Downwardly Mobile

nobody else here baby no one else here to blame

no one to point the finger… it’s just you and me in the rain

nobody made you do it, no one put words in your mouth

nobody here taking orders when love took a train heading south

it’s the blind leading the blond

it’s the stuff the stuff of country songs

HEy IF GOD WILL SEND HIS ANGELS

AND IF GOD WILL SEND A SIGN

AND IF GOD WILL SEND HIS ANGELS

Would everything be alright?

God has got his phone off the hook babe would he even pick up if he could?

it’s been a while since we saw that child hangin’ ’round this neighbourhood

see His mother dealing in a doorway see Father Christmas with a begging bowl

Jesus sister’s eyes are a blister… THE HIGH STREET never looked so low

it’s the blind leading the blond…

it’s the cops collecting for the cons

so where is the hope and where is the faith… and the love?

what’s that you say to me

does love… light up your Christmas tree?

the next minute you’re blowing a fuse

and the cartoon network turns into the news

HEy IF GOD WILL SEND HIS ANGELS

AND IF GOD WILL SEND A SIGN

AND IF GOD WILL SEND HIS ANGELS

WHERE DO WE GO

Jesus never let me down you know Jesus used to show me the score

then they put Jesus in show business now it’s hard to get in the door

it’s the stuff the stuff of country songs

but I guess it was something to go on

HEy IF GOD WILL SEND HIS ANGELS

I SURE COULD USE THEM HERE RIGHT NOW

WELL IF GOD WILL SEND HIS ANGELS

WHERE DO WE GO…

(scat singing)

[if god will send his angels] U2

If Jesus, at the outset of his ministry, identifies himself with Jacob at the outset of his epic journey away from home and back again…what is Jesus doing?

In the course of his epic journey, Jacob will become the father of Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, (a daughter, Dinah,) Joseph (whose sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, would be counted as Jacob’s), and, much later, Benjamin. The birth of the ‘twelve tribes’ (or, technically, eleven tribes and two half-tribes). The transition from a family towards a people.

Jesus will call a symbolic twelve disciples: a renewing of the people of God. John’s Gospel doesn’t make that explicit, doesn’t duplicate information already well-known; but it is implicit in Jesus’ statement concerning Jacob, spoken in the context of calling his first disciples.

So there is similarity in the comparison. But there is also dissimilarity.

Jacob is self-serving; Jesus, other-serving.

Jacob is elusive, leaving behind a trail of angry men…oh, wait – we’re back on the similarities again.

God’s commitment to both is the same; but while Jacob remains to be convinced, Jesus is already convinced.

Jacob is upwardly mobile, by any means. Jesus is downwardly mobile, culminating in crucifixion.

When Jacob died, he was gathered to his people. When Jesus died, he gathered a people to him, beginning with his mother and the disciple whom he loved.

A people to be characterised by his example.

So if God will send his angels, where do we go?

If his track record is anything to go by –

sending his angels to a refugee running for his life

sending his angels to a people living in exile

sending his angels to a girl on the cusp of womanhood

to a young man questioning his teenage partner’s fidelity

and to marginalised nightshift workers

to a man more than half-starved in the desert

or facing torture and public execution

to one man in prison awaiting death

and another exiled in a prison camp –

if his track record is anything to go by, if we sure could use his angels now then we must find ourselves at the bottom rung of the ladder…