After a dramatic conversion to Christianity in the late 1970s, Bob Dylan translated his newfound faith into three of the most polarizing albums of his 63-year career. Over the course of two years, he released “Slow Train Coming” (1979), “Saved” (1980) and “Shot of Love” (1981). Although the Jewish-born Dylan had evoked biblical images and narratives in many songs before this period, these three albums of gospel music are explicit expressions of evangelical Christian devotion. While several songs from these albums evoke images of the life, death and resurrection of Christ, two in particular — from “Slow Train” and “Saved” — are especially fitting for Holy Week and Easter.
“Slow Train Coming”
The title track of “Slow Train Coming” is a lyrical indictment of the moral and social pathology of American political life. It describes both various aspects of moral decadence and corruption, and the false gods and solutions invoked to address it. “Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted,” the narrator begins the song, setting the tone for a catalogue of various social and political maladies. The source of his disgust, however, is less the particular ills he describes than the assertion that we can save ourselves by our own effort. He asks of his companions, “Are they lost or are they found? / Have they counted the cost it’ll take to bring down / All their earthly principles they’re gonna have to abandon?”
Many people who hailed Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday fundamentally misunderstood the nature of his kingdom. Expecting a violent insurrection against imperial Roman rule, many welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem only as a political liberator. He was greeted not as the eternal savior, but rather as a political revolutionary. They reduced Jesus’ role to a this-worldly political hero who had come to replace one kind of coercive earthly politics with another. They sought a human solution to a divine problem.
The lyrics of “Slow Train Coming” illustrate that this expectation persists even today. “Man’s ego is inflated, his laws are outdated, they don’t apply no more / You can’t rely no more to be standin’ around waitin’,” sings the narrator. Rather than to seek truth that transcends earthly institutions, we have put our faith in “Big-time negotiators, false healers and woman haters / Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition.” Phony prophets peddle false solutions, which actually contribute to further decline. “They say lose your inhibitions / Follow your own ambitions / The talk about a life of brotherly love; show me someone who knows how to live it.” Each verse of the song ends with the lyric, “And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend.”
The image of a train, while anachronistic in reference to the Gospels, is a recurring image in Christian salvation songs. Tom Waits, for example, writes in “Down There by the Train,” “There’s a place I know / Where the train goes slow / where sinners can be washed / in the blood of the lamb.” The train is an image of salvation: “There’s room for the forsaken / if you’re there on time / you’ll be washed of all your sins / and all of your crimes / down there where the train goes slow.”
Johnny Cash invokes similar images in several songs, including “Hey Porter,” “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Train of Love,” among others. In each of these songs, the train is a means of exodus, salvation and liberation. In Dylan’s song, the slow train seems to represent both coming judgment and ultimate deliverance from damnation. The train of judgment is coming, accounts will be paid. But when it leaves the station, it will be a vehicle of hope and salvation for those who climb aboard.
“In the Garden”
The most explicit Easter Triduum song in Dylan’s three gospel albums is “In the Garden,” from the album “Saved.” “When they came for him in the garden did they know?” the song begins. “Did they know He was the Son of God, did they know that He was Lord? Did they hear when He told Peter, ‘Peter put up your sword’? / When they came for him in the garden did they know”?
Each stanza of “In the Garden” expresses a different way that Jesus manifested his mission to mankind, followed by similar questions asking whether the people really understood what was going on. Echoing “Slow Train,” the narrator explains, “The multitude wanted to make Him king, put a crown upon His head / Why did He slip away to a quiet place instead?” In the Gospel accounts of the Garden of Gethsemane, we see similar confusion and indecision. Some followers fell asleep; one snuck off to betray him; another fled naked, finding that to be less shameful than to be associated with Jesus and his “failed” mission. “When they came for Him in the garden, did they know?”
Dylan’s questions, though, are not aimed only at Jesus’ contemporaries. They are perennial questions that confront every person in every generation. While his contemporaries were faced with questions about the nature and purpose of Jesus and his mission, we are confronted by the ultimate question of salvation from sin and despair.
When He rose from the dead, did they believe?
He said, “All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth”
Did they know right then and there what the power was worth?
When He rose from the dead, did they believe?
These are not questions merely for those who witnessed the Jesus of history. They are also aimed at those of us confronted with the Christ of eternity.
