What would Jesus say to Keane?
A Christian response to “Under the Iron Sea”
Introduction
Keane is a band made up of 3 lads, Tom Chaplin, Richard Hughes and Tim Rice-Oxley grew up together in Battle, Sussex. They started messing around with musical instruments in their teens and were soon writing their own songs. In 1999 they moved to London, working in dead end jobs and practising in dank rehearsal studios in the evenings. 2 years later, still with no record deal they returned to Battle. Eventually they were invited to go to France to record some demos – which they did. This led to a record deal with a small company, a first album which sold 5 million copies worldwide and, 2 Brit awards, a Grammy for best new act and worldwide acclaim.
In June of this year they released their 2nd Album – “Under the iron sea”
Good questions
“ In making this record we tried to confront all our worst fears, to ruthlessly scrutinise ourselves, our relationships with each other, with other people, and with the world at large, and to make a journey into the darkest places we could find”
Under the Iron Sea is an album that takes a long hard look at what it is like living in 21st century UK. They sing about love, hatred, beauty and the world being a broken place, broken dreams, confusion etc. It is gritty stuff, it is real stuff – some of it may be uncomfortably real and close to home. Keane ask lots of questions in their songs – the sorts of questions you and I ask all the time.
What would Jesus say to Keane? How would he answer the questions they ask?
Atlantic
If I need anything at all,
I need a place that’s hidden in the deep
Where lonely angels sing you to your sleep
Though all the world is broken
I need a place where I can make my bed
A Lover’s lap where I can lay my head.
I have everything I need – except one thing. I need a sense of meaning and purpose in life. Something that can’t be taken away from me despite what the world is like and throws at me. I need a sense of belonging, to know where home is, even more importantly to know who home is. But I need this from a world that is broken!
The question is, where does what I need come from– is the love between 2 people the answer?
From our teenage years up, that is what we are led to believe and taught. But is it really the answer, how can it be in a world that is broken, and in a world of broken people.
Do you want to be well?
Read John 5:1-7
If you imagine the scene at the pool of Bethesda, it is not hard to see that, in John’s eyes, this is a picture of the world; the whole of humanity is disabled, blind, lame and paralysed. Most of us don’t realise this – we think we are doing pretty well! The great thing about Keane is, they realise that we are not, that they are not.
This is the first step towards discovering the truth; realising that we have a problem. If Jesus bumped into Keane backstage at the Brit awards I think they would immediately hit it off, Jesus occasionally says to people he meets, “You are not far from the kingdom!” [1] he would probably say this to Keane.
Why? Because they are honest and they are asking good questions; a passion to know the truth and a willingness to seek for it were things that Jesus deeply respected. Christians can learn from this… have you ever sat down to think about what you don’t know? When was the last time you changed your mind about something? Are you the kind of Christian who is quick on the draw with those easy-come-easy-go ‘words’ for people who are hurting? We need a good dose of humility, some of us.
James says that we ought to be slow to speak and quick to listen. I agree!
If you do not share my faith in Jesus, there are precious few other places to go for answers. We learn from childhood that we live in a bleak and barren universe, this is Richard Dawkins:
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference [2]
This is the world Keane grew up in and which they reflect in their songs. They know that we need to find a life-raft; something to give our lives meaning as we float on a sea of meaninglessness. For most, this means finding a relationship that will give us what we long for. Sarah Litvinoff, of RELATE, a marriage counselling service, knows all about relationships:
The search for romantic love and the perfect relationship has filled the space where religion used to be in the lives of millions of people who no longer have much religious faith. Instead of setting their sights on paradise in the next world, many people believe they can find it in this one; in the arms of someone who will make them feel forever passionate and ecstatic. [3]
As most find out to their cost, it does not work. The great British author, Somerset Maugham paid a very heavy price and became quite cynical.
Never love animals, they don’t last long enough. Never love humans, they last too long.
In other words, we are taught from birth that we live in a bleak, blind pitiless and meaningless universe, the ways we cope with this are not very successful, and we are lost.
Artists sense this and write about it, paint it, sing about it and, never forget, they make money out of it. Jesus would, I believe, ask us all a question; “Do you want to get well?” If there is an answer, would you be interested in knowing what it is?
Is it any wonder?
Sometimes it’s hard to know where I stand
It’s hard to know where I am
Well maybe it’s a puzzle I don’t understand.
I get the feeling that I’m
Stranded in the wrong time
Where love is just a lyric in a children’s rhyme, a soundbite
I’m disappointed. I had great plans and ambitions in life. High expectations of myself and other people and all of them disappointed. “I always thought that I knew I’d always have the right to be living in the kingdom of the good and true. But now I think I was wrong.
All the news we hear is disappointing. Even the good things are either trivial (fame and fortune) or only good because they are better than the rest. Global environment crisis, war and terrorism, illness and suffering continue, and those we put our trust in often don’t seem to be able to do anything about it, or even make it worse. What kind of a God is it that lets this happen? If he can deal with it, why doesn’t he. Is love really just a sound-bite?
And what about for me, a Christian? I put my trust in God, I believe in the cross – but things still happen to shake my trust in God. I too have to face the question – why does a God of love allow these things to happen, even to those who follow him and worship him.
Good news for broken people
Read John 5:6-18
As we grow up we are taught how to do long division and spend days looking for answers to arithmetical problems. We learn about 1066 and do projects where we look for facts about the Normans. Answers to our problems are always numbers, or facts, or new gadgets that make our lives easier.
So maybe that is what people are expecting when they look for meaning or an answer to the problem of suffering; we want God to write us an essay or give us some new killer facts.
