“Oh, Jerusalem”
I spent over an hour yesterday just listening to and watching some legendary live performances from legendary musicians and bands.
It was quite an emotional experience.
It was a bit of an epiphany.
You might think that these performances are about the band or the artist. Freddy Mercury singing “We are the Champions” at Live Aid in 1985 is astounding. No special effects, no lights or video show, no background dancers’ just Freddy, the band Queen and the massive crowd. Freddy Mercury masterfully felt and used and gave back the energy of the crowd. It doesn’t always have to be to that scale. In a different live performance in a smaller arena, Leonard Cohen recites his poem/song “If it Be Thy Will” as a prayer with eyes closed and then hands it over to the Webb Sisters who sing the lyric. Cohen isn’t even looking at the crowd. What he knows however is that he is in their company. He is bearing witness.
I remember Eugene Peterson once said that you can’t trust a crowd. Peterson was warning against falling into the big church, consumer religion experience. He said that the three ways of false transcendence are substances, sex driven simply by appetite, and crowds. He warned most strongly against crowds.
I still like and believe what Peterson said. I have been at a Vancouver Canucks hockey game during the Stanley Cup Final in 2011 when the crowd was so ecstatically loud that I was caught up in it, adding my screaming voice while at the same time observing this phenomenon of mass hysteria.
There can be more to it as well.
It can be a multitude of humanity. There can be something beautiful about a crowd. We know it now when we are not allowed to gather.
Yesterday I watched footage of Paul McCartney leading hundreds of thousands of people in singing “Hey Jude”, the “Na na na NA NA NA NA, na na na na, hey Jude”, part.
I saw that the crowd is no mere recipient. The crowd is the energy and the art itself. If you have been at a concert anything like that you know the feeling. It is astounding to sing together with so many people. You feel a camaraderie, a coming together in agreement.
Yesterday as I watched my mind went to Jesus weeping over the city on the day of the so called, “Triumphal Entry”. It was his only address to the crowds that day and it was without their knowing, after the noise and the jubilation. “Oh, Jerusalem, if only you had known what brings peace.” Jesus loved the crowds. Jesus loved each person in the crowd.
When I see the huge crowds in these concert scenes I think, “Oh, Wembley Stadium”, “or “Oh, Central Park” or wherever the assembled are gathered.
If only we could know what brings peace. If only we knew, when we gathered in those crowds that one day we would not. It would be banned. Or we would be unable to gather. Or we would each face our own diminishment or death.
When you watch the Live Aid performance of Freddy Mercury I don’t think that you can help but see that he loved the people. He is so small in tight jeans and a tank top, but he is immersed in the energy of the crowd. He is giving them a gift and accepting a gift from them.
As I watched I recalled that Freddy Mercury died from complications of another contemporary plague, that of AIDS. The knowledge of his earthly end gives a sorrowful nostalgia to the scene and yet makes it more powerful.
One day we may gather again.
And in Revelation at the end of all things, we don’t retire to a cottage in the country. The heavenly dwelling to complete and fulfill all of time is a city. And there are multitudes before the throne. And no one has to wear a mask.
AMEN.
