"Radiohead makes sacred music."
- Bono

Repeat Bono's words on a Sunday morning in almost any church in America, and you can bet you'll be greeted with some interesting emails on Monday morning:

• "How can this music be sacred? They don't even mention God?"
• "I don't come to church to hear about some weird band, I come to worship."
• "Radio-who?"

Maybe Christians can't hear the sacred rhythms in the music of Radiohead, but others can and do.

About a year ago, I was sitting in an outdoor café in rural southern France with my wife, when our waiter asked why we had come to his small village. "To see Radiohead in San Sebastian, Spain later this week," we answered. Our young waiter immediately perked up, "Radiohead - they know our pain."

The sacred has two halves. Jack Miller once said something like, "Cheer up! You are worse than you think. Cheer up! God is much greater than you can ever know!"  Christians don't spend much time on the first half of Miller's succinct summation of the Gospel. Listen to what passes for sacred music in a Christian bookstore these days, and what you will find is artists who often ignore the hard-to-hear first half of the Gospel and instead head straightaway to the easy to swallow second half. But without the first half, the second half is often just another shallow self-help program. It is an irony that by doing the hard work of turning the dark soil of our hearts deeply, we better prepare them to fully embrace the reality of God's goodness.

At the end of the 90's, RH released what many critics still consider the best album of that decade. OK Computer was chock full of brooding about plane crashes, personal resignation, war, propaganda, manipulation of elections, and that was before 911, Afghanistan, the last Presidential election, and Iraq. Prophetic? Two albums followed OK Computer, both well-received by critics and core fans, but not particularly accessible to the masses. And then along came this year's release, Hail to the Thief.

HTTT was originally entitled "The Gloaming", gloaming being that time of the evening when the shadows lengthen and the darkness falls. If you take a look at the evening news, who could argue with frontman Thom Yorke that this may be the gloaming for western civilization? The album is filled with portents of the future - emotional/personal songs of frustration with the condition of the world and anger that this is what we will leave our children, a drunk and belligerent guest at a wedding, concern for the plight of the individual in the post-modern world and in places there are glimmers of hope. 

The old word for spiritual gloaming is "repentance". It is a thorough disgust with your own vain attempts at self-improvement and with the structure of the system around you that attempts to keep you enslaved. This spiritual gloaming is a necessary port stop on the way to sunrise and new life. I think this is why one reviewer has said of RH, "They are the sound of Nineveh repenting."

We shouldn't be surprised that we have trouble embracing spiritual gloaming, especially when it gets practiced by ordinary people. Religious people have always found repentance in non-religious people to be anathema. 

That's basically the story of Jonah. God told Jonah to go to the ancient city of Nineveh and tell the citizens there to repent from evil. Jonah resisted, thinking the Ninevites didn't deserve a second chance. But God used a boat, a violent storm, some desperate sailors, a big fish, and regurgitation to convince Jonah to see things His way. Jonah landed in Nineveh with the worst of attitudes and announced the first half of the Gospel (my paraphrase), "This is your gloaming. Your error and self-destruction will be met with God's anger unless you stop your nonsense."  When the Ninevites listened and responded as God had hoped they would, an unmoved Jonah skulked off and complained, "Isn't this just what I said would happen? It's just like you to show compassion and hold back judgment! I would rather die than see this!" 

Later in the story, God confronts Jonah about his apparent dislike for repentance in Ninevites. He explained to Jonah, "Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"

We met Karl in San Sebastian, Spain the day before the show we were to attend. Died-black hair, pale-skinned, Austrian, 20something art student - Karl wore the official uniform well. He took the train to San Sebastian for 12+ hours and bought tickets off the street to see the show. We met first on the street (a RH show in Europe is a fairly polite gig, the shows are a traveling carnival of the faithful fans journeying from town to town) and then later in the concession line where a second conversation ensued between us. 

After speaking at some length in both conversations about RH, music, the world situation, and art, Karl asked me what I did for a living. I told him, "In the workaday world I sell tile, but what I really get excited about is what I do as a volunteer - I serve as an elder and teaching pastor at a church for people like us."  He asked incredulously what kind of church would have a pastor that was a bona fide RH fan. I told him, "A Christian church."  I then went on to explain how Jesus and His friends were thoroughly engaged with the people of their time and place, attending parties, dinners, and religious events, living life as a part of their culture instead of living apart from it. He confronted people when he felt they were in error, yes, but he also healed them when they were sick, cried with them in sorrow, laughed with them in joy, and died for them to redeem the brokenness of their lives.

At the end of our conversation Karl said, "I think more pastors should like Radiohead" and he went on to invite us to spend the night on the beach with him and his friends.

I think Karl was right. But can anyone hear his sacred request?

This was a great article! God can be found everywhere you look - and when we look for Him only in a "church" we often can't find Him ther because we've passed Him 10 times on the way. He may have even waved to us a couple of times!

I'm also a musician, and although I tend to write music for the building up of those in the Body, I find Jesus speaking to me from many unlikely places. As God spoke to Isreal through Kings of Persia, and even Donkeys. He still speaks today.
Jim Black
www.jimblacksongs.com
--Jim Black ( jim at jimblacksongs dot com ) on 4/2/2005; 11:19:37 AM