As Good Friday approaches more people will be thinking about ‘Why Jesus was killed?’  There are a bunch of reasons and probably more than one historical one too, but I think Woody Guthrie gets at least one of them right in his song ‘Jesus Christ’ so I decided to record it and share it with y’all.  Plus it might as well be the new American song for Occupy Wall Street Christians.  So Enjoy!

If you are wise then check out my favorite box set of Guthire.  It makes me smile.

Jesus Christ
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

Jesus Christ was a man who traveled through the land
A hard-working man and brave
He said to the rich, “Give your money to the poor,”
But they laid Jesus Christ in His grave

Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand
His followers true and brave
One dirty little coward called Judas Iscariot
Has laid Jesus Christ in His Grave

He went to the preacher, He went to the sheriff
He told them all the same
“Sell all of your jewelry and give it to the poor,”
And they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around
Believed what he did say
But the bankers and the preachers, they nailed Him on the cross,
And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

And the people held their breath when they heard about his death
Everybody wondered why
It was the big landlord and the soldiers that they hired
To nail Jesus Christ in the sky

This song was written in New York City
Of rich man, preacher, and slave
If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee,
They would lay poor Jesus in His grave.

•  The first was from theologian James K.A. Smith with An Open Letter to Praise Bands
  
•  The second was from Tony Jones guest posting at PoMoMusings on the next 100 years
  
•  The third was from Tara Burke over at Relevant Magazine on A Not-so-joyful Noise 

James has three suggestions for worship bands including the band leaders not praying so much between songs.  Tony thinks that public prayers should be eschewed all together – especially the written prayers of the pastor. Tara, as a musician herself, is trying to find the balance when the band hits an off note and keeping her focus on the actually worship and not on the stage performance.

The reason that I have taken special notice of this conversation is because I am in a bit of a transition. My whole life I have been in churches that utilize contemporary rock-n-roll style worship or contemporary praise for the music at the weekend public services. I was very comfortable lifting my hands, jumping up and down, and singing at the top of my lungs with my head thrown back and my eyes closed.  I now serve in a congregation that sings hymns with a big choir and an even bigger pipe organ. 

WELL – recently a group of us have been commissioned to launch an emergent gathering this fall in West LA. It is coming together so well and everyone seems to be on the same page … in every area except one: music.  You can tell that this is the one area where some fear and trepidation is present. “What will our music be like?  What kind of style will we use?”  Since the  music we traditionally have in the sunday service is so different than what we listen to in our cars … where does that leave us?

Luckily we have gifted musicians who love the Lord and I’m sure that they will navigate this just fine – plus they love Gungor so I am optimistic.

However, after reading these well written and thoughtful blogs I had three thoughts in my head:

1.  How bad is it that both James and Tara have to mention the center-of-attention behavior of the band?  It dawns on me, before I stick up for ‘worship teams’ in general – maybe I have not seen how bad it is out there and that I myself would be put-off (or horrified) at the spectacle they are referencing.
2.  Is this situation inflamed by an epistemology employed by evangelical and charismatic churches? I don’t know how else to say it but …. if you think that you are singing to God (vs. about God) and the God is actually listening to you and evaluating what is going on, then are you more critical of both the sour-notes and distracting ‘self’ behavior or overly elaborate performances?
3. If the band is there to facilitate my /our worship and connecting with God, then keeping the songs simple and somewhat familiar is a better way to facilitate a group to be in unison and not distracted. We are able to ‘enter in’  to a ‘spirit of worship’. But then people circle back and are critical that the songs are simple, repeat too much, and grow stale with constant use.

It seems to me that there is a lot being assumed when we talk about worship music. We all sort of know that worship is an all-week whole-life expression – we just sort of take a short cut in our language and talk about church music as worship.

1. There is nothing better than  ’shuffle songs’ while driving
2. I could use any of these in a sermon – there is theology in all of them

So I got thinking about the top 5 albums that I love to do theology to/with?  Here is my list, I would love to hear yours

5. Alison Krauss  & Union Station: live

4. Five For Fighting: America Town 

3. Mumford & Sons: Sigh No More  

2. Blues Traveler: Four

1. OAR: In Between Now & Then  

You can see from my list that A) I like music with guitar & drums B) musicians who don’t dance while they sing C) rich lyrical tapestries

Honorable Mention goes to MeWithOutYou: Brother Sister 

I never struggle to believe in God. I believe in the deep core of my being. I have faith in my bones. I breath this stuff. I am filled with Holy Spirit and that gives purpose to my day and direction to my life.

