sustain:if:able kiwi

being human in U2’s no line on the horizon part 2

So the new U2 video for their single Magnificent is out. It’s all North African and white sheets. Ho hum. And the lyrics seemed to make no sense. “Only love, only love can leave such a mark” as the white sheets are pulled off buildings. They are all drifting and the bird is flying overhead unnoticed.

Which makes no sense. How can sheets leave a mark? They billow and drift. What a dumb graphic for a visual, I think.

Or is it ironically subtle?

You see, I have already suggested that the song Moment of Surrender includes a wonderful theology of being human. Take those lines:
I was punching in the numbers at the ATM machine
I could see in the reflection, A face staring back at me
At the moment of surrender, A vision of a visibility
– and consider that the face looking back at the ATM is ours, transformed by the moment of surrender. Only then does the human person become fully human, fully visible. This is God en-fleshed, for the silence of the incarnate sound finds voice, and thus visibility in us. In so doing, the two lines of the horizon are integrated, for vision has become visibility. (for more go here).

So is this theology of being human at work again in Magnificent. As the sheets are pulled away, do they not actually reveal the real thing, the real Africa, the real shape of buildings and people. Is this the mark left by love? Layers that once obscured and masked are in fact removed. Such is the mark of love.

Theologically, this would have echoes with Genesis 1, in which humans are made in the image of God. Then in Genesis 3, sin enters and so clothes are worn, obscuring and masking that which God has made good and whole. Then in the Incarnation, Christianity affirms Christ as fully human and fully divine. Thus the invitation to be in Christ must be understood as the invitation for us to enter fully into our humanity, to refind ourselves as the image of God. Such is love, the return to full humanity.

If this is so, it’s no wonder Bono also sings in Magnificent: And sing whatever song you wanted me to, I give you back my voice, From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise

Is this what it means to get “in the sound”, as each human, in response, finds their own unique voice, that which was a gift in the womb? This is love, and this love is twofold; for not only is the original voice re-found, but is found, for “Justified till we die, you and I will magnify, The Magnificent” Is this justification theological, the invitation to be fully human, revealed in all our honesty by love.

Or perhaps it’s simpler to accept, dumbly, that the visuals of the video really do have nothing to do with the lyrics. And that the lyrics of one song really do have nothing to do with the other songs in the album.