By Karl N. Jacobson I
n his song “Neon Cathedral,” hip- hop artist Macklemore, lamenting his struggles, his sin and suffering, and his need, sings: There’s a heavy current, got a long way to swim. Closed the Bible a while ago, I need some shots for this sin ….
I read the Bible, but I forgot the verses.
The liquor store is open later than the church is. Macklemore’s music is powerful in many ways. It’s heartfelt, timely and poetically deft. In “Neon Cathe- dral” he uses biblical imagery to characterize his personal situation quite beautifully (e.g., describing his “best thinking” as a “crown of thorns perched atop my spine”), but there is more to this song than adroit use of biblical imagery. He also offers a critique of the use (and perhaps use- fulness) of the Bible in answering his struggles. Macklemore has, it seems, turned to the Bible—and to those who are responsible for its use—for answers. But he found the book closed to him, the verses forgettable and the stew- ards of those verses wanting. It was at the crossroads of Macklemore and the prophet Isaiah that this article took its first steps toward shape, along with my own thinking about the state of the Bible in the church. These words and atti- tude, this critique, had me turning Isaiah’s words into a question: Is the word returning empty? First, a caveat. Of course the word
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Jacobson is a pastor of Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd and an adjunct professor of reli- gion at Augsburg College, both Minneapolis.
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