I never doubt the reality of the Christian faith … until I listen to a conservative like John Piper or Marc Driscoll talk. Then, it is all too apparent to me that we are (at least partially) projecting our greatest hopes and dreams onto the screen of the heavens. We are outsourcing our fears and evils onto a cosmic bad guy called the devil. We have created a galactic father figure in the sky (paging Dr. Freud).

It is so clear when Piper talks that it makes me want to retreat into the post-liberal work of George Lindbeck!  

Xenophanes is famed to have said:

“If oxen and horses and lions had hands and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men, horses would draw the shapes of gods to look like horses and oxen would draw them to look like oxen, and each would make the gods bodies have the same shape as they themselves had.”

It gets boiled down to “If horses had gods – they would look like horses.”

Most days I can stave that off. I can avoid the haunting suspicion and nagging doubt … but what Piper does is create a God in his own image – there is no other way to say it – it is idolatry.

So what? you may ask. Why even bother with it?  Because, I believe that there really is a God.

C.S. Lewis wrote a poem one time called “a footnote to all prayers” (it references Pheidias who was  a legendary statue maker in the ancient world) 

Footnote to All Prayers

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskilfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.

Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

This is why we must acknowledge what it is we are doing when we pray, when we preach, and when we practice. We are doing the best we can with words, symbols, sounds and images. But if those images are solidified and codified past their point of original artistry, mysticism and metaphor – then it becomes something deadly to the soul and dangerous to the one seeking the real and living God revealed in Christ.

They wander through theological frameworks, eschatological expectations and process potential for a greater engagement.

Translation: Tripp sings and then they talk about the meaning of the song … along with the week’s news through a theological lens.

I love music. I love singing in church. I sing while I drive. Sometimes I even go out of my way to find music from other cultures to appreciate (thank you NPR).

As a pastor, I have always evaluated the songs that we sing in the service and have even vetoed certain songs for theological reasons, and others for musical reasons. And that was before I spread my wings as a progressive-emergent type or even got my theology degree.

 Being a theologian who loves music can be tricky in the current worship culture. I find myself thinking “can I sing this song with integrity?”

I take worship pretty seriously so I just don’t have the luxury to ‘turn my brain off’ or ‘turn a blind eye’ to the content of the songs that we sing as a congregation.  I can’t do what some of my peers do and say with a shrug “these are simply the songs that we sing and that is just the way it is – don’t get too worked up about it or put too much thought into it.” It’s just not possible with my personality and passions.

Examples of the challenge would be:

• the antiquated masculine only metaphorical language about God. I know they are just pronouns. I know they are just metaphors. I know that its just personification and anthropomorphic projection… but it really gets to me.
• Remnants of the pre-modern conception of a three-tiered universe. Heaven is ‘up’ and hell is ‘down’. etc.  I know what it is, I’m just not cool with continuing to sing it.
• God as only transcendent. Yes – God is beyond us. But God is also within us and all around us. This spacial language problem really gets old. I’m tired of intiving/begging God to come ‘down’, break ‘in’, and show up.

One of the things that has helped me greatly is the discovery of theo-poetics. I was introduced to the idea a while ago but it didn’t come into it’s fullness until I read The Weakness of God by John Caputo. I realized that the way we talk about God is exactly that: a way.  I also love Nancy Murphey’s take on expressive vs. representative language in Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism. 

 I have to remind myself: Look, we use expressive language in worship. It’s poetics. Now, take a breath. 

This came to a head that other day in a different way. We are starting a new gathering at our church and I went looking for some new songs. I was not finding much so I went back to a reliable resource from my past. This large church in a different country is famous for its worship choruses. The newest album had some things on there that made me cringe a little bit. So I started looking into their theology – which I had never looked at before because previously I didn’t really look at such things.

