Musical Musings: Goin’ To Acapulco, (As covered by Jim James & Calexico) by Bob Dylan

I really struggled with this one. It was stuck for a while, and I wasn’t sure why. First, I didn’t know the lyrics; it was just the sound of the melody and the refrain “Goin’ to Acapulco!” in my head that kept reverberating. Then I made a point of finding the lyrics, finding Dylan’s version of it (because it’s Jim James’ cover with Calexico for the movie “I’m Not There” that haunts me) and I discovered I had a greater challenge in front of me. At first, the song seemed… empty. Void. He was singing about going to have fun, but it was this dirge-like song in a dirge-like scene, and it didn’t fit. But the more I looked at the lyrics, and comments on them… I realized this was a song about a house of ill-repute. How was I supposed to write about that?

And then, as I commented on that very problem, I realized why this song was so sticky, and why I could blog about a song about ill-repute, and why a song about “having fun” might seem empty, void, and more like a dirge than it did truly joyful. I think I’m supposed to talk about redemption.

You see, Beloved, when Jesus walked the earth, the religious leadership had expectations of those who followed their religion. You obeyed the 10 commandments, but that was just the start. You also had to toe the line with all the lesser commands and rules and decisions and deliberations. Everything had to line up just so and be exact. The leadership actually hoped that obedience to all this legalism would bring about the salvation of their nation, the deliverance of their people. They thought law was the answer to all their people’s problems.

That actually doesn’t sound a whole lot different from the way the church is viewed today; that there are more “thou shall nots” piled onto the 10 commandments than there is anything else. Now granted, there are some who are going to read this and protest; note that I’ve said that this is how the church is viewed today… not that this is necessarily how the living body of Christ that is the actual Church behaves (or should behave). There are a lot of people who are far more concerned with how things look from the outside than they are with what’s going on inside. They’re more worried about looking clean and holy than they are in actually changing lives from sick and diseased and dying to vital, alive, and healthy, even if it is a little scarred and ugly.

Jesus, when He came to the earth, did not go to the Temples to save the religious people. He went out to the sick, the dying, the hurting. He made friends with tax collectors, who lined their own pockets by puffing the tax rate above the legal mandates, and were thus glorified thieves. He touched lepers, people whose disease was so contagious that, for the safety of the community, they were shunned and sent to live away from everyone, and forbidden to ever experience the simple humanity of touching another-because one touch could spread the illness. He spent time with easy women, letting one wash and perfume his feet in the home of one of the religious leaders! He even brought political radicals into His inner circle of friends.

Consider, both by the standards of His time, and of ours- these are not the people that “good people” spend time with. It “doesn’t look right” being seen around them. “Tongues might wag” or “rumors might start” about what “He was doing with those people.” What was Jesus’ answer? “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance.”

Now, to be honest, He’s actually commenting on both; the ‘healthy’ and ‘righteous’ He’s referring to only think they are healthy and righteous; in truth, they are as sick and in need of repentance as those they look down upon. They’re only justified in their own eyes. When you understand the standard by which you are measured, you understand that all of us, every one of us, is in need of what Jesus offered, and we all need to repent. That’s what Paul drives at in His letter to the Romans; no matter what measure you use to judge yourself, the only one that matters says you come up short. But there’s an answer provided, a way to bridge that eternal gap that you can’t… and it was Jesus Himself who provided it.

So here is a proper understanding: There is no “us” and “them”. There is no “those people”. There are no “I can’t be seen with them” situations. Jesus walked through them all. We are all “those people”. You know those kids your mom wouldn’t let you play with when you were growing up? You’re them. I’m them. Your children are them. Every one of us is that kid. We’re the girl from the wrong side of the tracks. We’re the guy with the scary tats who rides that big ol’ motorcycle. We’re the crack addicted baby and her mom. We’re all the worst this world has to offer. We’re all Rose Marie down in Acapulco, and none of us are any different, just like Bob Dylan said.

But if none of us are any different, if we’re all equally lost, then we’re all in need of an equal redemption. If we are all equally depraved, then we need but one salvation in our lostness. There can be but one path out, one cure for what ails every one of us. You can look elsewhere… look all you want to. But until you find the doctor, until you understand how desperately you need the doctor, you will continue to flounder, lost, confused, hurting, empty and void, no matter how hard you look for fun.

I came to a place where I recognized I had no righteousness in myself. That nothing I did accomplished anything on its own. Oh, I could do good things, don’t get me wrong; I was a good kid. But I couldn’t do enough. I couldn’t be enough. I couldn’t anything enough. I came to a place where I recognized I was broken, utterly shattered, and oh, Lord, how I needed a Doctor. He was there, His tender mercy slowly knitting me together, teaching me to walk, carrying me when I couldn’t, loving me all the time. When I couldn’t forgive myself, my Doctor, my Jesus, taught me what redemption was, buying back the pain of my childhood, the sting of guilt that was and wasn’t mine to carry, and leading me to walk forward, pressing on towards the greater things He has for me to grasp hold of in the days and years that have and continue to come.

That, beloved, is what Church is really about. It’s about people who have come to understand their need for the Doctor, come to seek and find Him, and whose greatest longing in the world is to share Him with everyone else who needs Him. It’s not a building. It’s not rules about what you can and can’t do. It’s not about what we can and can’t say, see, or think. It’s about a Doctor who takes you from death and rebuilds your life. It’s about redeeming your deepest hurts, your greatest shames, your ugliest guilts, and making you new and whole in ways you never imagined you could be. And you know what? It doesn’t matter who you were before, who you are now, or what you’ve ever done. If you’re willing to be made whole, to see your need and seek the Doctor, I’d love to let you meet my Jesus. We don’t even have to go to Acapulco first. But we can go after… He never said we weren’t allowed to have fun.