Bruce Springsteen on Jesus

Every now and then a song rises to the top of my personal charts.  The latest is "Jesus Was an Only Son," by Bruce Springsteen:

Jesus was an only son
As he walked on Calvary's hill
At his side his mother Mary
In the path where his blood spilled

Jesus was an only son
In the hills of Nazareth
Reading the psalms of David
At his mother's feet

A mother prayed, 'Sleep tight my child sleep well
For I'll be at your side.
No shadow, no darkness, no tolling bell
Shall pierce your dreams tonight.'

In the garden of Gethsemane
He prayed for the life he'd never live.
He beseeched his Heavenly Father to remove
The cup of death from his lips.

Now there's a loss that can never be replaced,
A destination that can never be reached,
A light you'll never find in another's face,
A sea whose distance cannot be breached.

Jesus kissed his mother's hands
And said, 'Mother, still your tears
Remember, the soul of the universe
Willed a world and it appeared.'

I think that's the best portrayal of Jesus's humanity I've ever read.  That's partly because Jesus's divinity is not mentioned.  It reminds me of Bulgakov's potrayal of "Yeshua" in his novel The Master and Margarita.  Bulgakov's "Yeshua" is heart-breaking good, but his goodness is a naivete which is helpless against Pilate.  There is no resurrection.  Christians believe in Jesus's humanity, as well as his divinity-- that's the whole point-- but I wonder whether they are permanently unable to express it as poignantly as the "good agnostic" (agnostic about Christianity, not necessary about God) for whom Jesus's humanity is all that there is.  The apostles, after all, were like the "good agnostics" in the time of Jesus's Ministry: like Springsteen or Bulgakov, they recognized his goodness, but not his divinity.

Bulgakov's "Yeshua" is a fictional character, and Christians would have some reason to take offense at the liberties Bulgakov takes with the historical record.  But there is nothing in Springsteen's song, as far as I can tell, that a Christian should object to.  The second and third verses, about Jesus's childhood in the hills of Nazareth-- it is the portrayal of Jesus's childhood that makes him so human-- are not in the Gospels, which all either begin with Jesus's Ministry (Mark and John) or jump from the Christmas story to Jesus's Ministry (Matthew and Luke).  In the Gospel of Luke, there is a single episode in between, about Jesus teaching in the Temple when he was twelve.  That's all the Bible says about Jesus's childhood.  Yet Jesus must have had a childhood, and the two scenes Springsteen represents-- Jesus reading the psalms of David at his mother's feet, and Mary singing him a lullaby-- are as orthodox as you could ask for.  We know that Jesus must have read the psalms of David a lot because he quoted from them so much in his teachings.  This is more obvious from the "good agnostic" point of view than from the Christian point of view: I think Christians can have a vague notion that since Jesus was God, he was omniscient and wouldn't have needed to study.  Or maybe Jesus read the psalms for devotional reasons; we know that he prayed often during his Ministry.  And the other verse.  Did Jesus need to be comforted by his mother, like any common child, to go to sleep?  Well, yes.  That's the incarnation for you.  Yet it's amazing to imagine it.  Anyway, given how little the Bible says about Jesus's childhood, it's remarkable that Springsteen was able to write two verses about it without making anything up.

Reversing the Gospel pattern, Springsteen details Jesus's childhood and then jumps over Jesus's Ministry, straight to Gethsemane, where he mentions another astounding fact which Christian believers in Jesus's divinity would find hard to accept if it weren't there in the Gospels (though it occurs to me now: Jesus was alone, so how did the evangelists know about it?): that Jesus didn't want to go through with it!  He must have known, surely-- conceived it somehow, at least, even in his human state-- that his death was the only hope of salvation for the world.  How could he ask the Father to "take this cup from me" (even if he added "not my will, but yours be done")?  What could be more heart-breaking?  The  threads of tragedy that bind this world together broke the heart even of God.

The fifth verse is pure Bruce Springsteen, with his ethos of infinite sadness.  And if the song ended there it would quite definitely not be a Christian song (as The Master and Margarita is not a Christian novel).  But then there is the sixth verse, where Jesus, who resembles for the first time in the song the Jesus of authority-- he is calmly comforting his mother, not begging for reprieve, even though he is about to die-- reminds Mary: 'Remember the soul of the universe / Willed a world and it appeared.'  What can I add?  Rarely have twelve words evoked such a sense of wonder in me as these.  Creation!  Yet how is it relevant?  Somehow, it is intimated, the power of God ("the soul of the universe") can heal even this unspeakable grief, the mother watching her son go to die-- but nothing is said of how, no promise is explicitly made.

There is a sense, I think, in which this song is wiser than the ancient Church Councils: wiser, because it says less, because it uses the details of the Bible to evoke the humanity of Jesus, because it juxtaposes heart-breaking sadness on impossible hope, because it opens the mind to the great mystery without trying to formulate it.  The ancient Churchmen knew they could never put into words "the mystery of faith," that the best they could hope to do was to put a hedge against error.  Praise God for their work, and I am in their debt for guidance.  I do believe they got it right.  They were trying to express, as this song does in its way, the mystery of the incarnation, and they came up with dogmas like:

• the Son of God is true God, born of God the Father before all ages, and is eternal, as is God the Father; He was begotten, and not made, and is of one essence with God the Father. (First Ecumenical Council, Nice, 325 AD)
• the equality and the single essence of God the Holy Spirit with God the Father and God the Son. (Second Ecumenical Council, Constantinople, 381 AD)
• united in Jesus Christ at the time of the incarnation were two natures, divine and human, and that one should confess Jesus Christ as true God and true Man, and the Holy Virgin as the God-bearer (Theotokos).  (Third Ecumenical Council, 431 AD)
• as God Jesus Christ is eternally born from God. As man, He was born of the Holy Virgin and in every way is like us, except in sin. (Fourth Ecumenical Council, 451 AD)
• in Jesus there are two wills, Divine and human, and in these two natures there are two wills, but... the human will in Christ is not against, but rather is submissive to His Divine will. (Sixth Ecumenical Council, Constantinople, 680 AD)

