New Song
It’s hard to forget about nostalgia these days. Most cars are designed with a generous helping of homage or history-mining, largely because we can’t get enough of it. Nissan deserves a chunk of the credit for this. The Nissan Pao was unveiled in 1989, part of an internal design competition to drum up consumer interest. It worked. Even today, the car is eye-catching. It’s 32 years old, but some Americans just began learning about it when it became eligible for legal import in 2015. Maybe you’ve seen one for the first time recently. Or its neoclassic stable mates, the Nissan Figaro, S-Cargo, or Be-1.
Its mechanicals – unibody construction, a 51-horsepower, 987-cc four-cylinder engine, and a 1500-lb curb weight – were normal fare for contemporary Japanese subcompacts. But its retro design language was, paradoxically, fresh, and demand far exceeded supply. Nissan used surreal ads depicting the Pao observing aurora borealis, and also adjacent to a large dinosaur egg. They look simultaneously prehistoric and post-apocalyptic.
Within the decade, the American car market would meet the Chrysler PT Cruiser, Volkswagen New Beetle, and a bevy of other retro-inspired cars. It’s common today, but nostalgia felt a little new back then.
In the book of Revelation, John sees a constant collision of the past, present, and future. In chapter 5, he sees a sealed scroll, containing prophecy about the future. But “no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it.” (Revelation 5:3) No one was worthy. No one was able to predict the future, or bring about the second coming of Jesus. But Jesus himself, as the Lamb, took the scroll with authority and began opening the seals. Everyone – the four living creatures, a mighty angel, and the elders – fell down and worshiped him: “And they sang a new song…” (v. 9)
This new, extemporaneous song describes how Jesus redeemed all of us from our sinful ways. All of us – from “every tribe and language and people and nation” (v. 9b) – can look forward to a future in the kingdom of God, serving God together. The originality of this “new song” is significant. In the Old Testament, people sang a new song to celebrate a new act of God. The most famous is probably the song of Miriam and Moses in Exodus 15, celebrating their deliverance through the Red Sea. In Revelation 5, the celebration is for our unknown future that is known by God and within his power to enact. And, crucially, it’s a future that we get to be part of in a big way.
In the Bible, the act of singing a new song is actually a celebration of an old tradition. In our lives, this peculiar blend of old and new can be frustrating. The same old life, where nothing new comes along. The same new problems (war, violence, crime, political bickering) on the news. The same old habits, with no new progress. The same new financial difficulties. A clean slate sounds really good sometimes.
Revelation 5 delivers this exact newness. Jesus is coming again, and the slate will be wiped clean. No more aching joints, rusting quarter panels, financial debt… the newness will be quite literally unimaginable. Yet we don’t have to wait for the future to have hope in it. Jesus holds that future, and we can know him today. The idea that a loving God holds the future is something believers have known for millennia, but maybe it’s a new song for you, and it feels fresh and original. Or, if you’ve been a lifelong church member, maybe you’re finding new ways to apply what you already knew about the Bible. That’s a newness you can enjoy every day.
As a design exercise, the Nissan Pao worked. As a marketing gimmick, it worked even better. Nissan promptly unveiled the 300ZX, which really did look like the future, and people were floored by its design. So we can blame cars like the Pao for triggering a future of nostalgic (read: derivative) design, or we can celebrate it for marking an end to one era and ushering in a new one. It all depends on how you look at the past, and what you believe about the future.
