Jesus Gonna Be Here*

Stephen J. Nichols, Getting the Blues (Brazos Press, 2008) “My daddy was a guitar pickin’ man.” This is the first line of a country song that my mom wrote about her father, my granddad. The stories that he’s told me about his childhood as a poor boy in the south, discovering music, particularly the guitar, playing with the guys, alcohol, discovering the Lord, and then becoming a preacher, have some similarities to the stories I read in Getting the Blues. I’m fascinated by the contribution that the blues have made to different genres of music. And in comparing stories, I think of the old country music as a sort of “white man’s blues.” Maybe I’m wrong. The white man’s story is certainly different, but the human condition is the same. In his book, Nichols demonstrates well how the blues are a raw and honest picture of us, that is, all people living east of Eden. I couldn’t help but make connections of how these blues artists wrestled with some of the same issues as my granddad. After his conversion he put his guitar down, sadly associating it with the sinful lifestyle that he was leaving behind. With that, he turned his back on a true gift from the Lord. My granddad was a very good guitar player, good enough to be able to have a jam session with the great Chet Atkins. Granddad followed the call to preach,  sans guitar. Many of the blues boys, as I will call them, in Nichols’s book also struggled between the life of playing the blues, and preaching, or just the Christian life in general. But Nichols wants the reader to be awakened to the gift that the blues keeps giving: Blues invites us to embrace the curse through its articulation of restlessness and despair, longing and disappointment, exile and estrangement---what theologians call alienation. But a theology in minor key also sounds a note of hope, as it leads us to the Man of Sorrows and the cross. The blues artists sang out of frustration, even vengeance. The blues artists, however, sang, giving voice to their hope for deliverance, their hope that Sunday’s coming. (34) Blues is theology. Nichols demonstrates this well as he takes the reader back in time to the stories behind the Delta Mississippi blues. Blues boys such as Robert Johnson were so desperate to play that many of their first guitars were made on the side of their house with nails and wire. They just had to play. And sing. I love this book. Along with learning about some of the artists that I spin on my blues playlist, Nichols takes us to the first man to experience the blues, Adam himself, as he had to accept the curse that he brought upon mankind. Adam experienced a loss that was very unique in that he really did have it all: righteousness, paradise, communion with God. Nichols also teaches us that “While it may be anachronistic to call David a bluesman, he could, by the credentials born of his suffering and by the repertoire he left behind, rival any of the Mississippi Delta’s finest” (63). David was a musician after all, and his Psalms give us his most despairing utterances to God, along with his sure hope in a Savior. There is also a whole chapter on “Women of Sorrows,” where I learned more about some blues gals that I have always loved, like Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, alongside of “Naomi’s blues.” While we are familiar with the kinsman redeemer motive with Boaz, as well as Obed and the whole promised seed, Nichols shows how the book of Ruth gives us the archetype of humanity in Naomi. “Her blues song is truly the song of humanity, replete with the rhythms of the curse, but thankfully also the rhythms of the cross” (108). This leads us, of course, to the true Man of Sorrows, Jesus Christ, “who hears the complaint and protest of both men and women of sorrow. He hears, he intervenes, and he gives them freedom” (108). Nichols helped me understand why I’m drawn to blues singers, as well as writers such as Flannery O’Conner. They make us look at humanity in all its darkness. They make us face the truth. And yet, they know how to cry for mercy. He explains how Christ’s name might not be mentioned specifically in the lines, but that “he haunts the music just the same” (15). We need the blues to remind us. The stillness of Good Friday scares us. The immobile Redeemer, pierced and scared and shut up in death, is too much for us. We prefer “Up from the grave He arose with a mighty triumph o’er his foes,” and rightly so. But failing to linger at Good Friday, failing to keep Good Friday as an essential piece of our senses diminishes and distorts the full weight of Christ’s work. If we don’t linger at Good Friday ,we have no hope to offer those who suffer from great floods, or from injustices, or from any of the litany of curses in the fallen world.” (108) In Getting the Blues, Nichols gives us history. He also gives us story and context. He gives the reader a deeper sense of appreciation for the people and the art of the blues. Nichols even offers us some of his own blues lyrics. More importantly, he shows us where our groaning is leading eschatologically. Thankfully, my granddad has picked that guitar back up in his retirement years. Even he can join in on Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday” as we all hold fast to our confession of hope for that great day. “The blues is a congregation that sings on Saturday night in expectation of Sunday” (171). And just to make my heritage even cooler, my other "Pap Pap" plays the blues harmonica, which is a whole other story...   *The title of this review is from a more recent blues release by Tom Waits (1992), but I just couldn't resist.