Kris Kristofferson at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival, January 31, 2009.

Photograph by Rex Roof via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

The year before Kris Kristofferson won the Country Music Association’s Song of the Year award for his masterpiece “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” the trophy was given to a story song about a couple that suffered a car crash while cheating on their spouses. Two years earlier, the award honored a song about a man who missed his dead wife. The year before that, the prize was presented for a song about a husband mourning over his wife’s decision to seek a divorce. All standard topics for country music radio. Each had some charm and a catchy phrase or two, but none had lyrics that came anywhere close to Kristofferson’s “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down.”

“On the Sunday mornin’ sidewalks
Wishin’, Lord, that I was stoned
‘Cause there’s somethin’ in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone
And there’s nothin’ short a’ dyin’
Half as lonesome as the sound
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks
And Sunday mornin’ comin’ down.”

Amazingly, those aren’t even the best lyrics in the song. I’d like to say that Kris Kristofferson changed country music forever, but he did not. All the proof one needs is supplied every day on country radio. Catchy jingles about drinking, cheating, and loving America dominate the genre once again. The poetic ability of the Texan, who died on September 28, is as rare today as it was before he wrote his first hit. The Grammy Lifetime Achievement honoree elevated country music (and pop and easy listening) for a few years and then mediocrity took over once again.

What Kristofferson did not do, however, is apply his brilliance to gospel music. He wrote two gospel songs: the number one country hit “Why Me?” and the southern gospel standard, “One Day at a Time.” Both songs have touched the hearts of many Baptists, but they lack the poetry of the hall of fame composer’s most exceptional work.

To judge Kristofferson’s own understanding of God, Jesus, or faith by those two rather sentimental pieces, though, would be a mistake. Many of his lesser-known compositions depict the intent of God and Christ in prophetic ways. In 1975’s “The Year 2000 Minus 25,” the former Army Captain wrote of his anger over the way those who served in Vietnam were treated both during and after the war. He pictured God responding to the injustices involved and wrote,

“Welcome to the year 2000 minus 25, oh say can you smell her for the smoke
God’s still up there laughin’, so he’s gotta be alive
Who says he can’t take a dirty joke.”

On his 1972 recording “Jesus Was a Capricorn” (his only number one country album as a solo artist) Kristofferson wrote,

“Jesus was a Capricorn, he ate organic foods
He believed in love and peace and never wore no shoes
Long hair, beard and sandals and a funky bunch of friends
Reckon they’d just nail him up, if he came down again.”

In his song, “They Killed Him,” covered by Bob Dylan, Kristofferson sang about the deaths of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and then added:

“The only son of God Almighty
The holy one called Jesus Christ
Healed the lame and fed the hungry
And for his love they took his life away

On the road to glory where the story never ends
Just the holy son of man we’ll never understand
MY GOD, THEY KILLED HIM!”

Similarly, in 1970’s “The Law is For Protection of the People,” the son of an Air Force Major General described instances of police abuse and then summarized his outrage with,

“So thank your lucky stars you’ve got protection
Walk the line and never mind the cost
And don’t wonder who them lawmen was protectin’
When they nailed the Savior to the cross

‘Cause the law is for protection of the people
Rules are rules and any fool can see
We don’t need no riddle-speakin’ prophets
Scarin’ decent folks like you and me
No siree.”

The Rhodes Scholar often expressed an aching grief that the promise and purpose of Jesus’ teachings and ministry were never realized to any great degree in this world. Fully engaged and enamored with all that Jesus offered to humankind, the country music legend lamented that Christ’s endowment of grace, love, compassion, and justice was rejected, certainly by those in power, and to some degree by us all.

Kristofferson’s anguish over the rejection of the spirit and liberating words of Jesus is most evident in the chorus of his work titled “To Beat the Devil,” a song he dedicated to Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash,

“If you waste your time a-talkin’
To the people who don’t listen
To the things that you are sayin’
Who do you think’s gonna hear?
And if you should die explainin’ how
The things that they complain about
Are things they could be changin’
Who do you think’s gonna care?”
There were other lonely singers in a world turned deaf and blind
Who were crucified for what they tried to show
And their voices have been scattered by the swirlin’ winds of time
‘Cause the truth remains that no one wants to know.”

Although the social activist changed the last line of the song to the more hopeful, “Cause I don’t believe that no one wants to know,” all who fight the good fight resonate to some degree with the struggle to keep speaking the words of Jesus to a world that is often unmoved.

Kris Kristofferson will no doubt be remembered mostly for “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “For the Good Times,” “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again),” “Why Me?” and “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” as well as for his acting career. But I think he would have also hoped that he would be appreciated for articulating the “lonesome sound” of believers everywhere who lament that the “things they complain about are things they could be changin’” by more closely following Jesus.