The Lord's Prayer (It's Yours) -- Jesus, Matt Maher, Bryan Fowler, Jacob Sooter

Another way of saying what they thought about in this song was the oft-used acronym KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid (but make sure you say this especially to yourself if you use that ‘Stupid’ word, and not to others). Don’t make something too complicated, and particularly when you look at “The Lord’s Prayer”, as Matt Maher, Bryan Fowler, and Jacob Sooter did when they repeated and updated it with a few reminders for themselves (See here the late 19^th Century artwork The Lord’s Prayer, by James Tissot.)  The words Jesus used to teach His hearers in His great sermon (Matthew 6/Luke 11) were also those by which He lived and taught every day, so when Matt, Bryan, and Jacob put in a few extra words, they must have been looking at Him and His life’s consistency, and how they thought they should respond to Him daily, too. With any familiar words used repeatedly, day after day, there is a risk that the words become a rote exercise, but one of these three 21^st Century composers says his regular use of the prayer has had the opposite effect. Should we expect that the prayer basics that Jesus taught would remain any less stimulating for us as the day He first spoke them?

 

Jesus readily responded to the people who asked Him how to pray, something that really indicated how the people already trusted Him. And yet, He didn’t offer them promises about Roman comeuppance, about redemption of the Jewish nation to its former autonomous status, or about prosperity for themselves. It was instead all about each individual’s one-to-one connection with God and with each other. In short, each of us needs to find ourselves in His corner and trust that He provides, prompting us to treat each other as He has treated us. Matt said in 2022 (perhaps a year after the 21^st Century version of the prayer-song was written) that he thought it was all about reminding himself about spiritual basics, when he and his family would echo Jesus’ words each day. Making things too complicated had been one of the spiritual traps into which he’d often fallen, Matt admits, so making this prayer a daily habit was intentional from a foundation-building perspective. Moreover, he found that he would discover something anew each time he mimicked Jesus in this way. Do you suppose Jesus intended this phenomenon when he taught the people? Certainly, Jesus wanted you and me to personalize the prayer, and because each day is new, how I live out that prayer just might change ever so slightly, or perhaps more radically on occasion, as my life unfolds from day to day. One might gather that that is what Matt and his two friends were also thinking when they added some words to the prayer, particularly the phrase ‘right here in my heart’, which is sung seven times to emphasize how today’s disciple responds to what Jesus said. Matt, Bryan, and Jacob added some other words to underscore that the world He created, and the kingdom Jesus came to initiate, are His…’it’s yours, all yours’. That is so very crucial to accept, not just as a believer, but as a human being created by Him. If I don’t acknowledge His ownership, I can spend my life as an empty exercise in accumulating stuff for myself, none of which I can take with me to the other side of mortality’s conclusion. On the other hand…   

 

…when I discover and accept that He’s the LORD, as in landlord and people-Lord too, then I can aim at the only target that makes sense: His kingdom. That’s the one that is enduring, because He brought it with Him when He was here on earth, and its expansion to millions and even billions of people since then just cannot be rolled back. Read Revelation, and remind yourself who wins in the end. Why would you not want to be connected to what He – the Resurrected One – has begun and which will overpower death, because He has already done so as the First-Born? I have no better option and no other plan that offers what He’s begun in His kingdom. Do you? See if Jesus’ simple, but still-potent words work for you.  

 

Read the story from the principal author-composer of this 21^st Century version of the prayer here: Matt Maher Goes Personal with "The Lord's Prayer (It's Yours)" : News : JubileeCast

 

See information on the image here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_The_Lord%27s_Prayer_(Le_Pater_Noster)_-_James_Tissot.jpg (found at this link -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Prayer ) …The author died in 1902, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1930.

 

Hear the Sound -- Leslie Jordan, David Leonard, Matt Maher

 

How would a people who’ve just realized they’ve been rescued sound; what would they say to the One who has made the seemingly impossible happen? That was the sensation that Leslie Jordan and David Leonard were trying to access with so much of their music when they formed All Sons and Daughters in the Nashville area (see the map here of the Nashville area [in Davidson County] in Tennessee) in the latter part of the first decade of the 21^st Century. “Hear the Sound”, from the period around 2012, occupied a place alongside other songs that they felt would connect broken, struggling people with an appreciation for the God who freed them. Is a ‘thank you’ enough, or would any number of words be sufficient for such an episode? Just consider what Leslie and David, with some apparent help from Matt Maher, thought would be appropriate words to say to the God-Redeemer.

 

Though these composers don’t share what precisely was behind ‘Hear the Sound’, what they have made clear (in an interview in NewReleaseToday, see link below) was their intent to make their music relevant to people gathered in a church for worship, to invite these people to join in with them. And, something in the lyrics they wrote further suggests they had a particular idea about what such a group of people should ask God to hear. Take a look through Psalms, and notice how ‘hear’ is used, as the ancient songwriters asked for help while in distress, with so many cries for mercy or deliverance or perhaps just complaints offered up to Him who can deliver. Alternately, many praise psalms to extol God are also evident in this ancient songbook, and perhaps that is where these 21^st Century songwriters went when they sought to offer a contemporary version of a psalm of praise. Though God is a Divine Being with love and compassion at His core that guide His response to our distress, He has so many other characteristics that stand out. We can certainly ask for His help, but Leslie, David, and Matt must have been dwelling on other reasons why a people might call out to Him – to tell Him we acknowledge and honor Him for who He is. These three would have found a large number of psalms that speak of His ‘mercy’, ‘grace’, patience (‘slow to anger’), ‘majesty’, ‘forgive(ness)’, and His ‘redeem(ing)’ and ‘restor(ing)’ mission, and of course His ‘love’. One other term they use four times, however, is ‘forever’, for which there are abundant references in Psalms to laud Him: Psalm 9, 29, 33, 48, 66, 68, 89, 92, 100, 102, 105-7, 110-11, 117-19, 125, 133, 135-6, 138, 146, is not an exhaustive list. ‘Let the heavens roar’, and ‘echo across the ground’, they lift to Him, as a prompt for His ears to have His own creation tell of His greatness.

