J
esus Christ – music and lyrics by Woody Guthrie.
Jesus Christ was a man who traveled through the land
A hard-working man and brave
He said to the rich, "Give your money to the poor,"
But they laid Jesus Christ in His grave
Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand
His followers true and brave
One dirty little coward called Judas Iscariot
Has laid Jesus Christ in His Grave
He went to the preacher, He went to the sheriff
He told them all the same
"Sell all of your jewelry and give it to the poor,"
And they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.
When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around
Believed what he did say
But the bankers and the preachers, they nailed Him on the cross,
And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.
And the people held their breath when they heard about his death
Everybody wondered why
It was the big landlord and the soldiers that they hired
To nail Jesus Christ in the sky
This song was written in New York City
Of rich man, preacher, and slave
If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee,
They would lay poor Jesus in His grave.
As far as ‘rebel jams’ and songs of political dissent go, I am more often a devotee of Rage Against the Machine or System of a Down; but there is something irresistibly awe inspiring about folk legend Woody Guthrie’s song, Jesus Christ. Penned (from what I can gather) in around 1940, this has to be one of the very first songs ever recorded with such blatant Christi-anarchy leanings.
I’m not wanting to peg Woody out as a closet Anarcho-Jesus Freak, don't worry. However the weight of his tune is prehaps given more credibility knowing that he wasn't a 'party-line-towing' member of the God squad. Ok, so the theology of the ballad is unashamedly slanted heavily to the left, in favor of the poor and working class; which it could be argued is the most authentically Christ like you can get– but that’s another debate! Although, according to the Biblical texts we have access to, Jesus didn’t explicitly tell EVERYONE to sell their possessions and give to the poor (I think it was more a case of misplaced priorities for a particular rich geezer which carries a relevant symbolic reference for us all...) the message here still stuck me as a pretty profound one.
While the issue of whether those who nailed Jesus to the Cross were literally ‘bankers and the preachers’ is debatable, what’s for sure is that those who did ‘drive the nails in’ were those whose comfortable, safe and padded lifestyles were shaken to the core by the offense of Jesus’ confrontational message. The reality is, if Jesus turned up preaching unconditional love for your enemies in New York today, he might not be crucified (after all it’s not the Roman empire!) but you can be sure he’d be forced into an orange jump suit and held on a rather infamous island just off the cost of Florida…
And the challenge that this song offers is still relevant. After all, if your oh-so-comfortable life (mine too!) is that padded maybe we should get up off our cushions and have a look at who’s being smothered beneath the comfort of our reclining leather coated lazy-boy? Are the shoes and jeans we wear made at the expense of exploited workers in Indonesia or Vietnam? Is the meat on our dinner plates made available to you by the abuse and maltreatment of beautiful animals, fashioned in love by the father of creation? How does this measure up to our so called ‘beliefs’ and ideals? What use are beliefs if they remain abstract and are not applied daily?
And that’s the beauty, and simplicity of making a change to our world; it’s down the small choices that every one of us makes one by one that affect the bigger picture. By applying the ideals of non violence and striving to live out our desire for justice. But it takes courage to stand up and be counted for that which singles you out as different, an outsider, a ‘looser’, a weaker breed. The reality is that you are only made a looser or viewed as weaker by an success system that is based upon self interest and material gain.
But as Walter Wink has demonstrated throughout his writing, turning the other cheek does NOT mean letting the Empire walk all over us. Passivity does NOT mean being passive. It means working harder to find creative, non-violent and authentic responses to the accepted status quo. It means things like trawling the internet to find fair trade shoes, and choosing to opt out of the abusive and environmentally catastrophic meat and dairy industries. It means not betraying that which we profess with our mouths; not being the ‘dirty little coward’ of today, even though we were for most of last week, and the week before, and the week before.
The use of poor Jesus in the closing line is particularly interesting; this a Jesus devoid of any real estate or physical possessions, one who is laid bare upon the cross; killed for unreservedly loving people in a radical way. And then we think it’s a big deal to implement that love into our lives beyond the pews of a Sunday morning. It’s not a big deal, it’s the only deal.
