The B-Side

“The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” - Psalm 118:22

The folks at Decca Records had a problem with a song.

For all their promotional potential and Decca’s state-of-the-art technology, it was a lame song and nothing could change that. Exacerbating the issue was that the front man and his band were regarded as…unusual.

The song was entitled “Thirteen Women” and, released just nine years after the first atomic bomb was used, fed into the zeitgeist of the “atomic era” by imagining the survivors of a nuclear holocaust.

As the reader has guessed, the survivors were thirteen women. Oh, and one guy who is the song’s narrator.

Even by the standards of the day, it was a tad sexist.

The song went nowhere and the band’s on-stage antics, they were known for capering about the stage instead of standing still by the microphones and instruments with some dignity, made it far less likely to secure a profit.

Decca released it as a 45 rpm single and it disappeared almost immediately.

The next year, MGM was preparing to release a “riveting tale of urban youth” set in an inner-city high school.

The movie needed a contemporary soundtrack though, and one that would not cost much. The movie’s star grabbed a bunch of his teenage son’s records and passed them along to the music director, who then listened to a lot of the bad pop music of the era, coming across “Thirteen Women.”

It was still a stinker, so the music director flipped the disk and listened to the B-side. That song on the secondary side of a wretched record was a little better and more what he was looking for. So, it was purchased by MGM for next to nothing to be played over the movie’s opening credits.

It would subsequently alter our cultural history.

The song was “Rock Around the Clock” performed by Bill Haley and The Comets. Because of its use in the movie, it spent two months at #1 on the Billboard pop charts.

Heck, it knocked The McGuire Sisters out of first place!

When The Blackboard Jungle was released, theater operators noticed that teenagers were coming to repeat showings of the movie to dance in the aisles during the opening credits.

The teens would lounge about for the duration of the movie, indifferent to its plot, buying concessions [yes, the source of true profit], and sharing experiments in the…ah…biological imperative [until caught in the usher’s flashlight beam]. Then they would dance again when the next showing began.

While “Rock and Roll” music, so named because it often employed the “rock” of a 4/4 time signature with the “roll” of the 4/4 meter, had been around for a few years, this was the first time it had dominated the charts, not to mention the movie seats. From that year forward, it would become the primary musical style for the remainder of the century.

This is an apt lesson in how things thought to be without use can prove their worthiness, albeit with unpredictability.

If the B-side to an unpopular and hopeless song can change an entire culture, imagine what the ignored portions of a religion might do.

This is one of the reasons that the wisdom expressed above in Psalm 118 is interwoven into the Newer Testament.

The theme will appear again in Acts 4:11 [“This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone”] and Matthew 21:42 [Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the scriptures: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes”?]

Each reference is to the importance not only of Jesus’ message, but of the discarded people of faith, those restricted in their participation in 1st century Judaism by the very human leaders who made such draconian determinations.

Those injured or maimed, those too poor to contribute to the Temple’s tax, women in menses, those who either worked for or were thought to be too close to the Romans, were excluded. The list was rather extensive.

Limited participation and the lack of alternate perspectives contributed to the flatness of spiritual experience and left far too many outside of the mainstream of the religious structure, despite God’s promise of access to The Covenant.

This tendency is repeated throughout the history of Christianity as well, and led to The Great Schism of 1054, the Protestant Reformation that began in 1517, and The Oxford Movement of 1828.

In each example, the “rejected” have a catalytic role in God’s Covenant. Where would Christianity be without Jesus’ ministry to the lame, blind, sick, poor, and ostracized, or the subsequent work of the radical theologians and confrontational clergy?

The considerable voices of the Protestant Reformation such as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and even our own Thomas Cranmer, the composer of The Book of Common Prayer, were seen as outliers, the least important to the elite class that managed Christendom.

Imagine what our worship life, our nimble and vital theology, would have been without their contributions.

This “B-Side” features in the petitions of The Great Litany and refines our ministry as bearers of the Gospel.

That it may please thee to inspire us, in our several callings,
to do the work which thou givest us to do with singleness of
heart as thy servants, and for the common good,
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.

That it may please thee to preserve all who are in danger by
reason of their labor or their travel,
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.

That it may please thee to preserve, and provide for, all
women in childbirth, young children and orphans, the
widowed, and all whose homes are broken or torn by strife,
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.

That it may please thee to visit the lonely; to strengthen all
who suffer in mind, body, and spirit; and to comfort with thy
presence those who are failing and infirm,
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.

[The Book of Common Prayer, page 151]

It is also true for us as individual Christians, as we all carry a “B-Side” to our character, that part of our being that drives us more deeply into our relationship with God?

We struggle through it to become the best Christians we can be; the best representatives of Jesus’ teaching, healing, and works of wonder. Each of us strives to convey Christian love in a world that discourages its practice and often leaves us with the temptation to surrender to the pressures of secular nihilism.

As is prayed on every Good Friday, and perhaps should be every day:

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look
favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred
mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry
out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world
see and know that things which were cast down are being
raised up, and things which had grown old are being made
new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection
by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus
Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity
of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer, page 280