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.

He Knows My Name – Tommy Walker

 He wasn’t thrilled with the topic, and really needed someone else to push him into it. What if Tommy Walker’s Divine Maker had felt that way in the beginning, if He had pursued half-heartedly the man-making project, if He had even decided that “He Knows My Name” was just a momentary and insignificant cerebral fragment? Instead, Tommy decided, eventually, that God’s inspiration wasn’t just whimsical, and that an upcoming sermon by a minister in a Los Angeles church (see the seal of Los Angeles here) was the stimulant he could not ignore. After all, he was a worship minister, and this was his role – to write a song when so directed. God is creative in His very nature. So, when someone tells you to mimic that characteristic, what’s that say about you if you refuse? Tommy had already decided that God’s work in his human-ness wasn’t an accident, so he answered with what this minister was expecting. Just flip the switch, and say ‘OK, I’m ready; you’ve got me, God. Use me to say what You want’.

Actually, Tommy Walker’s Los Angeles preacher who asked him for a song in 1996 probably deserves some notable credit for ‘He Knows…’, because that was the title of the sermon that he’d already chosen. You can almost see Tommy sighing as this minister (Mark Pickerill) pitched the idea at him; what had stirred this minister’s thoughts, anyway? Tommy admits he needed ‘sheer discipline’ to agree to this, because he really didn’t feel motivated, even as the poetry began to develop and ink flowed from his pen. Tommy was initially convinced this would be only an average-quality song, but he stuck with it nevertheless.  Perhaps it was the simplicity of the concept that helped Tommy finally feel that something special was in work. Just go with the idea that this Creator made me, and scope out how He expressed Himself in that process. He doesn’t just know ‘my name’, He knows my ‘thoughts’. He gave me a ‘heart’, and my ‘tears’ are ones He gives me. And, He listens when I ‘call’, because He knows what’s going on inside this person He made. It’s all about intimacy with this God and me, Tommy must have decided, as he continued to write. It started in the very first few moments, ‘before even time began’, that I became His. ‘In His hands…’, and ‘…His own’, are words that Tommy used to confess that he could not exist, even as a thought, if God had not first been who He is. And, despite my ability to leave or try to ignore Him, He won’t ‘leave me’. Perhaps that’s because something is more true of God than even His created humans understand at times: that He cannot remove Himself from those He made, since we’re in His image. A human may decide to run away from Him when he really doesn’t want to be part of His Creator. How long can that really persist, one might ask? How much sadness does that engender in God when that happens? Jonah ran the other way, and a whole generation snubbed their noses in Noah’s day. They didn’t have God in human likeness to change their minds. What excuse do you and I have?

Tommy includes a lot of scriptural reminders that God does indeed see each of us intimately (see the link below that show what many writers have said – John [John and 1 John), Isaiah, Jeremiah, David [in Ps. 56, 139], and Moses [in Exodus]). He does feel what we feel, cries over those He made, as the bible’s shortest verse relates (John 11:35).  Why’d He create, if the result has pained Him so? That He’s inscrutable is also who He is, but not when it comes to reaching out for me. It’s a lifelong education, this knowing Him. He already knows me, and yet I cannot help feeling the frustration that there’s always a deficit on my end of this understanding. But, I cannot deny the link is there, and that to fight Him is vain. He knows you and me. Tommy thought at first that this was a ‘so what?’ Then, he thought about it some more. Keep thinking, he says.      

Information on the story behind “He Knows My Name” can be found in Tommy Walker’s book Songs from Heaven, written with Phil Kassel in 2005, published by Regal Books.

Also see the story here: https://www.tommywalkerministries.org/media/song-of-the-week-2019-16-he-knows-my-name

See information on the seal of Los Angeles here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seal_of_Los_Angeles.svg . The seal  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 was created by a government unit (including state, county, city, and municipal government agencies) that derives its powers from the laws of the State of California and is subject to disclosure under the California Public Records Act (Government Code § 6250 et seq.). It is a public record that was not created by an agency which state law has allowed to claim copyright, and is therefore in the public domain in the United States.

Come Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy -- Joseph Hart, Fernando Ortega, John Andrew Schreiner

 

He was a 47-year-old confessor (in 1759), who’d only a few years earlier finally ‘found himself’ while worshipping at a Moravian Church in London (see its flag here). The year 1757 was indeed a pivotal year for Joseph Hart, a rather obscure language teacher who admitted that he was not a very ardent believer. And then, he heard a message from long ago, one that was intended for another church far away. Somehow, what an isolated apostle on a lonely island said to another body of believers centuries earlier spoke to Joseph, compelling him to admit who he was before his Creator. The time for delay was over. It was an admission through which Joseph found a release, a freedom from the gnawing feeling in his gut that he was missing something. Joseph’s feeling and the poem-song he composed are not worn-out, useless relics, since others have taken up his thoughts and added their own to them centuries later. What Joseph felt and said is always fresh and relevant for those who are willing to look inside themselves, and see who they really are.