(All quotes from The Law of God, Archpriests Seraphim Slobodskoy, 1996.)  But even if the Councils were right, was it worth it?  Each council was a source of schism, with some who had been at peace with the Church becoming heretics.  Had they stayed in the fold of the Church they would have been a source of confusion, but sometimes, perhaps, sometimes, of insight too-- as Bruce Springsteen and other good agnostics sometimes have been.  Would it be better if the Church had more room for them?

I owe this song a person debt: it opened my eyes to the cult of the Virgin Mary, which I had never quite understood.  There aren't many stories about Mary in the Bible.  She mostly does only one thing, though of course that one thing-- bringing Jesus into the world-- is very important.  She deserves our respect, to be sure, but why is she honored above the Apostles, who spread the Gospel and died as martyrs, or above any of the prophets and saints?  What was the sense of making intercessory prayers to the Virgin Mary?  Imagine her trying to cope with all those millions of prayers!  It's one thing for God, an omnipotent Being, to hear so many prayers, but poor Mary-- just a simple Jewish girl, with so much responsibility!

But think of Mary singing a lullaby to Jesus-- to God-- in the night, to comfort his childish fears and help him sleep.  Mother of God.  Moses saw God in fire and cloud on Mount Sinai, and in the Burning Bush, and only a few times.  Mary-- she spent thirty years of her life with him, with him every day, not fully understanding who he was, to be sure-- we learn that from Luke-- yet she was able to bear the divine presence.

If I could write one song like this my life would not be wasted.

Comments

[gabe]

I cannot tell you how excited I am that I found your blog. This is wonderfully written and very precisely captures the excitement I personally felt when I heard Bruce sing this on Storytellers with his narratives interspersed.

"Whatever divinity we can lay claim to is hidden in the core of our humanity and when we let our compassion go, we let go of whatever claim we have to the divine."
B. Springsteen

Good job. Great research.

[Krau]

This is a truly beautiful song, and is a huge affirmation that Bruce Springsteen is so deeply and truly connected to the common human experience, that he, in my mind, is worthy of the label "divine".

I also look at this song as a way to illustrate the more common human experience - that our children, who we bring into this world, have a destiny all their own. We can prepare them only so much, but they have to face that destiny alone.

Thank you for the post - I just googled this song and yours is the first I clicked on. Based upon your writing in this post, I will read your other writings with great interest.

[Geoff]

i find myself falling into your "good agnostic" category, and yet, i am christian. i am born again. i am a son of God. the word of God is my entire life. and through all this...i detest religion. mainly for how it has contorted and counterfeited the bible. dogmas that have lived on as if they were doctrine, things men made up, like that jesus is God. Jesus is the Son of God. that's it. he IS human. he received Holy Spirit from his father, just like i have now because i believe on his name. the humanity is the only reason for me to believe in and admire what jesus went through and did for all of us. i've always said that if it weren't for him and God being SEPERATE, i'd stop believing today. the trinity is a trick and a lie to draw people away from the accuracy of the bible so that they miss out on the power that is in it. i like this song because it isn't showing jesus as God...for once somebody got it right.

[Nathan Smith]

I think the Gospel of John makes the divinity of Jesus pretty clear.

[nato]

Why does it matter?

[Nathan Smith]

You mean, why does it matter whether Jesus was divine? Or why does it matter whether the Gospel of John makes it pretty clear that He was? I was just pointing out that you can't accuse the Church of "counterfeiting the Bible" by asserting the divinity of Christ. Obviously an appeal to the Gospel of John is not a persuasive argument for the divinity of Christ unless you are pre-committed to believing the Bible. As for why the divinity of Christ matters, that can't be explained both adequately and briefly, at least not by me; but the "good news" (Gospel) is about how God has renewed / is renewing a world spoiled by sin and death, in which all good things will pass away, and will raise mankind and the earth to a state of new glory. In becoming a human being and dying, God united us, inasmuch as we accept the gift, into his Body and Blood, and into his Resurrection. No, that isn't particularly clear; it's the sort of thing that you contemplate for a whole lifetime, and may learn great wisdom and receive great joy thereby, without ever comprehending it. It is a "mystery," in the lofty, ancient sense of the word.

[nato]

"why does it matter whether Jesus was divine?" Versus receiving holy spirit or whatever. It seems like there's a lot of potential construals that would come out to the same thing. But I understand there's probably a ton of theological reasoning about it with implications that wouldn't occur to me. I guess the reason I ask is because frequently it sounds like there are extravagant claims encoded in these disputes that are rarely unpacked. Maybe I just watch long enough because I have no dog in the fight.

[ms]

As C. S. Lewis said, it is part of the deep magic--which amounts to a mystery so profound that it can give people hope and faith in a profoundly fallen world. I think it matters a great deal that Jesus was divine because only a divine being would have the--for lack of better words--authority and power to transform both the world and the individual, but in very unexpected ways--through humility and love.

[Errol Marks]

hi
i just stumbled across ur site and i enjoyed ur article
i have written a poem on Jesus and what he has done
lemme know if u want to read it. even though its not as brilliant as the one mentioned above but well u may like it
mail me if u wanna read it - errolmarks@gmail.com