With Grace in Your Heart and Flowers in Your Hair: Christian Imagery in Mumford and Sons

I’ve recently become obsessed with a new album: Mumford and Sons’ Sigh No More. It’s a rocking, singable, exuberant and deeply visceral album. I’m no music critic, so I cannot comment in detail on the musical nuances of the album. I do know, however, that I really enjoy the banjo plucking, guitar strumming, double bass thumping, the beautifully blended four-part harmonies and the driving, boot-stomping rhythm. This is one of those albums, much like The National’s High Violet that makes me just want to sing along the whole time.

I cannot remember now exactly how I came to them, or they to me. I know my pastor, Wendy Moen, mentioned them to me once and I made a note to look into them. I did, but I did not become deeply seeped in their music until I saw the video for “Winter Winds.”

One of the most striking moments I remember from that video was Marcus Mumford dragging a chair and a guitar through a field of high grass under a cloudy sky, with the haunting lyrics of “the shame that sent me off from the God that I once loved was the same that sent me into your arms…” I found that very moving, very emotional. The “God I once loved?” Why is this mainstream band talking about God? And the more I listened to their music, the more I found deep Christian imagery (the first two words of the album are “Serve God”). I’ve looked into some of what they have said about this imagery, and about the kind of “church revival” feel of some of their concerts. They say that those themes and images come up, but it’s more a concern about spirituality instead of about dedication to institutional Christianity, and that they have each had different spiritual journeys.

Regardless, the imagery is very developed and pronounced throughout the album. The song “Roll Away Your Stone” (the title image clearly one of the resurrection – “the angel of the Lord … rolled away the stone” (Matthew 28:2); “[the women] were discussing who would roll the stone away from the entrance to the tomb … but when they arrived they saw that the stone … had already been rolled aside” (Mark 16:3)) When the singer (“speaker?”) says that all of his bridges have been burnt he is reminded “that is exactly how this grace thing works.” (A direct mention of grace reappears later in the album, in “After the Storm” – “Get over your hill and see, what you find there with grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.”) The mention of grace is fortified in the next phrase with an image of repentance and reconciliation: “It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart, but the welcome I receive with the restart.” These lines, if any do, certainly seem to refer to the story of the prodigal son and when the shamefulness of his return is transformed into exuberant celebration by a merciful father.

Penance and purification dominate in “White Blank Page” where the singer asks if you can “kneel before the king and say I’m clean, I’m clean…” The later reference to “loving you with my whole heart” can be interpreted as a secular reference to a lover, but the final use of this phrase widens it to a more theological plane: “So tell me now where was my fault in loving you with my whole heart / Lead me to the truth and I will follow you with my whole life.” This is almost lifted from the Psalms: “Show me the path where I should walk, O Lord… Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me…” (Ps 25: 4-5). Or Jesus’ “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Plus “disciples” were simply “those who followed.” Following someone with your entire life seems a spiritual level of devotion.

A smattering of biblical imagery emerges in “Timshel.” The mother of a “baby child” is told that this man’s choices will “make man great, his ladder to the stars.” Ladder to the stars sounds like Jacob’s dream of a ladder to heaven. And the final line “I can’t move the mountains for you” references Jesus’ “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed and you said to this mountain ‘Get up and move’ it would move...”

“Thistle and Weeds,” while not overtly quoting scripture, does have strong suggestions of biblical language. “I’m on my knees and your faith in shreds it seems … Corrupted by the simple sniff of riches blown I know you have felt much more love than you’ve shown. I’m on my knees and water creeps to my chest.” This sounds almost baptismal. And the corrupting influence of the excessive love of money. The refrain of “plant your hope with good seeds, don’t cover yourself with thistle and weeds” echoes of the “Parable of the Sower” who went out to sow and some seeds fell on good soil, and some among weeds, and some among the rocks. The line “There’s more than flesh and bones, let the dead bury their dead, they will come out in droves” is almost lifted directly from Jesus in Matthew 8:22 – “Let the dead bury their dead.”

The lyrics of “Awake my Soul” (at least an overtly spiritual title) have a line of “where you invest your love, you invest your life.” This is very similar to Jesus (Matthew 6:21 and Luke 12:34) “where you treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Later in the song we hear “you were made to meet your maker,” a maker we’ve heard of before in “The Cave,” where we are told “you can understand dependence when you know the maker’s hand.”

The more apocalyptic imagery is reserved for “Dust Bowl Dance” where we hear the narrator say “there will come a time when I’ll look in your eye / You will pray to the God that you always denied / Then I’ll go back out and I’ll get my gun / I’ll say you haven’t met me, I am the only son.” This seems to reference “Not everyone who cries out ‘Lord Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 7:21) and/or the parable of the ten bridesmaids where the unprepared bridesmaids knock on the door begging entrance but are told by the groom “I don’t know you.” (Matthew 25:12). And of course the “only son” phrase summons images of Christ, who, it is said in the Nicene Creed is “the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father…”

All of this is to say that Mumford and Sons is not a Christian band in the strictest sense, but that their bold (and sometimes subtle) use of both scripture and references to spiritual themes will make them even more relevant to a society seemingly always in search of its soul.