This summer I went to the U2 concert. (I know, I know. Yes, you should be jealous, ‘cause it was freakin’ awesome). I’ve loved U2 since I was 16 years old and my first real boyfriend (who was not my boyfriend yet) danced with me to “Sweetest Thing” and later declared it to be our song. I don’t usually tell people that this is when I first fell in love with U2. Usually I tell people I fell in love with U2 when I bought their “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” album in the era of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Those guys were actually singing about something. Clearly the latter story seems like a bit “deeper” reason to love U2.
I thought about this as we waited for the concert to start, watching the giant screens flash statistics. How much money was being spent world wide on illegal drugs, how many people had died unnecessarily of hunger while we sat their sipping beers, how many children had been born to members of the crew while on tour (17 by the way). At this moment one of the women in our group turned to us and said, “That’s the one thing that I don’t like about U2, all their political stuff. Sometimes I just want to sit back and enjoy my rock concert.” Hmmm. That’s actually one of the things I love most about U2. They care. They aren’t just self-involved rock stars. Or maybe they are and they’ve just kept up an incredible act all these years. Either way, they are beckoning their fans to a higher calling. They don’t let their concert goers sit idly by resigned to their role as mere rock fans. They think more of us. They invite us to care too. All while enjoying an amazing rock concert. I don’t mind paying $10 for beers to participate in all that.
And last week I discovered another reason why I love Bono, The Edge, Larry and Adam. The U2 concert was perhaps the most worshipful experience I’ve had in a very long time. From the moment I sat down in my seat my heart fell into anticipation of God’s presence. I found myself noticing Him everywhere. Soldier Field felt as though it was brimming with hearts that cared about the same thing God’s heart cared about. As I sang along to Pride I was singing about Jesus, the one man who came in the name of love. Belting out “in the name of love/what more in the name of love”, I realized these words were worshipful. I was singing those words to God. The warm, perfect summer air was thick with God’s presence. Sunday Bloody Sunday was my heart’s cry to God.
And it was at that exact moment my mind began to articulate this idea of feeling closer to God, filled with more adoration and worship of Him than I had in a long time that my husband’s cousin Becky turned to me and said “This is better than any church service I’ve ever been to.” And all at once I felt both wholeheartedly in agreement and deeply conflicted. Hadn’t I just been thinking the same thing? And yet, this wasn’t a church service, and while I don’t know where Becky stands with God, I do know her conflicted relationship with the church. And it made me sad. It made me sad for her and the thousands of others in this stadium that sang along without knowing the power behind those words. And it made me sad that people, myself included, are finding a more powerful experience with God at a rock concert than they do at church.
I work in a church. I’m not in charge of worship I work with students. But I am constantly trying to help create experiences that draw my students closer to God. And I’m constantly trying to convince them that God is, in fact, at church. And, I’ll admit, sometimes I have to convince myself of the same thing. Why is it that my heart feels more in line with the heart of God at a U2 concert than it does at church? What are we doing wrong? Why did God feel closer at Soldier Field than He has at church in a long time?
Maybe it’s just my church that feels irrelevant. Or maybe it’s just me. Lately I’ve had a hard time singing worship hymns that feel so dry when everywhere I look I see things that make my heart long for God’s intervention. There is so much hurting, so much pain, so much corruption and evil that I’ve never in my life wanted so much to see Jesus move in actual, tangible, concrete ways. I read the Gospels with a desire to see how Jesus would respond today. What would he say to our modern day Pharisees? (And whom would he identify as one?) How would he heal the woman next door who’s so addicted to drugs and alcohol that most days she barely functions? What would he say to the girl who was kidnapped, trafficked and now sells her body because she knows no other way? The more I learn about injustice, the more desperate and useless I feel. The more I see what is dirty and rough and hard in the world, the more complicated I understand the situation to be. I have more problems to bring to God and fewer answers than I did when I became a Christian 10 years ago.
And perhaps that’s why U2 was such a jarring experience for me. For the first time in a long time, I felt myself crying out to God straight from the depths of my heart. And my voice wasn’t alone. I was in a stadium full of people asking God the same thing. And that felt really worshipful. “How long, how long must we sing this song?” How long indeed.
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