This week was Christ the King Sunday, and our songs were gathered with this theme in mind. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.
Songs:
Revelation Song by Jennie Lee Riddle
Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan
Because He Lives by Bill and Gloria Gaither
Hope by Jameson McGregor
How They Fit In:
There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme.
Revelation Song: We sang this song to begin our time together with a focused and straight-forward moment of singing about God's grandeur and particularity. In thinking about Christ as King, we are met with a picture of power and majesty that is distinctly different than we might imagine out of our own cultural expectations--this almighty King abandoned His station to dwell among the disenfranchised and to champion the cause of the nobodies, and is well-imaged as a slaughtered lamb. In this, we find wonder, mystery, and hope.
Death in His Grave: This song traces the story of Christ, underscoring that Christ's kingship is directly linked to his death--his complete self-emptying--and his resurrection.
Because He Lives: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs. This is what we said about Because He Lives then: We sang this song to proclaim that our daily hope in the face of uncertainty is located in the risen Christ.
Hope: This song voices the hope we have in Christ, the fire in the darkness. In this image that comes into the world through John 1, we find the most fundamental summation of the Christian story--God set a light in the darkness that the darkness did not overcome. Fire is more real than the darkness, such that there is no amount of darkness that can overcome the light of the fire.
Crown Him With Many Crowns: This song well-captures the kind of King that Jesus is: the slaughtered Lamb who receives unmatched and unmatchable praise, who has known intimately the worst of our suffering and conquered it, whose tools of war are peace and love, and to whom all other crowns belong, that we might all find rest and belonging.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM