Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 549

The rock band “Rage Against the Machine” has recently released and got air play (at least on Triple-J) for a song called “The Ghost of Tom Joad”. This song was originally written and put out by Bruce Springsteen in 1995. Though I doubt the programmers at Triple-J have given this much thought. As a Christian, “The Ghost of Tom Joad” strikes me as being very appropriate for this Christmas season.

As you may remember from your English classes, Tom Joad was the leader of the poor Oakie family that fled the dust bowl and abject poverty of the depression in Oklahoma and went searching for a better life in California. They were not welcomed by the locals with open arms. It was a battle for Tom to keep his family together and provide for them in even the most basic of ways — in the end he paid for this battle with his life. Bruce Springsteen writes of the ways in which he sees the ghost of Tom Joad still roaming the California of today in the struggle of the Mexican laborers, the gang members, the marginal with “no home, no job, no peace, no rest”

In the Ghost of Tom Joad I see a cry for Jesus. “How Long!?”. We might sanitize His coming with sweet smiles, cute nativity scenes, “merry Christmas”, and millions spent on gifts, but at heart there was in the Incarnation a clear statement that God was coming to stand with the poor, the prisoner, the widow, the blind (Luke 4:18ff). He had had enough of the way in which man disregarded the rights or even the life of others. In His coming we see God do something radical about the way in which sin had corrupted every part of human endeavor. God chose to do this by His truly becoming One of us. The Ghost of Tom Joad quotes the words Tom spoke to his mother:

In the life of Jesus we see the soldiers mocking and spitting; His desire to see the children and the meek become the role models and first in the Kingdom; Jesus showed Grace to the outcast woman from an outcast race getting her water in the midday sun; spoke of being His disciple following Him even if it meant giving up wealth and position; put the first last quoted the words of Isaiah 60.

Bruce Springsteen’s version of the song is done in a simple way a la Dylan with guitar and harmonica. Bruce sings the words quietly, with sadness he sees the injustice and is weighed down by it, like Jesus watching the rich ruler walk away and grieving over his inability to open his clenched heart. Rage Against the Machine’s version is very different it involves screaming guitars, the words are spat out by the lead singer they also see injustice but their response is anger and a passionate desire to be involved in the change that is needed.

My heart is touched by both versions but with the second I see the darkness and cry of anguish from the cross. The baby born at Christmas is not passive, does not just watch and report home. His involvement in human history, has turned, uprooted that history. And I see the challenge to not just passively swallow the materialistic sleep-inducing pill of this “Happy Holiday” season, but rather to speak out, to be seen, to carry the cross and make it’s impact clear.

“The highway is alive tonight. But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody about where it goes. I’m sitting down here in the campfire light searching for the ghost of Tom Joad”. The search is on, the hunger is clear what are we doing to help provide the only true answer? Bruce and Jesus both make it clear that preaching from afar is not what our call is about … there is a need to sit at the campfires of the dispossed, in the stables of the poor … to speak little and listen much.

The hope we bring is not just of a kingdom “ever after” or some nice feelings on a Sunday but to bring that Hope in a REAL way, like Jesus did, to the people about to be stoned, the tax agent in the tree, the hungry by the lake. How do we do that? What is the “formula” to be effective in this calling? I have no one answer to that … it will be different for each of us, and in each situation. But the call IS about attitude, priorities, direction, the heart.

This Christmas the ghost of Tom Joad calls us – so do the ghosts of aids victims, the massacered in Rwanda, the aborted babies, the hungry of PNG – the list goes on. The baby in the manger does not just smile sweetly and then live happily after on Christmas cards – He grows: He weeps over Jerusalem, He turns tables, He is nailed to a Tree, He rises again and is King. May His Kingship be clearly proclaimed this Christmas.

- Jude and Martin (JaM) de Graaf <>< E-mail:

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