by Sebastian Faust
The song "Fly From Heaven" from
Toad the Wet Sprocket’s album Dulcinea is 20 years old now, which
means, here at On Pop Theology, it’s just about ripe for us to
discuss it as though it’s a contemporary piece, trending even now
through the charts. Because that’s just the sort of thing we do.
After all, we maintain only that we talk about pop culture; we make
no claims as to which era’s pop culture.
It’s really quite a beautiful song
with its warm, ringing guitars and soft, shimmering drums, all in
that catchy, jangly, mid-90’s sort of way. But the soul of the
song is its lyrics – well crafted, beautiful, pained, and haunting.
And the bridge will unnerve you every time: “They took my brother;
they ripped him from me to twist his words as they did his body.”
There is anger there, like a hard, black stone, but it is utterly
drowned and submerged in the heavy abyss of sadness and of loss.
When I first heard the song, those
words hit me like a fist. I hadn’t worked out the meaning that
first time through, but the plaintive cry and absolute heartbreak of
the bridge had embedded itself within me. As I listened again, and
put the pieces in place, it became all the more meaningful – a
fictionalized account of someone watching the shifts in theology that
turned a man into a god, a prophet into a messiah… for though it
never speaks his name, this is a song about Jesus.
Scholars have long commented on the
difference between Jesus as he was (the Historical Jesus) and Jesus
as he is later depicted (the Christ of Faith). Since the portraits
of Jesus in the gospels differ from one another, it becomes clear
that each of the evangelists portrayed their subject in a way most
useful for their individual messages. (This is not to say that the
gospels are fabrications from whole cloth; the authors were
constrained by the traditions about Jesus which already existed in
the communities from which they wrote. Second, the entire “Quest
for the Historical Jesus” would run right down a blind alley if its
adherents believed there was nothing of Jesus’ historical words and
actions to be found within the gospels.) The synoptic tradition
shows the evidence that such changes were made in order to emphasize
the evangelists’ individual takes on his import and significance;
John and Paul do the same thing, in even more sweeping ways than do
Matthew and Luke – theologizing writ large.
And it’s all very interesting for the
sort of people who wear thick glasses and smoke pipes and speak of
Levi-Strauss and yet aren’t talking about jeans. But Fly From
Heaven isn’t a song that sits with those sorts of folk in their
big leather chairs... it’s a song that takes such a premise and
then asks, “What if?”
“What must it have been like,” goes
the logic of the song, “to have been one of Jesus’ brothers (or
sisters), to have grown up beside him, to have seen the life he led,
heard the message he proclaimed, and witnessed the death that he
died? What must it have been like, after all that, to hear people
talking about your brother with terms he never applied to himself?
“What must it have been like to hear
that a man named Paul was travelling about, claiming that your
brother appeared to him in a vision, and tasked Paul with proclaiming
a message among whose chief tenets was that your brother was actually
the pre-existing agent of Creation and Son of God?"
Well, it would have been something like
this:
Paul is making me nervous;
Paul is making me scared.
Into this room he swaggers,
Like he’s God’s own messenger.
One of Jesus’ siblings, let’s call
her Rachel, begins with her feeling of unease regarding Paul of
Tarsus. Before she even comes to Paul’s message, there is his
self-presentation that raises our narrator’s hackles. Paul bursts
onto the scene with bluster and with preening self-importance.
When the apostles had come together to
replace Judas, they chose only from among those who had travelled
long with Jesus, who had been privy to his teaching. And though
there were two men they considered well qualified, they chose only
one in order that they might continue as The Twelve. But now,
Paul saunters in and claims that he is the Thirteenth Apostle,
summoned by a Jesus whom he’d never known in life, but who appeared
to him in the sky. He brags about a special mission outside the
purview of the Twelve – Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles.
Oh, he wraps his arrogance in a cloak
of humility. “I am the least of the apostles, unfit even to be
called such,” he says (1 Cor. 15:9). But when he speaks of them,
you can hear his derision, referring to them as “the so-called
pillars [of the church]” (Galatians 2:9).
Rachel sees Paul as he visits
Jerusalem, and the first thing she can think is how arrogant this man
seems, and therefore, how dangerous.
Changed the name of my brother;
Changed the things that he said.
Says that he speaks to him,
But he never even knew the man.
(I’d give my life for him.)
There is a sense of deep sorrow and
loss as the memory of Rachel’s brother has become public currency,
appropriated by a man who never knew Jesus in the flesh. Her
brother’s name has been altered, the Greek word Christ now
added on almost like a surname. Her brother’s message has been
changed – no longer a renewal of the Kingdom of Israel, it has
taken on cosmic proportions and become a message for Gentiles, a
message about powers and preexistence and a proclamation built around
the brutal crucifixion that killed him.