I was troubled by three things I found. The first was an odd prosperity gospel framework. I know its always dangerous to put too much stock in quick summaries by critics… but anytime the phrase ‘greed is good‘ shows up, I’m concerned. The second was a formula to be rich/blessed  and a blame on those who weren’t. The third was that the whole thing (including the songs) were wrapped in ‘Spiritual Warfare’ as the main place that reality plays out.

I asked one of my trusted friends (who is way more liberal than I am) if we could sing songs that come from that church at our new gathering with integrity. I was shocked when she said yes. Her reasoning was that we take things and redeem them for our purposes regardless of where they come from.

I am not comfortable with that. I know its ‘just‘ theo-poetics… but I’m not sure I could worship while singing that song.

Thoughts? 

In this conversation with Bo Sanders from Soularize 2011, they talk about ministry, music, and what it means to get below the surface and invite people who are safe into a place of vulnerability and people who are vulnerable into a place of safety.

The music for this episode is from their last album Sneek Peeks at Magic Moments. The new album comes out this Friday!

Connect with Agents of Future on Facebook. Follow them on Twitter. Get their music from bandcamp.

In Your People

For the Love of God

PS.  I use one dirty word at the end.  It is used as a theological affirmation of the depth to which my own human f***ed upedness runs.

Enjoy it Here! (Right Click and ‘Save Link As’ to download)

Hark! a thrilling voice is sounding.
‘Christ is nigh,’ it seems to say;
‘Cast away the works of darkness,
O ye children of the day.’

Wakened by the solemn warning,
let the earth-bound soul arise;
Christ, her Sun, all sloth dispelling,
shines upon the morning skies.

Lo! the Lamb, so long expected,
comes with pardon down from heaven;
let us all, with tears of sorrow,
pray that we may be forgiven;

that when next he comes with glory,
and the world is wrapped in fear,
with his mercy he may shield us,
and with words of love draw near.

Honor, glory, love, and blessing
to the Father and the Son,
with the everlasting Spirit,
while eternal ages run.

Audio Here (right click and ‘save link as’ to download mp3)

Advent Song 1 here and Song 2 here

Hopefully this blending of John Pearlberg’s anthem ‘Remembering with Love and Hope’ and the Angelic Choir’s song in Luke’s gospel will encourage you in Advent to receive and bear God’s Gift for all of humanity.

Remembering with Love and Hope (audio here. right click and save as to download)

Glory to God, Glory to God in the Highest
And on earth peace to everyone

Remembering with love and hope, we celebrate the feast
Christ bids us come and dine with him, our host and great high priest
God’s word made known in flesh and blood, a covenant of grace
in manger, cross, and empty tomb, we see God’s loving face

Through all our lives Lord you are near and to the end of time
In bread and cup yourself you give, our life in yours we find….
Love, Love, Love, Love, Love it comes close to you, close to you (x2)

We break the bread and bless the cup, your spirit is out poured
Made one in you, we feast in love until you come o Lord
We trust the pledge of your strong love and pray your kingdom come
when face to face we’ll feast with you in our eternal home

At the end I envisioned a split where the ladies keep singing the Angel’s lines, ‘Glory to God…’ and the fellas follow me in singing the chorus.  When I recorded both parts with me it sounded like it would work, but that much of my voice freaked me out.

The first advent song is here.

Listen Here (to download right click and save as)

View the present through the promise, Christ will come again.
Trust despite the deepening darkness, Christ will come again.
Lift the world above its grieving through your watching and believing
in the hope past hope’s conceiving: Christ will come again.

Come Lord Jesus Come (x3) And Live In Me
Probe the present with the promise, Christ will come again.
Let your daily actions witness, Christ will come again.
Let your loving and your giving and your justice and forgiving
be a sign to all the living: Christ will come again.

Match the present to the promise, Christ will come again.
Make this hope your guiding premise, Christ will come again.
Pattern all your calculating and the world you are creating
to the advent you are waiting: Christ will come again.

If anyone wants all four chords let me know.

Here’s the Song, I have decide to follow Jesus.

btw: I use a dirty word in the song so don’t listen if you don’t want to hear it. I think i use it theologically but now you know it is there.

Peace of War

Check it out, Download it, Share it, and if you want chords\words click here!

Here’s the Mp3: Peace Be Still

Download the words\chords