What if the answer is none of these, what if the answer is a person?
Right at the centre of this incident, which John records as an eye witness, is Jesus. One word from Jesus and this paralysed man is healed instantly, completely and permanently! What does that tell you about Jesus?
It tells you that Jesus can repair people. That is good news in a world full of broken people!
But there’s more to it than this simple observation; in the conversation that followed this incident, Jesus way of speaking about himself drew the fire of the religious in the crowd (16-18). This was unpopular, but Jesus friends kept on making this same point, that he was ‘making himself equal with God”.
This gospel begins by making this point very powerfully.
John 1:1-2 & 14& 18
God has spoken, he has sent his final Word and it is not an essay, or a list of killer facts about stuff we never knew; the Word is a person.
So if you want to get well you are going to have to take a close look at Jesus.
When I was in my mid twenties I arranged to meet some friends to explore a cave in Derbyshire. My friends didn’t turn up and so I went underground alone. After a few hours I began to try to return to the surface and discovered that I was lost, after crawling around in the cave for another hour or so I had to admit that I was unable to find the entrance, my light was fading and I was getting tired and frightened. What was I to do?
Sitting with my back to a solid rock wall I tried to calm down and gather my thoughts. Then as I looked off to the left I noticed something, at the end of a narrow fissure was a boulder, on top of the boulder was a green leaf.
The colour of the leaf was significant, green stuff looses its colour very quickly in the dark, so this leaf was a recent arrival. I crawled along the fissure until I reached the boulder, turned and looked up. I could see daylight! It was not the way I entered the cave, but it was good enough for me… I was out!
Just as the leaf was the clue I needed to find my way out of that underground prison, so Jesus is the clue we need to the fact that this world, this existence, this life is not all that there is (24). Jesus is the key to what the Bible calls ‘eternal life’.
This means two things:
First, it means life that continues after our bodies have died. This life is in reality a preparation for the next one. Keane sing of life’s emptiness, its apparent meaninglessness. But the fact is that every one of our actions is significant – nothing is meaningless.
Second, ‘eternal life’ begins now; following the clue of Jesus to see the expanded universe that is waiting for us changes the way we live and the way we feel now. We know why we are broken and we know that God is working to fix it. He hasn’t finished yet, and we are in the middle of the healing process, but the day is coming when it will be complete.
So, are you interested, do you want to get well?
Crystal Ball
Oh Crystal ball, crystal ball save us all
Tell me life is beautiful
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Oh crystal ball here my song
I’m fading out
Everything I know is wrong
So put me where I belong
What hope do we have for the future? Is it just luck? If a mirror could tell us the future what would it say? Good or bad? And how can I be sure it is good?
There are many things we consider beautiful – not just the obvious.
Justice is beautiful. Something we clamour for and long for. Is there justice in life, because if not, what is the point in striving for it now.
Peace is beautiful. We are approaching Christmas when we speak of “Glory to God in the highest and peace to men on whom his favour rests”. But the world is far from peaceful. Is there peace in life?
Forgiveness is beautiful. Hard but beautiful - but we all need forgiveness. Is there forgiveness in this world?
Without justice, peace and forgiveness we end up with lives consumed by insecurity, bitterness and self-centredness. Is there a hope for the future that life is beautiful that will help us now?
Justice and mercy
Reads John 5:21-30
Everything is significant because one day God will evaluate everything we have done, that is quite a thought!
But why should we believe Jesus? Let me tell you why I believe him. First, he lived a perfect life, then his teaching is incisive and practical, it works. Not only this, but when you look at the prophecies in the Old Testament that predict the events of Jesus life, you find that his credentials are impeccable. Oh, and he fulfilled those prophecies in ways that could not be faked. And then there is his resurrection, the facts of history offer no other explanation for the explosive rise of the Jesus movement. That is why I believe Jesus.
So believe him when he says two things:
First, this life is not the only one you have, there is going to be another (25). Jesus rose from the dead, and so will you.
Second, we will all face God’s evaluation of what we have made of this life (28-29)
So there is a reason to live well, to love our neighbours and our enemies. Nothing is meaningless, everything we do has significance. But look who will do the judging (27) it is Jesus himself.
I can imagine a defendant in court being quite resentful about those who sit in judgement on him or her. Most people who find themselves in the dock are from very deprived backgrounds, most people who find work as judges are from quite privileged backgrounds. What right have the well-off to judge the deprived?
Look at the reason Jesus is qualified to judge us (27) it is because he has experienced our kind of life, he has lived as one of us.
In the last analysis, at the end of time, all of us will receive justice. But that is not good news – I don’t need justice, what I need is mercy!
This brings us back to Jesus, the clue to the life that follows this one (24) – I know that I deserve God’s justice, I know that I have no time to tidy up my life, so God has given me a way to know that I am safe for eternity – hear what God is saying through Jesus and believe it.
Imagine being caught in a burning building, there is no way out and you are trapped, yet as you are giving up hope of rescue a door opens and a voice shouts, “This way… there is a way out over here”. What would you do?
You could refuse to take the easy way out, insist on retaining the dignity of deciding on your own fate and finding your own way of salvation.
On the other hand, you could decide that the information you have received is unreliable (after all you don’t know the person giving you the advice) and that you should just stay put.
Or you could just run for your life and give it a try! That is what it means to hear and believe; you hear and do what you are told!
[1] See Mark 12:34
[2] Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden: a Darwiniam view of life, London: Phoenix (1995), p. 133
[3] Sarah Litvinoff - The Relate guide to better relationships, Ebury Press 1991, page 14