 

Lest Luke 19:40 be called into play (Jesus said ‘stones will cry out’, if the people did not shout His name), Leslie, David, and Matt give today’s disciples one more psalm to shout our admiration for Him. What’s the best way to have Him listen to you and me? That’s what these three answer with their song. And, it’s a reminder that His attributes haven’t stopped just because Psalm 136 ended with 26 verses, for example. How about if you and I could pick up where that psalmist stopped, since He focused so many of his thoughts on earth’s and Israel’s ancient history? Has not God been praiseworthy for the last two millennia, or more personally in yours and my lifetime? Make sure those stones aren’t warming up today, to do what we’re neglecting to do!    

 

 

Read here about the worship duo who were two of the three composers of the song: All Sons & Daughters - Wikipedia

 

Read here about the album on which the song appears: Live (All Sons & Daughters album) - Wikipedia

 

Read about two of the composers here: All Sons And Daughters Artist Profile | Biography And Discography | NewReleaseToday

 

See here for information on the map-picture of Nashville metro area: File:Map of Tennessee highlighting Davidson County.svg - Wikimedia Commons

Christ Is Risen -- Matt Maher and Mia Fieldes

 

It might have been an Easter Sunday, but as easily could have been any Sunday that helped Matt Maher and Mia Fields generate a song that proclaims “Christ Is Risen”. But since the song was inspired by a 3^rd Century sermon by John Chrysostom (see image of this Archbishop of Constantinople here), which was prepared for an Easter celebration, we can feel certain that Matt and Mia were also focused on Easter, even if the premier of the song did not actually fall on that day in 2009 when this contemporary hymn was introduced. Matt relates that this was an extraordinary sermon, not necessarily because of the preacher’s skill, but instead because of the great truths he communicated that day. And so, this 21^st Century music-writing pair wanted to echo what John had said some 18 centuries earlier. One doesn’t need to embellish the events to underscore the gravity of what Jesus accomplished. Instead, Matt and Mia seem to want us to revel in what happened to Him. Experience the overflowing joy, while gathered with the church, that we will all one day heed His call to mimic this resurrection.  

 

Matt relates (see video link below, in which he talks about the song’s meaning) that his ancient brother’s words said much to encourage the believer, including that Jesus used ‘death to destroy death’; that ‘Hell was fooled when it swallowed Jesus’ – it thought it had a mere man, but instead ‘encountered God’. Hell ‘took in earth and encountered heaven’. And so, there are echoes of these stunning realities in the words that Matt and his collaborator Mia have composed, including the defeat of death’s sting that the Apostle Paul used in his own words (1 Corinthians 15: 54-55, which were, in fact, echoes of what Isaiah [25:8] and Hosea [13:14] said, centuries before him). And, by accessing a 3^rd Century sermon to spur their own lyrics, Matt and Mia have reminded today’s Christ followers that we can celebrate now, but also be struck that we’ll one day rejoice with those of John’s era – in fact all of the saved from all time. ‘Come and rise up from the grave’ is a refrain that is paired with the words ‘Come awake!’ throughout the song, as if we who are still alive are calling out to those who’ve gone on before us; or, maybe we’re all just previewing words that we will long to hear in our own futures – words that Jesus will proclaim in a loud voice, and which no one will be able to resist. When one ponders that all of the human race, from all the millennia that will have lived by Judgement Day, will be there to ‘come awake’, is a ‘Wow!’ really sufficient to express what we’ll all be experiencing? Matt says that the thoughts of Easter cannot be limited to just that particular Sunday, but that all Sundays are opportunities – mini-Easters – for the church to gather and remind each other of this hub of our faith. Indeed, the potency of Easter is so great, that it cannot, and should not be confined to one Lord’s Day of the year.

 

If Matt and Mia have it correct, perhaps we should be singing Easter-like songs every Sunday! (And, in fact, I think we do where I worship – how about you?) But, just on Sundays? No, every day of the year, even 24/7 would probably not be really enough to tell how important this Christ-rising actually is. One cannot get in touch with this completely until one approaches his own crossing over. Funerals have a unique way of bringing me as a mortal to this unavoidable reality, and they happen to take place on all kinds of days of the year, not just on Sundays. So, if death invades my existence on whatever days it wants to, I need Easter every day on the calendar to counter this. Keep a copy of an Easter song, like this one Matt and Mia have given, nearby. That’ll be my strategy, along with a bookmark to John Chrysostom’s words. As John said from Constantinople to complete his message all those years ago, For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of them that have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto the ages of ages. Amen.

 

See the song’s story here: Bing Videos

 

Read about the 3^rd Century church father here: John Chrysostom - Wikipedia

 

Read about the sermon that inspired the song here: Paschal Homily - Wikipedia

 

See information about the image here: File:Johnchrysostom.jpg - Wikimedia Commons …This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1929.