This week was the fifth Sunday of Epiphany, and Josh's sermon text was Matthew 5:13-20. Our songs were gathered with both of these things 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:
Pulse by Jameson McGregor
There's A Wideness In God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)
SMS [Shine] by David Crowder* Band
Rise Up by Bifrost Arts
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.
Pulse: We sang this song to begin our time together confessing that we have been selective with the way that we have practiced love in the way of Christ, and petitioning the Spirit to recreate us into a people who relate to one another as God has revealed to us through Jesus.
There's A Wideness In God's Mercy: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs. This is what we said about There's A Wideness In God's Mercy then: Through the Beatitudes, the fourth week of Epiphany allows us to consider the upside-down logic of the Kingdom that Jesus came proclaiming. Those who are truly blessed do not necessarily look like it when viewed through the lens of prosperity that our culture has offered us. This song carries a similar theme in that it proclaims God's love to be broader than our minds can handle, and God's strictness to be much more malleable than we expect.
SMS [Shine]: This song both celebrates the "shining" of Epiphany, and also functions as a petition for God to continue to shine in the world through the Church. The Light that the Church carries is revealed when people who are being formed in the Way of Christ relate to God and one another as Jesus did, rehearsing his story with their lives.
Rise Up: This song is a lament that highlights vulnerable and forgotten people and petitions God to rise up and defend them. It also petitions God to strengthen God's people as they live as strangers in a strange land. There's sort of a double-meaning in this song. It equal parts asks God to do what we cannot, and asks God to enable us to do what it seems we cannot. This tension is all over the Christian faith. Because God is in the habit of using the weak to overcome the strong.
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