Anyway, I highly recommend you YouTube this. Great music.
I think "Piano Man" is a kind of parable about church, and God, and calling. My first thought, after "When exactly did I purchase this song?" was "Wouldn't it be great if church were like this bar?" I want to see a congregation with these bar patrons in it. John at the bar, a nice guy who gives Billy free drinks, who can't shake the feeling he'd rather be "a movie star." There's a crowd of businessmen, who "slowly get stoned." And Paul, "a real-estate novelist," walking the fine line between day job and daydream, Davy who will never get out of the navy, the "smiling" manager standing on the periphery, the waitresses who know how to flirt.
I want that congregation.
All of them ache profoundly. They are unhappy with the way life is turning out, and they don't know how to turn it back around. They are, Jesus says, "the poor in spirit." Do they know that Jesus loves them? Do they know that church is supposed to be the place where the questions that haunt them, the questions they try in vain each nine o'clock on a Saturday to drown out, are addressed to the God who cares?
If not, it's my damn fault. It's all our damn faults. "Damn" here being used in the religious sense-- God damns our failure to take to the streets and compel them to come in.
I pray that one day God will make me half the pastor Billy Joel is. (If, indeed, God is calling me to be a pastor-- that's a whole other story for a whole other time.) They talk to him, really talk to him, about the gashes on their souls. "Bill, I believe this is killing me," says John at the bar, and he knows Billy Joel won't laugh. Best of all, they ask him to sing them songs. Billy Joel takes their agony and turns it to song, so they can understand things about themselves they never knew before. And so they see God in the mess of their lives where they never knew God was, that God is redeeming them, and bartending and real estate and waitressing and the navy become high holy callings where the Lord is present!
I am not Catholic. But there's something sort of right about their understanding of priesthood: The pastor connects the people to God. The pastor stands between them, showing God all the ways his people suffer, showing the people all the ways God has been in their midst. The pastor must become the Piano Man. Or Piano Woman. And so must we all to each other-- this is not a distinctly pastoral calling, but for some reason tonight I can't help but see Billy Joel as an ordained elder.
It might seem like the Piano Man is the main event, but really the stars of the show are the ragtag parishoners/patrons, for whom every song is written. The Psalms are addressed to God and to Davy, who's still in the navy.
Liturgy is the work of the people. The pastor just gets to tag along.
"And the piano, it sounds like a carnival!" The kingdom of God is like a carnival, where we escape this dreary life of failed careers and negligent lovers, and find a new jubilant reality where, like children full of cotton candy, we smile at our Father who gave it all to us.
"And the microphone smells like a beer." Does it? Do the songs of the churches smell like beer-- familiar to Paul, the real-estate novelist, and comforting, yet full of grace he has never known? If not, it's my damn fault. It's all our damn faults.
Sing us a song! You're the Piano Man.
Here I am, Lord. Send me.
I think "Piano Man" is a kind of parable about church, and God, and calling. My first thought, after "When exactly did I purchase this song?" was "Wouldn't it be great if church were like this bar?" I want to see a congregation with these bar patrons in it. John at the bar, a nice guy who gives Billy free drinks, who can't shake the feeling he'd rather be "a movie star." There's a crowd of businessmen, who "slowly get stoned." And Paul, "a real-estate novelist," walking the fine line between day job and daydream, Davy who will never get out of the navy, the "smiling" manager standing on the periphery, the waitresses who know how to flirt.
I want that congregation.
All of them ache profoundly. They are unhappy with the way life is turning out, and they don't know how to turn it back around. They are, Jesus says, "the poor in spirit." Do they know that Jesus loves them? Do they know that church is supposed to be the place where the questions that haunt them, the questions they try in vain each nine o'clock on a Saturday to drown out, are addressed to the God who cares?
If not, it's my damn fault. It's all our damn faults. "Damn" here being used in the religious sense-- God damns our failure to take to the streets and compel them to come in.
I pray that one day God will make me half the pastor Billy Joel is. (If, indeed, God is calling me to be a pastor-- that's a whole other story for a whole other time.) They talk to him, really talk to him, about the gashes on their souls. "Bill, I believe this is killing me," says John at the bar, and he knows Billy Joel won't laugh. Best of all, they ask him to sing them songs. Billy Joel takes their agony and turns it to song, so they can understand things about themselves they never knew before. And so they see God in the mess of their lives where they never knew God was, that God is redeeming them, and bartending and real estate and waitressing and the navy become high holy callings where the Lord is present!
I am not Catholic. But there's something sort of right about their understanding of priesthood: The pastor connects the people to God. The pastor stands between them, showing God all the ways his people suffer, showing the people all the ways God has been in their midst. The pastor must become the Piano Man. Or Piano Woman. And so must we all to each other-- this is not a distinctly pastoral calling, but for some reason tonight I can't help but see Billy Joel as an ordained elder.
It might seem like the Piano Man is the main event, but really the stars of the show are the ragtag parishoners/patrons, for whom every song is written. The Psalms are addressed to God and to Davy, who's still in the navy.
Liturgy is the work of the people. The pastor just gets to tag along.
"And the piano, it sounds like a carnival!" The kingdom of God is like a carnival, where we escape this dreary life of failed careers and negligent lovers, and find a new jubilant reality where, like children full of cotton candy, we smile at our Father who gave it all to us.
"And the microphone smells like a beer." Does it? Do the songs of the churches smell like beer-- familiar to Paul, the real-estate novelist, and comforting, yet full of grace he has never known? If not, it's my damn fault. It's all our damn faults.
Sing us a song! You're the Piano Man.
Here I am, Lord. Send me.
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