If you haven't done so already, you can read Part One of this post here.

 Jesus on the main line

Tell Him what you want

Call Him up and tell Him what you want

Any analogy is only useful up to a certain point. It's hard to know, for example, whether the only thing the songwriter wanted to get across in the song “Jesus on the Main Line” is that God is available. It's possible that there was a more complex analogy in mind in which, as with a telephone, the person on the other end is both right there inside your ear but also very far away through a compressed and scratchy connection. So, God may be available to listen to us but in the same way that you might call your mom when you don't know what to make for supper, to which she suggests that you make soup, you will still need to get busy and make that soup yourself. It's also possible that there was no more complexity implied and we would be best off leaving the song as it is and not exploring the question any further.

The song is open-ended about what exactly God can be expected to do after you call Him up and tell Him what you want. Maybe, as in talking things through with someone listening, God neither says nor does anything but the process of laying the situation out in detail through prayer and discernment helps clarify what you should do next. It's possible that, as with calling your mom about soup, the communication goes both ways between you and God but the action remains for you to do. It's also possible, as when you might call a 9-1-1 dispatcher when your house is on fire, your communication with God results in God getting up and doing something that would not have taken place if you hadn't called Him on the main line. It's hard to know the answer to that question and there are scriptural examples that seem to lead all three ways and all the combinations between. It's also possible, following the example in the book of Job, that if we push God on why one thing happened rather than another, God might respond by asking who we think we are to even ask. I think it's fair to say that within our congregation there are those who believe that God works in any of these directions.

That is to say, we don't know what God will do when we call Him up and tell Him what we want. That's the wonderful and terrible part. We can explain that lack of knowing through all sorts of interesting theories but we don't know. The beautiful thing about a song is that it strips away the tendency to explain in too much detail because the musical form puts constraints around how much you can say and forces a song to get down to basics.

In the first part, I referred to the important process in the church of teaching, preaching, singing, and praying with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. As I sit here past the deadline thinking about how to resolve this topic with half a dozen discarded ideas open all over my computer screen, I am also looking at the fancy new tech equivalent of the newspaper. I see that while I type and delete, Canadian police are busy breaking up a demonstration in our nation's capital that has filled downtown streets with protesters for several weeks, many of whom are there based on sincere convictions of Christian faith. I see and hear at the same time many people speaking based on sincere conviction of Christian faith that this protest is wildly misguided and it's high time to bring it to an end and send everybody home. I can picture Jesus on the main line with a phone in each hand buzzing with Christian people telling Him what they want. Call Him up and tell Him what you want, knowing that somebody else is on the other line asking for exactly the opposite thing.

Where does that leave us? If we are on the main line with Jesus telling Him what we want and it all contradicts each other I can picture Jesus banging His head on the desk and wishing for something else to do. That leads me to look for recommendations from Jesus on how we should interact with each other to prevent the divine headache-inducing frustration of competing for opposite voices on the main line.

I find myself looking at Jesus' prayer for future followers that we read at the end of John 17. Does Jesus pray for our bravery? No. Does Jesus pray that we will have the correct answer? No. Does he pray that we will be influential? No. Maybe that we would be subversive? No. What about free? No. Maybe for us to be well-governed? No.

Jesus prays only one thing for future believers which is that we would be united in love.

So, we get on the main line and tell Jesus what we want in line with His own stated intentions for us and we will together pray for unity in love and then see what happens next.

Here's a final song to wrap it up.

Jesus, help us live in peace

From our blindness set us free

Fill us with your healing love

Help us live in unity