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Rickie Lee Jones: The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard (2007)
BY: Denis Haack |
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Back in the Eighties, film writer, director, and producer Robert Lee Cantalon decided to “write the words of Jesus in modern language, and publish them outside the New Testament.” So he launched a project that took him across Europe, to libraries and universities, until The Words of Jesus was published in 1997 (New Haven Press). He thought he’d like to produce a spoken-word recording from the book, and invited singer Rickie Lee Jones to participate. Jones read the lines Cantalon had chosen for her and after a pause, said she’d rather sing them. The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard is the result. “I have known for a long time that the only song is the song to God,” Jones says in the liner notes, “but never dreamed of hanging a sign on the door and saying, ‘This where he lives, what he does. These are his hours, from page to page, from church to church.’ I agreed to look at the pages, knowing they were alive. I held part of myself still so I would hear the tinniest drop from the page. I kept my beauty hidden from me so that only God would see it, and in it, stretched out to sweetly linger near. What we learn there, near the dreams of God, we bring back and find a hundred things that fit into places they did not fit before. We look up and remember that we came from a home we had forgotten we had built.” The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard is a musically poetic experiment in creative spirituality. Christians who love Jesus will find much to reflect on and discern as they listen.
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Denis Haack
Denis is the author of The Rest of Success: What the World Didn’t Tell You About Having It All and has written articles for such journals as Reformation & Revival Journal, Eternity, Covenant, and World. He holds a Master of Arts in Theological Studies degree from Covenant Seminary in St. Louis.
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There are tulips on my desk, and I saw my first robin yesterday, clear signals that winter is losing its grip on the landscape. The newspaper reported an ice jam on a nearby river that forced the closure of several roads. Chunks of ice the size of dinner tables slammed through a county park. Even something as glorious of the arrival of spring is never as perfectly smooth as we would hope in this broken world. We are, as my spiritual mentor used to say, glorious ruins.
Finding what it means to flourish as broken human being in an imperfect world is what Ransom is about. We believe in Jesus Christ, though often find ourselves dismayed at what passes for Christianity in our postmodern world. We hope what you find on this site will be helpful in your own pilgrimage, regardless of where you happen to find yourself at the moment.
Denis & Margie Haack
Anita Gorder
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