And if Paul boasts about his loyalty to
Jesus, Rachel asks how much deeper her own loyalty goes. She grew up
with him; she loved him deeply; she would give her own life if it
could only bring him back.
Like water through my hands
You’d give him any ending
But if he’s all you say
Would he fly from heaven
Into this world again?
Rachel finds that it is impossible
to keep the memory and the message of her brother from being taken
over by his disciples, and used to further their own ends. It is as
impossible as reaching into the stream and taking hold of water; it’s
slippery stuff that eludes the grasp.
Instead, Paul and the others have given
a different ending to the story. There is talk of resurrection, talk
of appearance, talk of ascension. But Rachel was witness to none of
it, and she is skeptical – in appearing to those who loved him,
would not Jesus have come also to her? Would he not have made
himself known? Yet she has had no such vision, no such experience,
and can only watch on incredulously as his disciples make the claim
that Jesus rose from death, and later, up into the skies, exalted to
the right hand of God.
Take whatever you’re needing;
Take whatever you can.
We are broken from within.
Run to another land.
Rachel has heard in the words of Paul
echoes of the message her brother had spoken. Paul has mined the
words of Jesus for anything he can use to craft his unique gospel -
taken up anything he can make fit into his message that all humanity
is broken inside and stands guilty before the judge. And she taunts
Paul here – saying that he has run away to distant countries.
Rachel thinks to herself, “Had he stayed nearer to Jerusalem, where
people like me had known Jesus far more intimately than Paul ever
did, his message would fall to pieces, crashing against our
collective memory.”
Like water through my hands,
Or is it just beginning?
But if he’s all you say,
Would he fly from heaven
To this world again?
The chorus here is much the same as
before, and yet, the second line has changed. Rather than, “You’d
give him any ending,” Rachel asks, “Or, is it just beginning?”
There’s a note here of something else, something more than the
inability to believe Paul and the Apostles’ message of
resurrection. In this recurrence of the chorus, I dare say there is
a true questioning, a longing to believe. Rachel aches for her
brother, and would welcome proof that his death was not the end of
things. And the final clause takes on almost an English Renaissance
meaning, something you’d find in Shakespeare: “O Petrarchus,
would that he would fly from heaven, again into this earthly world!”
They took my brother;
They ripped him from me,
To twist his words
As they did his body.
But her longing will not be given
consummation. Instead, the sorrow comes crashing in, hollowing out
her heart. Rachel grieves over the double handing-over of her
brother, first to the Romans to be mocked and crucified. And then
again, into the hands of his followers, to have his words twisted
until they fit the Apostles’ message.
Deny his beauty,
To lay him down at
The feet of those he couldn’t save.
With the first line, perhaps Rachel has
in mind the doctrine that Jesus had no siblings, when there she
stands. Or perhaps she is referring to the very difference between
her own experience of Jesus and that of Paul, who comes and denies
her reality, replacing it with his own vision of the risen man. In
the very same way, she laments that Jesus’ beauty has been denied,
for Jesus “the man” wasn’t good enough or beautiful enough for
the Apostles’ message; to make him worthy, he must now be Jesus
“the god.”
And as Paul carries the message of the
crucified Christ deep into the Empire of Gentiles, as he gives Jesus
over to them, Rachel feels that the apostle is proclaiming to them a
gospel that cannot save them. Her brother, who preached God’s
renewal of Israel, is instead being propped up as the salvation for
outsiders.
Will it be the end?
Or is he still ascending?
But if he’s all you say
Would he fly from heaven
Into this world again?
In the end, the disconnect is too great
for our Rachel. Her final iteration of the chorus finds her mocking
the message of upstart Paul. “Is he still ascending?” she asks,
as though imagining this risen Lord rising up through the clouds and
out, out, forever and ever, as he traverses the great chasm between
earth and heaven. She wanted to believe, but she has seen how the
Jesus she knew has been transformed into a Jesus she cannot
recognize. And in the face of that, how can she believe any part of
the message of Paul? How can she trust the ones who would twist her
brother’s words as the Romans did his flesh?
But if he’s all you say, would he fly
from heaven into this world again?
Sebastian
Faust is an ante-orthodox thinker and writer, self-styled canary in the
coal mine of pop culture. He paints with light, builds castles in the
air, and lives a life rather ordinary in Nashville, Tennessee. He holds
the position of Dauphin at On Pop Theology. You can’t follow Sebastian
on Twitter because he doesn’t understand technology, but he appreciates
hand-written notes sent by post or well-mannered carrier pigeon.
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