What I Learned About Church from Bono – Transcendence
U2 is the biggest band in the world, and their latest 360 degree Tour makes you aware of that.
Constructing what many believe to be the biggest stage set in concert history, their stage is gigantic. Check out this video for a tour of the set. I’m pretty sure that at the Rogers Center, they needed to open the roof because the set didn’t fit in the stadium.
There’s a theological word for something that big: transcendence – something that is magnificent, huge, incomparable.
And that is in the nature of God. God is transcendent. He’s bigger than we can comprehend.
Most of us want to be part of something bigger than we are. We want to worship. If we don’t worship God, we’ll worship money, or work, or family, or a rock band. We’ll find something that is bigger than us to bow down to.
And while U2 isn’t worthy of anyone’s worship, their concert was transcendent. You knew you were dealing with the biggest band in the world.
Now wait for the final post Monday…because the temptation would be to think that proving you’re the biggest band in the world was their goal – it wasn’t.
But it leads me to a question: in what ways are we doing church that points to a God who is transcendent? Sometimes church can be so banal, so mundane, that you would have a hard time believeing anything supernatural or bigger than us is involved.
In the music we use, the way the band plays, the way the preacher points to God, in the things that are happening in church, in what ways does that show the insider and the outsider that we are part of something far bigger than ourselves?
That’s transcendence. And people are drawn to transcendence.
