Jesus: The Mechanic
The Mountain Goats and the Messiah
I love to include pop culture references in my writing, my sermons, and often quote song lyrics in my every day life — much to my wife’s disappointment. Here’s one I hadn’t heard in awhile that I think is deep and meaningful to the Christian life, and oddly enough, it’s from a group called The Mountain Goats.
There’s a line in one of their songs, Psalms 40:2, (yes, that’s the actual name of the song) that stills me:
“Lord, send me a mechanic if I’m not beyond repair.”
Is this not the heart of the gospel? Begging and pleading with all that we have left, with what little hope we can muster up, that if we’re worth saving, then someone come and save us! If we haven’t been sold for parts, if our lives can manage to be salvaged (and we’re always salvageable), then we need a Master Mechanic to put us back to rights, to restore to mint condition, to make these rusty ol’ bodies beautiful again.
I imagine that we need more guttural prayers for those just sputtering along, spewing oil, coming into the final stretch on fumes… I think scriptures like Psalm 40:2 can give us just that:
“He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.”
The Psalmist adds language to our vocabulary for what some scholars have called “the pit of ruin,” though that can give the wrong connotation, like it were a pit, that with enough effort, enough ingenuity, we might be able to dig out or crawl out. In Hebrew, “the idea of mud and mire” is more like the idea of a lengthy season, or a state of difficulty. This is something that feels impossible, like it were never going to end. That’s why we need Him to lift us out.
The good news of the gospel, a theme many times repeated, is that the mire does end. Dysfunction will get repaired. What is hopeless is now hopeful. It is the Gloria Patri (per NT Wright), “as it was in the beginning, is not now, but once again shall be.”
Every prayer that ends in pleading, “if I am not beyond repair,” can be answered by the one who will repair all things. In fact, He is able to not only repair, but “make all things new.” (Rev 21.5)
Keep calling on the Master Mechanic who can put us back to rights.
You can take a listen to the song here: