THE TOMB AND THE SLOT MACHINE: ATLANTIC CITY AS HOLY SATURDAY MEDITATION
Still from the official "Atlantic City" music video. Public domain.
“Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night,
they blew up his house too.”
This provocative verse launches “Atlantic City,” the lead single off Bruce Springsteen’s sixth studio album Nebraska. It’s one of Springsteen’s best songs, though it stands apart from the rest of his discography. Springsteen recorded the album alone in his kitchen on a 4-track tape recorder, and without the upbeat accompaniment of his E Street Band the whole project feels darker than his usual work. Yet this somber songwriting expresses a deep well of hope. While I’m sure the Boss never intended it, I’m convinced that “Atlantic City” is actually a perfect hymn for Holy Saturday.
Most of Bruce Springsteen’s best songs feel biblical. Though they’re rooted in the intimate details of a place, a time, and a few characters, they share a certain timeless quality with biblical narratives. The backdrop to “Atlantic City” is the murder of Philadelphia mob boss Philip Testa — “the chicken man” — and the resulting turmoil in the organized crime world. It taps into the anxiety of the early 80’s, as New Jersey wondered whether the legalization of gambling would revitalize the dwindling Atlantic City. But ultimately, the song is about two young lovers and their cooling romance. The narrator is full of desperate dreams, yet crushed by the bleak circumstances around him. He’s driven to risk and recklessness, all in hopes of securing riches and love. Above it all, he asks the same question that the Church repeats each year on Holy Saturday: is resurrection really possible?
“Well, I got a job and tried to put my money away
But I got debts that no honest man can pay”
Most Americans are driven by debt. We live in the middle of a student loan crisis that has hampered the financial development of an entire generation. Our for-profit healthcare industry and the resultant medical debt causes over 60% of all bankruptcies. The lack of living wage laws leave the working poor trapped in a Sisyphean cycle of poverty. Consumer culture drives credit card debt as we’re sold the lie that materialism will offer us meaning. 40% of Americans don’t have $400 in the bank to cover an emergency expense. Springsteen speaks pointedly to this culture: no honest man can pay these kinds of debts. In other words, the system is rigged — these are not the personal failures of lazy people, or problems that can be overcome with better financial planning. When money is power, debt becomes an organizing social force, a way to keep people powerless.
Of course, Christians are driven by a sense of debt too. When the Bible talks about sin, it often refers to it as debt. The most straightforward translation of the Lord’s Prayer would be: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” I confess I don’t always like this language — it feels too Reformed, or otherwise evocative of the callous cruelty I can now see in penal substitutionary atonement. I resist the idea that salvation must have some kind of economy — but I recognize my resistance is rooted in my own powerlessness. There is no good work I can do to pay off this sin-debt. There is no honest man, not even one, who can satisfy the demands of the Law. There is no power within ourselves to help ourselves.
And so I find myself sitting with this debt on Holy Saturday. There is nothing to be done. No dramatic liturgy — just a short Collect, a few selected readings, and a prohibition against Eucharist. Salvation is out of our hands, and sits with Christ in the grave or in hell or wherever the hell else he is. The day is distinctly quiet. Just as Springsteen’s Nebraska is sparse and bare compared to the rest of his raucous discography, the silence of this Saturday stings in comparison with the rush of Holy Week and the exultation of Easter. In this quietude, sometimes the promises of scripture whittle away at the debts in my hand.
“Now our luck may have died and our love may be cold
But with you forever I’ll stay”
My wife has heard “Atlantic City” more times than any reasonable person should. She has ranked every single cover version as I incessantly play them on repeat (the frantic version by Jamie T is her least favorite). She even let the band play it at our wedding. To be clear, while Atlantic City is a love song, I wouldn’t recommend that you play it at your wedding.
The young lovers in the song share a frosty romance. There’s no passion, no heat, no warmth; only the utilitarian reminder to dress for the occasion and the cold. Of the myriad resurrections the narrator longs for, perhaps the greatest is the rekindling of this relationship. It seems more likely that the sand would turn to gold, but still the singer stays the course — “with you forever I’ll stay.” At least they cling to commitment amid their cooling romance — much like I must cling to God when my prayer life turns prosaic and uninspired.
When I was younger, I thought that genuine Christian faithfulness required a near-constant emotional high — and if I wasn’t feeling it, then I must not be believing it. Now, I recognize the stark beauty of the relationship in Springsteen’s song. Amid the cold determination, there are sparks of love: perseverance, dedication, commitment, a refusal to give up. It’s a relationship that forges ahead holding onto the smallest embers of hope — and that’s enough. “With you forever I’ll stay.” (“I guess I’ll try Morning Prayer,” is what I half-heartedly tell Jesus.)
I wonder if this is how the people who loved Jesus felt on Holy Saturday: Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the Mother of God. They prepared the cold body of Christ for burial. Gone was the warmth and joy they knew in life; but even in death, they take up the intimate work of love. With oils and incense, wraps and perfume, they dress the body — “Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty.”
“Now I’ve been looking for a job, but it’s hard to find
Down here it’s just winners and losers, and don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line”
I’m not a gambler. I don’t know if it was growing up Baptist or having frugal German grandparents, but I don’t like taking risks with money. Actually, I don’t like taking risks in general — I want things to be safe, careful, measured, controlled. Gambling is dangerous, reckless, out-of-control.
And yet, it seems to me that God enjoys a good wager from time to time. God bets on Job, negotiates odds with Abraham, and smirks when Jonah draws straws. It feels a little impious to cast God as a gambler. I don’t mean to step on God’s sovereignty — can the Creator of heaven and earth even take risks? But when the soldiers cast lots for Jesus’ clothing, I wonder what God was betting on. I wonder how the cross could be anything but a risk. Was Christ always a losing bet, a savior destined to end up on the wrong side of the line?
You see, preachers don’t really know what to do with Holy Saturday. We can preach the cross, we can preach the resurrection, and ideally we can preach both in the same sermon. But I’m not convinced we can preach the Saturday in between, when Jesus is dead and buried and we’re waiting to see what happens next. Can we avoid the temptation to rush ahead to the good news of Sunday? Can we reckon with a God who gambles, leaving us in suspense? Can we preach the moment when the dice are cast, the cards are flipped, the slot machine is spun? In this moment, everything is up in the air. The possibilities are limitless. Anything can happen. God has never seemed more reckless, calling Death’s bet and calling it good.
Springsteen is honest about gambling — there are far more losers than winners. But I never expected to meet God on the losing end, betting against the house. The most dangerous sinners are looking on. All Creation is in suspense, waiting and watching to see who will hold the winning hand. We crowd the table, finding a spot next to Christ, the king of losers. We dream of what it might mean for the losers — against all odds — to win.
“Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact
But maybe everything that dies, someday comes back”
The chorus to “Atlantic City” makes sense of the narrator’s reckless search for meaning. Each time it’s repeated, the narrator grows more and more desperate. Working a dead-end job to pay an impossible debt, draining his savings to buy bus tickets, losing what money he has gambling, and finally agreeing to a criminal favor. Everything dies, but maybe everything comes back. No matter how bad things keep getting, the narrator holds onto the impossible hope that things might turn around.
We, as the audience, can’t imagine this will end well. The narrator is doomed. All his other endeavors have failed. The opening lines convey the chaotic, destructive ends of the organized crime world he is entering. Surely, this man has gambled with his life and lost. But Springsteen gives us no satisfaction. The outro fades out on whoops and yells over mandolin tremolo, the faint echo calling: “Meet me tonight, in Atlantic City.” Anything is possible. Come and see.
This is a modern parable. The gospel is the foolishness of the world, the man who sells all that he has to buy a field full of hidden treasure. Perhaps the gospel is also a man who sells all that he has for two tickets on the Coast City bus, and a chance at turning everything around.
Holy Saturday is the moment when the inevitability of death crashes into the possibility of resurrection. I think we tend to get this backwards: we prefer the possibility of death and the inevitability of resurrection. We want death to be distant, sanitized, contingent. We want resurrection to be comfortably certain, in a credal kind of way — a way which can be safely measured, which we can affirm in the abstract but rarely recognize in practice.
Deep down, we’re all much more familiar with the inevitability of death than we like to admit. But what do we know about the possibility of resurrection? Can we look at the world around us, full of debt and death, and see the limitless possibility of resurrection lurking around every corner? Do we truly trust that God is making all things new? Do we seriously believe everything that dies could someday come back?
More than ever, amid the incalculable loss of the past year, I crave the impossible hope of a limitless resurrection. And so I hope that all of the luckless and unloved might meet Christ in the quiet stillness of Holy Saturday.
