Lenten Devotional AT40 Day 4, Take Me to Church, Hozier

Lenten Devotional AT40 Day 4, Take Me to Church, Hozier

This unlikely pop song has surfaced unresolved angst in contemporary culture. Here's an excerpt from Chris Reimenschneider of the Star Tribune,

Laced with traces of American gospel and southern R&B music, it sounds darker and rawer than Smith’s and Adele’s similarly blue-eyed-soul work. Also, the lyrics and especially the song’s music video are partly inspired by a touchy topic that even his sound-alike singer Elton John would have been timid about tackling 30 years ago: the Catholic Church’s and other organizations’ stance against same-sex marriages and homosexuality.“The song is about how sexuality and love are such a basic, integral part of humanity,” Hozier explained.“For the church or any organization like a government to question who you love or who you have sex with just seems to go against humanity. I’m not condemning the church or religion on the whole, just that one policy, which seems so wrong to me. And obviously I’m not alone in thinking that.”(www.startibune.com/entertainment/music/292710011.html)

For me the song up earths the question of what it means to be human, and part of the created order. Christian teaching on creation, resurrection of the body, and the incarnation certainly over come the notion that the material world is inherently evil. And yet our religious institution still formulates rules that echo Hozier's lyric.

'We were born sick, ' you heard them say it

I don't imagine this question of humanity and the church's propensity to "go against" humanity is limited to sexuality. I have witnessed church policy deny humanity in when we fail to stand against torture, poverty, injustice, or war. To paraphrase Lisa Batten's favorite Theologian, When we deny humanity we also deny the resurrection (See Peter Rollins).

This song stirs up a persistent problem in the life of a Christian. How can do we be human and still walk in the way of Christ. Paul describes the paradox of humanity and sin in Romans 7:15.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

This is a tension that ought not be swept under the rug. It's a struggle that all disciples should personally take up, before they cast stones. Christ invited the faithful to ponder the question of humanity and sin as he drew in the earth in John 8:7-8. Maybe it is in this pondering that the Holy Spirit enters in and we are made clean, maybe this is what Hozier is driving at in the lyric,

In the madness and soil of that sad earthly sceneOnly then I am HumanOnly then I am CleanAmen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

What do you think?