Bad Ambassador
James Cathcart
November 09, 2016
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Exodus 3: 10-11
10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.’
11 But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?
The mercurial Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy probably wrote one of the most, if not the most, ironic pop songs ever written (sorry Alanis Morissette). Bad Ambassador is a soaring, bombastic ode… to struggling to express yourself. It is a suave croon… about feeling completely inadequate. Hannon fluidly and gracefully captures (with the aid of rich strings and a sumptuous production) the mismatch between the person we want to be and the person we find ourselves to be. This strikes me as an immensely biblical theme. So many of the people we meet in the Old and New Testaments are seriously flawed individuals trying to live up to a compelling version of themselves that God believes in, but that they often struggle to see themselves.
The final chorus goes, ‘I'm a bad ambassador for that elusive place you're searching for/I want to show you so much more/Yeah I could show you so much more/But I'm a bad ambassador.’ The song captures the irony and agony of only being able to express… that you can’t express yourself. This kind of disconnect between expectation and reality occurs throughout the Bible. The fact that uneasy soul searching keeps reoccurring reminds us that God cares about, and is deeply invested in, our emotional struggles. Your anxieties and hangups are not things you have to overcome to get to God. God is already with you in the midst of it all, helping you get from the bridge to the gutsy chorus.
www.sanctuaryfirst.org.uk/audio
Dear God,
We pray that we discover you in our midst
that we bring you all the insecurities and stress weighing us down
and that we might rest in your presence.
Amen.
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