They Baptized Jesse Taylor

It was early on Sunday morning when I woke up with the Johnnie Russell song in my mind The Baptism of Jesse Taylor. Talk about a blast from the past. There it was flowing like a rippling stream across my barely conscious brain. Good grief. I hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet. My eyes weren’t even open. Why that song popped into my head almost before I was conscious is still a mystery. I have no idea when I might have heard it last. And I didn’t even know who wrote or sang it until I washed the cobwebs out of my brain and with a strong cup of coffee and did a Google search.

(Parenthetically, the true effects of coffee are an illusion for me since I drink decaf due to a genetic heart disease. But it makes for a better story to say “I washed the cobwebs out of my brain with a strong cup of coffee.”)

In any case I found the words of the chorus running through my mind. “They baptized Jesse Taylor in Cedar Creek last Sunday. Jesus gained a soul the devil lost a good right arm.” Then I stopped. And a question began to form in my mind. Why did Jesus get a nebulous, non-corporal soul out of the deal when the devil lost a hard-living, cheating, drinking, fighting, complete with a body human being?

Maybe in my half-awake state I saw something not at all intended in the song, but why did Jesus not also gain a body? If the devil lost a good workman, did Jesus not potentially gain a good workman? Perhaps it is the unconscious view that permeates our religious thinking (even our civil religion) that God is primarily interested in saving souls. Why do we, too often, fail to think of God’s grace as transformation in action. God is not about saving souls. God is about bringing humans into communion with Godness!

I thought back to when I was a kid hearing people who said, “Given the choice between offering a starving man a piece of bread or the bread of life, we should offer them the eternal bread of life so when they die their souls will be saved.” I think that is a false set up and displays a lack of understanding of how our creator cares for the whole person. I remember watching someone pull a 12-14 year old kid out of a line in McDonalds, asking him if he was saved, forcing him to repeat a sinner’s prayer and then asking him where he would go if he died right now. The poor kid evidently get the right answer (to heaven) probably because he was no more saved after the prayer than the cars in the parking lot. But the “evangelist” continued to pressure him until he gave the right answer. Off to the side a group of people were chomping down on their burgers and fries, watching in admiration as their friend led this boy’s soul to Jesus. As soon as the kid said every thing he was supposed to say, the magic formula worked and his soul was saved.

This kind of thinking nuances our words and the way we think about salvation. It moves us to enter a dualistic world where physicality is not considered good, but our souls are that part of us which are really important. It is a denial of the importance of matter But along with Saint Athanasius let me say that I too have been saved by matter. God so loved the created (physical) order that he entered it, and provided a way for us to have even our very bodies be part of the salvation experience; hence the resurrection. Furthermore a human body, albeit a glorified one, sits at the right hand of the Father. Sounds like whole persons are pretty important to God!

I am glad I have not been charged with re-writing the afore-mentioned song. I just can’t get the thing to both rhyme and have sound theological content. Well Johnny Russell was song writer, not a theologian. And now you know why I am not a member of the Grand Old Opry.

Peace,

Leon