This was the twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs around the theme of communion of saints. 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:
Chariot by Page France
Heart Won't Stop by John Mark McMillan
Pulse by Jameson McGregor
When the Saints by Jameson McGregor (adaptation)
Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light
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.
Chariot: This song paints a vivid picture of an apocalyptic wedding feast where the varied and broken stories that make up human history are woven into a decidedly untragic ending. As we think about the communion of the saints and our Christ-centered interconnectivity, it is fitting to begin by imagining the moment in which this interconnectivity is no longer veiled.
Heart Won't Stop: To think more deliberately about Christ-centered interconnectivity we talked about, we sang this song to single out the connective tissue in this relationship: the love of God. In this love, we find an unmatched relentless pursuit that cannot be severed, even by death. It is this death discarding love that allows us to cling to the hope that we are connected to one another through Christ beyond time and space.
Pulse: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs. This is what we said about Pulse then: This song is a prayer that God would reconnect us to the Pulse of the Spirit in creation, and that we would learn to base our love for one another in our mutual status as creatures of God. There is no person for whom this does not apply, and, though it is at times seemingly impossibly difficult, we do not get a pass on our call to love everyone.
When the Saints: This song was requested by David Wilhite, our guest preacher this week. He asked me if I had a rendition of it, and I did not. After listening through about 30 versions, I realized that I was ill-equipped to do the song any of those ways, so I made my own. In that process, I became acquainted with the sense of longing that drives this song--an awareness that the journey of faith is one where we follow in the footsteps of people who have died, seeking to be drawn further in to a story about resurrection and redemption, cutting against the brokenness that we find in the world around us.
Wayward Ones: We sing this song every time we take communion to remind ourselves of a couple of things. First, we are a broken people--though we are seeking to become more like Jesus, we often fail at this. Second, Christ has given Himself for us despite our brokenness. We take communion to remember the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf, even though we did not, and do not, deserve it.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM