That Time I Accidently Food Poisoned My Chemical Romance (Mark 9:30-37)

It was the spring of 2007, and the concert booking folks at the College of William and Mary chose to host their largest concert ever – My Chemical Romance. For those of you not versed in late 2000s emo/punk/rock acts, at that particular point in time, My Chemical Romance and their Black Parade tour ruled the roost. They owed a lot to Green Day, Taking Back Sunday, and Fall Out Boy, who all paved the way for a massive mainstream act dressed like a 1bit color version of Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band complete with stark white pancake makeup and dark black eyeliner and eye shadow. At that specific moment, they enjoyed a huge level of fame, and we had never hosted anything of their magnitude.

I worked as town crew for a lot of the concerts that passed through the college. Over time, I got used to how they normally functioned. Each band submitted a specific set of demands that we, as the venue side, had to meet. This usually included what kind of hotel, what kind of flights, what kind of food, and what kind of dressing room/green room area. For an outdoor gig with a famous Reggae act, they demanded their own pavilion tent with solid sides, so folks could not see in and witness their pregame routine. A particularly sweaty HipHop act gave specific requirements for brand and amount of towels on hand because periodically wiping away sweat formed a key part of their on stage routine. As broke college kids, we would raid the dressing rooms after the concert and take the leftover food home with us. I considered this one of the key perks in working these shows. So much of what they demanded ended up not getting used, so I got a bounty of food, desserts, and hyper-specific hand towels. Most of the acts treated us pretty well or largely ignored us and allowed us to do our work, while they did theirs.

The very famous My Chemical Romance went a little differently. Dealing with their escalating demands sent my boss to level of stress that I hadn’t witnessed in him before. They needed this. They needed that. Our female coworkers kept getting sidetracked because the band wanted to “hang out” with them. Key to my role in all of this, My Chemical Romance rejected the food that we provided, so we ordered them alternative food from the only local dive bar with a menu fit for human consumption. Outside of pancake houses, late 2000s, Williamsburg, Virginia, didn’t have a lot of options. I volunteered to hop in a college owned van to go pick up dinner round two for our demanding emo headliners. I nearly wrecked the van trying to park it in a hurry at a restaurant with famously bad parking. Finally receiving my bounty, I rushed back to feed the band. Our second offering proved acceptable. My Chemical Romance eventually performed, and I had a great time working with their road crew to pack up the half dozen 18 wheelers worth of equipment and send My Chemical Romance on their not so merry way.

The next day, we got an email from our boss that My Chemical Romance cancelled their gig the next night in Detroit because they came down with food poisoning. The most likely suspect was the food that I nearly ruined a college vehicle to obtain, the food that they demanded after they found the original food unworthy. And people say that we get no justice in this life.

As I write this, Sean Combs (who has had many stage names over the years) sits in a New York jail indicted on enough abuse, sexual abuse, and racketeering charges to curdle the blood. So, my own encounter with toxic celebrity appears quaint and comically mild. In the time of Christ and the early church, several Roman emperors gain such a reputation for self-indulgence, self-aggrandizement, violence, and a desire for worship as deity that their reputations loom large even to this day – Nero, Commodus, and Caligula. Power sits at the core of it all. Non-famous people can’t send a college student dashing out into the night because dinner round one didn’t please. Only when one reaches the level of Roman Emperor can one get away with declaring oneself a god and get millions of people to go along with it. Humans will amaze you with what they will come up with if they know that they can get away with it.

This brings into starker relief the life and ministry of Jesus. He has the greatest claim to absolute power of any human being to walk the Earth. In John 1, the evangelist presents Jesus as the Word of God forging the underlying structure and logic of creation. In Trinitarian theology, we view Jesus as a coequal member of the Trinity with God the creator and the Holy Spirit. The Gospel writers tell of his miraculous deeds of healing, casting out demons, food multiplication, and the overcoming of death. He has a pretty good argument for some special treatment. “I am literally God and am here to save you all. The least that you could do is wash my feet, carry me as we travel, and bring me some better grub.” Obviously, he didn’t do that. He came to serve and not for others to serve him. He spent tons of personal time with people in the lowest rungs of his society: lepers, tax collectors, “unclean” women, people with disabilities, foreigners, sinners, and children. No one has ever had more power, and he never even used it for his own benefit – even as they torturously murdered him.

Celebrities can be fun. They mostly don’t contain the makings of monsters. Who doesn’t love following Taylor Swift’s boyfriend and his merry band of football men? Many use their power and platform for good – raising awareness about important issues, donating huge sums to charities, creating community oriented businesses, buying failing soccer teams, or making a darn fine tequila. Still, none of them will ever achieve the character and goodness of God. All of humanity’s history and the arc of Scripture should remind us that God chose to orient the most powerful force in the universe towards the sacrificial love of God’s creation. No one can top that. Instead of doing what the most powerful beings of our species keep doing, God doesn’t serve God’s own wants and desire to the detriment of others. God does the exact opposite.