[CHAPTER 8] — KEEP YOUR LAMP TRIMMED AND BURNING

The music of Willie Johnson

Keep your lamp trimmed and a-burning

Oh See what the Lord has done

From just a musical perspective, Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning may be my favourite song by Blind Willie Johnson. This, like many of Johnson’s songs, is a traditional gospel song originating from the African American community over a hundred years ago. As far as I can tell, Johnson was the first to record the song, but it has been subsequently recorded by a long list of artists, each with their own particular take on the song. Inspired by this song and Johnson’s playing more broadly, I have tried to learn the bottle-neck slide-style guitar technique. If you have ever thought about learning slide, this is a really fun song to play, but also an easy enough song to start out learning; just remember to tune your guitar to an open D tuning and make sure you know your blues scale.

The song references the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, told by Jesus and found in Matthew 25:1-13. In the story, all the virgins trim their lamp, but only half of them bring oil with them to keep them burning. It may be that the lyrics in the song are more consistent with another similar parable told by Jesus in the twelfth chapter of Luke. In the Lukan parable, the story is not about ten virgins who go out to meet a bridegroom; rather, it is about workers who must be dressed and ready as they await their master's return from a wedding banquet. Whilst it seems that the parable in Luke is more relevant to what is happening in the song, when I hear the song, my heart is drawn to the parable of the ten virgins.

Of these two similar parables, I think it is fair to say the parable of the ten virgins is much more well-known. This may be a matter of where it appears, towards the end of Matthew’s Gospel, in the twenty-fifth chapter, which is devoted to three parables: the ten virgins, the talents, and the sheep and the goats. These three parables come off the back of Jesus talking about how he will return at a time when people are not expecting it, and for that reason, his followers need to be prepared. The three parables are presented in a sequence with the first said to be indicative of what the Kingdom of Heaven will be like, and by the time we are at the third parable, we are clearly in a scene of the judgement at the end of the age. From my earliest encounters with these stories, I have found them somewhat terrifying.

Brother don't get worried

For the work is almost done

Whilst the song encourages the listener not to get worried, worry is what I have typically experienced whenever I have heard any of these stories. Although I wish that this were not the case, I do think it is important to acknowledge this experience. I worry that I will somehow be like those who were out buying oil when the bridegroom came and on whom the door was shut and not reopened. I worry that I will not use what I have been given wisely, and as a result, whatever I have is taken from me, and I am considered worthless and therefore cast out. It scares me to think that I may not have helped someone who was in need, whether they be hungry, thirsty, naked, sick or in prison. To put it bluntly, these stories, as I have often read them, are terrifying.

I am tremendously grateful for my exposure to the Christian faith from a young age, to my parents for enfolding our family in their journey of spiritual discovery and to the pastors, leaders and Christian community that were involved in my life during my formative years. Like any family of origin, it is possible to look back at some of the things you were raised with, accept that people were acting in good faith and at the same time question whether ideas or practices really are true, good or beautiful. I am not sure that I am in a place where I can remember, let alone discern, all of the aspects that led me to be a young boy who was not so much afraid of death but absolutely terrified of what might come after death. Even so, I will share one brief anecdote related to the parables of Matthew 25.

I was a young child in the 1980s, and at this time, there was a popular Christian recording artist named Keith Green who would get plenty of airtime in my home. Unless you were inside the Christian sub-culture, you probably have not heard of Keith Green. He was an immensely talented pianist and songwriter who died in a tragic accident at a young age, just before I was born. In certain circles, he remains a distinctly unique artist whose life was sadly cut short, like people would speak about Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Cobain. For me, Green was someone like Johnson, a generational musical talent whose biggest desire was to use their music to serve a spiritual calling.

Many of Green’s songs are memorable for me, but one in particular haunts me, unsurprisingly, because it is a haunting song that elicits fear and dread. “The Sheep and the Goats” is a song that Green performed solo on the piano; essentially, the song is a spoken word piece that recounts the parable from Matthew 25 put to intense emotive music: happy music when talking to sheep but the goats get different music, something more akin to the Darth Vader or Emperor Palpatine themes. Green also adds descriptive embellishments to what it was the goats did not do, and these attempt to bring the story into the present day. For example, rather than visiting the Lord in prison, they make radio programs and magazines; rather than opening the door to the stranger, they say they did not feel led to that ministry. The song concludes with Green reiterating that the only difference between the sheep and the goats was “what they did and didn’t do”.

I do not want to be critical of Green; for the most part, he was simply repeating the words of Scripture, but it is very clear that what he has added is intended to make the story even more terrifying than the parable already was. With his embellishments, Green introduces some humour, and in the live recording, you can hear the crowd in the background laughing at the “cursed”. The parable, as Jesus told it, has a symmetry to it that gives equal attention to the sheep and the goats. Jesus identifies with the hungry, the sick, and the prisoners and rewards those who participate in the unseen acts of mercy. To be sure, this is beautiful. However, conditioned by the song’s interpretation, my attention is drawn solely to what could happen to me if I am counted among the goats: eternal punishment, in eternal fire.

For my young and simple mind, it seemed clear that all three parables in Matthew 25 were talking about the highest stakes imaginable, something you only get one chance at, and if you were forgetful or unproductive, the consequence was, well, hell. It may come as a surprise to some, but the Gospel of Matthew not only contains some of Jesus’ most cherished teachings, like the Sermon on the Mount, but it also contains, by far and away, the most references to hell. If you were to do a word search in a modern Bible for the word hell, you would find that it appears more times in Matthew than in the entire rest of the Bible combined.¹ More than just the word hell appearing, the ideas that are often assumed to be referring to what we think of as hell are also the most prevalent: outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth, the separation of wheat from the chaff or good fish from bad fish, or sheep and goats.

This same young me was told repeatedly that God loved me and that if I believed in him, I could have eternal life. This was just a matter of praying a prayer that invited Jesus into my heart, a prayer I would have to pray over and over because I could not be sure that it worked. For whatever reason, the threat of hell loomed large, and I believed the things I was being told about it. I doubt anyone in my life intended to set me up to have repeated fiery nightmares or to be afraid of going to sleep at night, lest I swallow my tongue and be lost for all eternity, but this was my experience.

That experience has changed now; I can lay my head down to sleep and trust that I will rise again, be it in this life or the next. I am not sure exactly how this came about, but I have come to a place where I trust what I was told as a child, that God loves me, and somehow Jesus coming to judge the nations sounds like a good thing to me now. Reading the Bible more attentively and reading a variety of perspectives on how to interpret Scripture has certainly helped. I heard a wise man once say, at the end of the day, sitting behind whatever you believe about hell is what you really believe about God. If this be so, in order to be at peace with God, you are going to have to come to at least some sort of peace about what you believe about hell. Make no mistake, the terror of hell was a challenge for me as a young child, but perhaps it was succeeded by something just as anxiety-inducing. For that, however, we must turn our attention to John the Revelator.

1. The New International Version returns thirteen results, seven of which are found in Matthew and translate the Greek word “Gehenna”, a valley outside Jerusalem with a history involving child sacrifices to deities and whose significance goes beyond its earthly reality.