Oh son

She comes to me in the night when loneliness
is too much to bear
and she holds me close
and she helps me forget.
You go steppin' out as she comes steppin' in
someday I'll be forgiven for this.
Cause you just ain't got the time that you used to.
Well you say you love me and deep inside hell I know you do.
So stop your crying now, I'm already convinced that someday I'll be forgiven for this.                                   

 -Justin Townes Earle

First time I was in Nashville was for the Festival of Homiletics. Yes, only would a preacher gather with hundreds of other preachers, listen to sermons all day and call it a festival. But it was a treat to see the faces that went with voices I had for years heard while studying and listening to sermons in seminary.  Hearing four incredible preachers before lunch is a rich spiritual experience. It's also true to say that I hated it. There were days when I left thinking I could never be as good as half the preachers I just heard so why bother while also convinced that I was better than half the other preachers so why did they get to be up there anyway?  I told myself I wouldn't be back to another festival unless I was there to preach. I think that was 2009- haven't been back…

But the real story is the night a colleague and I skipped out on sermon listening and went to the Ryman Auditorium, the original Grand ole Opry, to hear the Swell Season, the musicians made famous by the movie Once- they were amazing. But the opening act was a skinny awkward guy with a famous musician Dad whose songs were unknown to me.  Then he sang the song quoted at the start of this blog, and I've never forgotten it. For all the sermons I’d heard and churches I had attended that week, there in the Ryman, with a double jack and coke, listening to this haunted, honest soul— I was on hallowed ground.   
I later heard in an interview that despite the trauma of Justin’s life, the drug abuse, molestation, fights and hard living, he said about his songwriting “I found this thing in speaking the truth.” And listening to him sing was like reading the psalmist, raw and honest, full of pathos and life. When Justin sang, there was so much honesty and hurt that I could not imagine Jesus being absent. He had to be there singing along, feeling every note of that prayerful plea. I went home wondering if I could ever write a sermon like Justin writes a song.  
 
JTE died last week. I heard the sad news on Sunday.  Reports are suggesting it was a drug overdose.  Whatever happened to the war on drugs? Thinking the enemy was the drug user, we’ve let drugs and their manufacturers peddle unspeakable pain and loss.  

I’m not a theological GPS- I can't tell God where to go; but I hope I can be a little bit of a barometer, sensing when the space is thin and the ground holy.  And like the Ryman that night long ago, I would like to think that in a lonely Nashville apartment last week, Jesus showed up again to claim one of his own.  
Justin Townes Earle - Someday I'll Be Forgiven For This …

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