Bus Stop —the first US hit for the British pop group The Hollies— made Number 5 on the Billboard charts in September 1966. When it first aired on our local station, I had never actually stood at a bus stop. We didn’t exactly have bus stops in my hometown. We had busses, and, yes, they stopped. It was just a bit more informal than in bigger cities.
If we were on the bus and wanted to disembark, we pulled a cord that notified the driver. He would pull to the curb just past the next intersection to let us off. To embark, we need only get ourselves to the bus route, stand a bit down from any intersection, and wave. The driver would pull to the curb and let us on. Fare was 10 cents.
Bus stop, wet day, she's there, I say
Please share my umbrella
Bus stop, bus goes, she stays, love grows
Under my umbrella.
All that summer we enjoyed it
Wind and rain and shine
That umbrella, we employed it
By August, she was mine. **
Make no mistake, though: despite my lack of direct experience, I absolutely understood the song. Romantic fantasies are part and parcel with the teenage experience. As soon as I heard that catchy tune and its pithy little word pictures, I knew I would love to share my umbrella with a girl at a bus stop.
But that was it. At that time and stage in my life, my interest in music was limited to the joys it brought me. Anything beyond that would take research. In would require me to know more than the superficial. I would have to care enough to ask a few questions. I would need a desire to know more beyond the easily known. And before all that, I would have to be willing to believe there was anything else worth knowing.
Fast forward a few decades.
One wet, fall morning in downtown Dallas, Texas, I was enjoying breakfast at the (sadly now defunct) Mad Hatter Cafe. You could always depend on a hot breakfast, interesting decor (think: Alice in Wonderland), and the continuous serenade of the Oldies radio station. I couldn’t come every day —couldn’t afford the calories— but I thoroughly enjoyed those mornings when I could sojourn there before walking over to my office.
I was just finishing up when the DJ announced the next tune was the first US hit by The Hollies. Was it nostalgia? I don’t know. All I know is this: as Bus Stop flowed into that space, I suddenly wanted to know more. Perhaps life had prepared me to desire more knowledge. Perhaps I was just ready for a change. In any case, I was no longer content to just know the little I knew.
I couldn’t stop myself. I quickly commenced an internet search. I soon had before me quite a bit more information about Bus Stop. Most interesting to me? The origin story.
Author/Composer Graham Gouldman revealed that he was on the bus, riding home from work (at a men's clothing shop), when he had an idea for a song about a bus stop. At that point, though, it was not much more than a title. When he got home, he mentioned the idea to his father. And that was that ... for a while.
Then one day he came home from work and his father said, "I've started something on that Bus Stop idea you had, and I'm going to play it for you." What Graham's father had written was, "Bus stop, wet day, she's there, I say, please share my umbrella." Graham described what followed: "It's like when you get a really great part of a lyric or, I also had this nice riff as well, and when you have such a great start to a song it's kind of like the rest is easy. It's like finding your way onto a road and when you get onto the right route, you just follow it."
Graham immediately went to his room where he continued working on the song. He finished the very next day ... while riding to work ... on the bus.
My Bus Stop story illustrates an important truth: people have always been able to learn more if they want to. Yes, we have some pretty remarkable search tools available to us, now, that previous generations did not. But more important than the tools is the desire. If we want to know more, there is a much greater likelihood we will learn more than if our desire is the opposite.
I think it was just like that with Zacchaeus in this week’s Luke selection. On one level, a superficial one, Zacchaeus was a tax collector for the dreaded Romans, and therefore a traitor to Israel in the eyes of his peers. To them, that meant he was a sinner. To all the tall people lining that street in Jericho, that day, Jesus was expected to pass by without even speaking to Zacchaeus. What good Jew could do otherwise?
You know the story of what transpired between Jesus and this “wee little man.” I can still see it on my earliest Sunday School flannel board, and still hear our young voices singing the song.
But Zacchaeus was not the man he appeared to be. Jesus knew that, even if the crowd did not. In his heart, Zacchaeus desired something different, something more. He was prepared to live beyond the superficial, to connect with God in a way his profession had, until that moment, made impossible. Jesus was willing to allow that transformation where others had had no interest in it whatsoever.
Jesus cared to know more about Zacchaeus than did his fellow Jews. And because he was willing, an amazing transformation occurred. Like in Bus Stop, the people were shocked to see love grow in such unusual circumstances, a love that could endure through rain and wind and shine ... and anything else.
Jesus stopped by a tree in Jericho. And a man “on the outs” was restored to the fold.
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Parts of this reflection are from one published in 2013 titled Bus Stop.
Photo (and an interesting blog about the Sycomore-Fig tree Zacchaeus climbed): http://trivialdevotion.blogspot.com/2013/02/zacchaeus-up-sycamore-tree-luke-194.html?m=1
**Listen to The Hollies perform their hit here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3XnYpGY5Z8
Two Psalms in this week's scriptures hold some interesting parallels: "I am small and despised, yet I do not forget your precepts" (Psalm 119:141) and "Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit." (Psalm 32:1-2)
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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 26 (31) Sunday, November 3, 2019
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=287
Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
Psalm 119:137-144
Isaiah 1:10-18
Psalm 32:1-7
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
Luke 19:1-10
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Join us Friday morning for Dayspring’s Lectionary Breakfast at Our Breakfast Place (formerly the Waco "Egg and I"). We meet at 8:00 for some pretty tasty victuals, along with some transforming scripture passages to chew on.
Rain or shine.
Enjoy the week!
Steve
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