Jesus Don't Want Me for a Sunbeam
"Don't expect me to cry for all the reasons you had to die."
The Vaselines were a band much-loved by Kurt Cobain and known mostly for their 1992 album, Enter the Vaselines. They shot to fame after the aforementioned biggest superstar of the early ‘90s covered the songs “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” and “Molly’s Lips.” The former he covered live on Nirvana’s enduring MTV Unplugged performance in 1993, just a few months before Kurt Cobain killed himself. Truly an underrated band even without Cobain’s sphere of massive, short-lived influence, my favorite song by The Vaselines is the guitar-shredding, keyboard-bouncing, romantic song “Son of a Gun.” But the song I want to talk about today, on Good Friday, is “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam.”
You must understand right off the bat, lest a fellow Christian gets offended, that I don’t agree with the premise of the song on a fundamental level. I take the death of Christ quite seriously, and while I’m no follower of atonement theology, I do believe Jesus’ death meant something dramatic and initiated a movement that persists 2000 years later. I have formulated my entire being on the radical life of Jesus Christ. It isn’t something I take lightly, even if I enjoy the occasional joke or meme.
The Vaselines were formed by two Glasgow kids, Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee, who loved music and wanted to rebel against their parents. One of the ways they did this was by writing songs like “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam,” a clever play off of a popular Sunday School song called “I’ll Be a Sunbeam,” the lyrics of which are “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam/To shine for Him each day/In every way try to please Him/At home, at school, at play.” Whatever that means. In response to this demand, The Vaselines sing: “Don’t expect me to cry for all the reasons you had to die. Don’t ever ask your love of me. Don’t expect me to lie, don’t expect me to cry, don’t expect me to die for thee.” These lyrics are powerful, even though theologically, I disagree entirely. (You have to imagine what these two experienced at the hands of the church to feel that way.)
But the line that really gets me, today on Good Friday, is this one: “Jesus don’t want me for a sunbeam/because sunbeams are not made like me.” What a devastating and true lyric that is; a direct callout to the original children’s song they’re riffing off of. As a polyamorous, bisexual, leftist, mentally ill Christian, I can only feel that line stab me right in the heart. Does Jesus want someone like me for a sunbeam? The majority of Christians think not. They do not see me as a real Christian, and I’m so unlike them.
Eugene sings again in his Glaswegian accent, “Don’t ask your love of me.” There aren’t many other lyrics. Frances joins in. This song was felt strongly by Kurt Cobain, and feels strong to me now. Does Christ demand all this love and devotion of us? How could he ask us to do so much, to love this much, to fight this hard when it seems like we’re forever losing? They’re right — we didn’t ask him to die for us.
Is it ironic, for all my maximum rational, progressive theology bordering on deism, the modernist “cherry-picking” as many would call reading historical documents as they were actually written and contextualized against that ancient culture — I do believe in a literal Resurrection. I am accused by my family of being so “unChristian” but I really don’t intend to be. I find relation to the irreverence of the lyrics here, though. I reject the theology behind the song, but I find such incredible meaning in them at the same time.
I think the same message is felt by Christ on the cross as he shouts, “Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani?” Even Jesus is abandoned. And yet this… this God still asks our devotion? And then devotion to the same Christ that he would see crucified by corrupt government for a radical message? That’s a big ask, isn’t it?
The world seems hopeless. The pandemic may be lifting, but climate disaster is around the corner. Trump may be gone, but the ICE concentration camps for children remain open and full under Biden. Trans people are being exposed to cruel bigotry from all sides of politics, corrupt laws against them for merely existing and wanting to have a normal life, and churches remain more concerned over a music video than the oppression of the people fleeing its pews. Yet God continues to demand so much! From me, in particular! For others, for our planet! Why should I be asked to provide it when he does not?
The answer, I hope, is in Easter. It’s in the message of Christ. My personal suffering remains minute and I -still- feel overwhelmed. I often believe God has abandoned the world, and while I am the furthest thing from a Calvinist, I would beg Him to come help, to intervene as it seems things get worse and worse every single day. But if Christ can push forward, maybe so can I.