Mockingbird

My friend Lane introduced me to the album Mockingbird by Derek Webb, former member of Caedmon's Call, on Lane's site The Fastlane. I just started listening to it, so I won't proclaim a bold support of the album yet. I like the lyrics to a few songs I've really heard so far, though. Check out Lane's site for a good review.

It seems that Mr. Webb is getting some backlash from his fans about this album. People are wondering why he's not preaching the Gospel in his album . . . why he's not boldly talking about salvation and passion of Christ, it seems. Interestingly, though, what I've heard addresses the passion of Jesus quite well. He talks about the passion of serving others, loving our neighbors, radically being people of Christ.

On his site, Webb has an interview with Infuzemag.com where he talks about the message of this album:

Because Jesus has kept the law on our behalf, because Jesus has loved the poor perfectly on our behalf, we are liberated. That was the message of the first record.

The message of this record is: it has liberated us unto what? Now that we are set free, now that we don’t have to do anything to earn God’s favor, how shall we live in light of that? And I think that looks very much like helping the poor. And maybe we need to look around us and see that an issue is that we are not around the poor. As Christians, we don’t live next to the poor, or those who are gay, or minorities or anyone who could be difficult for us to love. So now our neighbors are, of course, easy to love. They look like me, talk like me, make the same money and are interested in the same things. So this command has become way too easy.

In another section, he talks about the command to love our neighbor (Luke 10:27) is in the context of the good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:29-37). It's a radical call suggesting that our neighbor may be our enemy. What if we lived this way as followers of Christ, grasping to this great commandment in this radical way? What if we lived into the passion of our salvation that commands us to love our neighbors?