Jelly Roll, Billie Eilish, and Jesus.

Demons

So a complete train wreck of a man who the devil has complete control of, and whose behaviour is making even those around him despair, is suddenly delivered from the oppression that has wrecked his life.

He was a dead man walking, and was weaving his life in and out of the most deathly places he could. He was even given a new, tortured, name that reflected his ongoing demons.

And suddenly Jesus meets him and delivers him from all of that stuff, puts him in his right mind, turns his life around and sets him on the path to life.

And what does he want to do about it? He wants to tell everyone! He wants to tell everyone what Jesus has done for him. He wants to tell everyone to the point of embarrassment.

Even his name is a witness to the disaster, the lack of self control, that his life had been up until the point that he met Jesus.

His previous embarrassment had been his very public train-wrecking of his life. Of the lives of those close to him. Everyone knew him. He was legendary in the scandal around his life! No one could control a man with no self-control.

And now? He is more than happy to declare – to that point of embarrassment – what Jesus (who many around him actually disdain and fear) has done for him!

Well, that’s enough about Legion, the demoniac delivered by Jesus that we read about in the synoptic Gospels, let’s talk about Jelly Roll, the music artist who made a big splash this year at the Grammys after winning three gongs.

What’s In a Name?

Interesting name huh? His momma gave him the name Jelly Roll as a kid because, unlike the evidence from the picture above, he was huge! He was well on his way to obesity, and mum decides it’s good for a laugh. And the name stuck – stuck like a particularly jammy/jelly donut when hurled at a wall.

There’s at least two years with a therapist talking about parenting issues in all of that for sure, let me tell you.

But check out Jelly Roll’s progress in weight loss since 2023. Have a look online. Jelly Roll has lost something like 120kg in the past few years. Something musta gotten into him.

Oh, that’s right, the Holy Spirit has gotten into him! Jelly Roll (ok, let’s use his real name just once), Jason Bradley DeFord, has been delivered from his metaphorical – along with any actual demons – by Jesus.

And during his acceptance speech at the Grammys he did the unthinkable (to anyone who has not been transformed by the grace of Jesus), and declared loudly and proudly his love for Jesus and his amazing power to change.

Just like the demoniac, he explained to that crowd just how much Jesus had done for him, how his past life of debauchery and cheating on his wife were over, and that Jesus was the one who did that. By the way, I think some of the hostility from the crowd was that he named and shamed not only his own sin, but the very sins that the Grammy crowd is known for.

But notice, unlike Billie Eillish and her comments about ICE and immigration – valid or otherwise – he is not speaking to a home game crowd. That’s why I italicised the word “that” in the paragraph above. These are not Jesus’ people. At least not in the way that Jelly Roll is a Jesus person.

And more than that, in his speech Jelly Roll was not pointing his finger out there, saying “The fault is with you, or you, or you!” He is not saying that other people are the problem (well people outside the self-declared righteous attendees of the Grammys).

And even more than, in the cultural epicentre of a philosophy in which people point to their hearts and say “The solution is in here”, he points somewhere else. He knows the problem is “in here”.

The Jesus Flag

Jelly Roll does the exact opposite of the Grammy crowd and their expectations of those who stand before that very public podium. He stands up at an away game where all sorts of flags, of every colour and description (though not the Iranian flag) are flown and flies the Jesus flag.

He waves that flag around unashamedly to those who, with a high level of self-declared expertise, plus an equally high level of undeclared inexperience, and declares the solution is not us. Or not him at least.

Now this is a crowd that is all keen for a Jesus that wails on others (thank you Don Lemon), but a Jesus who turns the spotlight on your own sin and self-destroying ways and attitudes? No thanks! That’s why Jelly Roll said that Jesus is not for any political party. Which is almost a heresy among some.

But most of all, it’s the complete lack of shame in what Jelly Roll did that most astonishes me. As Jesus said to another insider Simon the Pharisee, (who is just an early form of Billie Ellis), while speaking of another social outcast, “She loves much because she has been forgiven much.” (Luke 7:47).

Why does it astonish me? Because – like many of you good folk reading this, I either deny or forget just how much I have been forgiven by Jesus. And let’s be honest, that makes me just a teensy, weensy bit ashamed to big note Jesus and who he is and what he has done for me, especially in front of the self-righteous crowd. It’s easy to be ashamed of Jesus when we are not ashamed enough of our own sin that got him crucified.

We shrink back from that among our hostile crowd, or we theologically “Third Way” it away, to the point that people walk away from us in our social settings none the wiser as to the actual problem (us) or the actual solution (Jesus).

I’m sorry, but once again, true to form at such occasions, Eillish’s statement was performative. She is a performer after all. It cost her nothing. It was a public display of virtue before an impressive and impressive-loving crowd. It was the exact opposite to what Jelly Roll did. And it pinned the problem on other people, exactly the opposite place to where the true problem lies.

It was a classic case of amazing grace. Jelly Roll’s eyes are opened, and Eillish’s eyes remain closed. As do the eyes of all the adoring types at the Grammys. At the very time that tens of thousands of Iranians were massacred for their love of freedom, and for a nation of downtrodden for whom a famous voice would have been a boon, a solace, a balm, we get the sound of crickets at the Grammys.

The Self-Flag

Was it virtue signalling all the way down from someone who is happy to live on stolen land as long as it is within a gated community. I can’t judge her heart, but it doesn’t counter the ongoing narrative at such events. Sorry to say it, it was a “Self-Flag”

The same silence was just as pronounced at the Emmys just after Charlie Kirk was murdered. Not a skerrick, not a mention, not even a mere “We didn’t agree wth him, but we cannot keep doing this.” So you can forgive my cynicism at the silence over Iran.

But back to Jelly Roll. He got some stick for what he said, from the virtuous of course. Probably a little like the former Legion got from those who had either suffered at his hands, or were skeptical about his change. Or – just as likely – who were not fans of Jesus and had not experienced his grace.

Let’s not rant on, let’s leave you with some words from Jelly Roll’s own lyrics from his last album. This is a song called, funnily enough, Born Again:

I was born into struggle, born to survive
Born in a place that you don’t make it out alive
They thought it was over, thought I was dead
But you can’t kill a man that was born to be born again

Like Legion, Jelly Roll tells everyone about Jesus because even if you kill his reputation or his career for saying that, you can’t actually kill him. Jelly Roll’s name – western it be Jelly Roll, or Jason Bradley DeFord, is written in the Lamb’s book of life.