus has something to say directly to the listener who is feeling that pain and anxiety: “Did you let it go?/Let’s get it back/Let’s get it back together.” Whatever you gave up to choose pain and anxiety, let’s get that positive stuff back; let’s find that hope again. This chorus turns a pursuit of misery on its head.
The next verses are where we come to the spiritual side of this discussion:
“Heard a lot of talk about this Jesus
A man of love, a man of strength,
But what a man was two thousand years ago
Means nothing at all to me today
“He could have been telling me about my higher self
But he only lives inside my prayer
So what he was may have been beautiful
But the pain is right now and right here.”
That’s exactly the problem of faith: we know Jesus, we know what He claims to be, we know the hope He offers, but that is just so hard to hold onto when you’re staring that pain in the face.
On first listen, many Christians might be tempted to throw out this album, because it says Jesus means nothing to us today. That’s blasphemy. However, remember that chorus comes back in. Just as the chorus urged the listener to choose hopeful things instead of pain and anxiety, so, too, I think the chorus urges us to choose Jesus over the pain.
That’s what I imagine that the disciples and believers in Jesus were trying to tell each other on that Sabbath, the Saturday after Jesus was killed on the cross. Pain was right before their eyes. Misery, grief, death, and a loss of hope. However, they also knew what Jesus had taught. He taught love, care, comfort, life, and true hope. Cue the soundtrack for the next Jesus movie: “Operation Spirit” by Live, watching the disciples try to hold each other up, as Edward Kowalczyk sings, “Let’s get it back/Let’s get it back together.”