 

Joseph Hart had been on something like a spiritual roller-coaster in the first half of the 18^th Century in London, though he would have been the first to say that the peaks of that ride had not been very high; instead, he’d spent most of his adult life feeling at odds with his faith, thereby occupying the lower levels of a faith commitment. He was bouncing between loose convictions and repentance – a repeating pattern that left him with guilt, obviously. So, sleepless at times, he searched for tranquility and a path to a more solid commitment, a state he finally found after hearing a sermon on Revelation 3:10 at a Moravian church (Fetter Lane, in central London). He’d found hope in the Apostle John’s brief exhortation to the ancient Philadelphia church (in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey). From that moment through the next few years, Joseph wrote a large number of his most well-known hymns that affirmed his new devotion, including ‘Come Ye Sinners…’. His words echo with the former condition in which he’d wandered for so long, and an urgency he wanted hearers to embrace. You are ‘poor and wretched’ (his original words, v.1), so do not ‘tarry till you’re better, (or) you will never come at all’ (v. 3); another verse pair in his poem (vv. 2 and 6) carries the same thoughts – you’re guilty, but don’t let that stop you from getting what you need from Him. Two of Joseph’s verses (vv. 4 and 5) also have us focus on Jesus – in a way, echoing the condition of the sinner and a redemptive opportunity that he poses in the other four verses. Jesus is convicted, then risen to glory where ‘hallelujahs’ are the overriding reaction of the once-condemned, now-saved. It’s a theme that hasn’t grown old, and never will as long as human beings are made from the same mold.

 

It's not any mystery that contemporary musicians and songwriters have found Hart’s poetry still affecting. Fernando Ortega and John Andrew Schreiner, two of those who have borrowed Joseph Hart’s song, are singing and promoting what was first written some 250 years ago. Other versions with varying words (like the Zoe Group, see link below to their rendition) are still being born, really a tribute to how meaningful are Hart’s original words, and more so how true is the Healer-God to whom they all sing. ‘He is able’, one of the contemporary versions exudes. That is what Joseph Hart finally figured out in 1757, when he was middle-aged. (Actually, Hart was in the last 11 years of life when he finally, fully devoted himself to God – so well past middle-age for him.) That should say something to anyone who thinks faith acceptance happens only for the young, before life’s events weigh one down. God is patient, accepting anyone, anytime. You and I are His anyones, and this is anytime.    

 

See here for biographic info on the original author: J. Hart | Hymnary.org

 

See more information on the song story here: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.

 

See here for original words, and a second version the author wrote: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/c/o/m/e/y/comeyspn.htm

 

Come Ye Sinners, Poor And Needy - YouTube  (Zoe Group version)

 

Public Domain status/statement by copyright holder of the City of London flag image:(File:Flag of the City of London.svg - Wikimedia Commons)  I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so:I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Let God Arise -- Chris Tomlin, Ed Cash, Jesse Reeves

 

He remembers the time, even the phrases the speaker used to make his point. Chris Tomlin was in Hawaii early in the 21^st Century when he heard a preacher repeat the words -- “Let God Arise” – first spoken by God’s leader in a wilderness, and then remembered by a psalmist and king centuries later. So, it was no accident that Chris should find this three-word phrase so meaningful and moving, something that spurred on millions of people some 3,400 years earlier. God made Himself evident, and He called followers to obedience, offering them His own light and a leader whose face would shine when He descended from a mountain conference with Him. He’d already done so many rousing wonders – did He really need to offer more proof of His identity, power, and authority? Perhaps God knew songs would be necessary to preserve these moments, and so the story and its accompanying words entered the spirit of poets like David and Chris, and all of us who will listen.

 

Chris Tomlin leaned on the words and collaboration of three of his contemporaries, as well as Moses and the poet-king David, to write ‘Let God Arise’. Chris shares when he was backstage at a conference in Hawaii where Jim Cymbala was speaking. The words Jim spoke were brief but had the desired impact, at least for one hearer – Chris Tomlin. In Jim’s words -- ‘we’re having these conferences, trying to build this church as if God were dead, as if He needs our help. The truth is, let God arise, and His enemies be scattered.‘ It was a ‘wow’ moment for Chris, who knew immediately that he wanted to write a song, and so he scribbled that part of Psalm 68 (he mistakenly says Psalm 61 in the video interview) on a piece of paper, not realizing at the time what its origin was. He says it moved him like a guy who might be watching the movie Braveheart, and hearing William Wallace issue the challenge to his army as they stood before the enemy. He thought the song he would write should be consistent with the psalm’s emotive power, and therefore accompanied by music that was ‘rowdy’, not some ‘pretty little’ tune. It’s a ‘shout it out’ song, Chris says. Thus, that helps explain the raucous beat as you hear Chris and his cohorts perform the song, lauding the Almighty and his works. This people that Moses was leading in the wilderness following their orders from God Himself – their commander-in-chief – was a people prone to stubbornness and complaining. Moses had to urge them on each day with the title words of the song Chris would write over three millennia later (Numbers 10:35), the same words that David would use (in Psalm 68) to stimulate God’s people of his own era, 400-500 years later (around 1,000 B.C.). Apparently, Chris also leaned on the advice and contributions of two others of his own time, Ed Cash and Jesse Reeves, to fashion the words for ‘Let God Arise’. God’s directives still flow through countless believers, even today.  

 

Echoes of Moses and David reverberate in ‘Let God Arise’, the 21^st Century rendition of this wilderness and later-Temple worship song. Verses 1, 20, and 33 of David’s psalm remind us of Him, and how we carry on the devotion to this God. Chris, Ed, and Jesse add some other words that speak of God’s great personage, and His powerful acts on behalf of His people. ‘Our God… saves!’ There’s so much more that they tell us of Him, but saving power seems like one of the underscored points of this song. Just let Him loose – as if we had any ability to confine Him! – and watch Him arise and conquer. Saving us is just a derivative effect of who He is. I’m ready to go upwards with Him. You too?

 

The primary author shares the story in this 4/14/2010 video: https://www.praisecharts.com/blog/chris-tomlin-shares-song-let-god-arise/