Palm Sunday Musings on Worship

I've been kicking around some thoughts about worship songs - hoping to write a few for GodFirst - and I want to put some of these thoughts into writing.

A potential pitfall with worship songs is to not be particularly Christian. (I'm indebted to my old housemate Will for my thinking on this.) Songs can have nothing about them that is wrong per se but also nothing to make them distinctly Christian. For instance, singing about love and peace and happiness is great, but a non-Christian can exult in these things also. Now from a missional perspective, this can be good - it gives common ground that seekers find palatable. And they can be just fine if in the context of solid teaching and a general understanding of how these ideals fit into the larger Christian story. But I believe our songs are a vehicle we can use to tell the true tale that all the other stories and longings and desires point to.

Two things strike me about Christianity that make it distinctly different: its strange conception of God's interaction with history, and the beautiful truth of costly grace.

In the Christian understanding, God is the author of history. He is constantly shaping characters and events, but he also interacts with the plot in specific, significant ways. In the Old Testament hymns, we find Israel giving praise for these things: God's general control over creation, and his specific acts on behalf of the people of Israel. But it gets better, because Christianity claims not just that God is the author of the story, but that the author entered the story himself as a character - the God-man Jesus. Jesus performed specific recorded acts - most notably his death and resurrection, which we celebrate this week - and these actions changed everything. Christianity rises or falls on a historical fact - the person of Jesus Christ, and more specifically, his resurrection from the dead (see 1 Cor. 15:12-19).

Christ's actions lead to the doctrine of costly grace. God offers forgiveness that is rich and free and unending, with nothing we have done to deserve it, but it came at incredible cost to him - the death of his own son. And its effect is a total reorientation of our priorities and desires - if Christ gave up everything for us, the only rational response is to put him absolutely first with all thankfulness and joy. This is a radical idea that I only see fully expressed in Christianity. Every other way of thinking either skews toward a work-based method of getting your just desserts, or some sort of tepid "let's love and forgive everyone" that carries no weight or power because it doesn't count the cost.

There are probably more, but these are two truths that strike me as being profoundly Christian, and two truths that I hope we can express in our music. (And to be sure, there are many songs that already do express these beautifully!)

I've been thinking a bit about writing some music. There are tons of potential themes, but a few have been on my mind lately that I would love to see captured in song.

I've long been captivated by the idea of God as author, writing the story of history that he invites us to play a role in. Last year, I was particularly struck with Samuel Wells' description in Improvisation of history as a five-act play, where we live in Act IV. The climax was back in Act III, where Christ died and rose from the dead, guaranteeing ultimate victory. And the final act, Act V, is already set, when Christ will return and God will bring the final restoration of all things. For us living in Act IV (the age of the church), this gives incredible freedom! We are invited by God to play a role in his story. We can't screw it up - the victory was won by Christ and nothing we can will prevent the final resolution. So we are free (free to improvise as Wells would say) to live whole-heartedly for Christ, knowing that he works all for good. This also captures why God's sovereignty, his ultimate command of history, doesn't remove freedom but actually generates it. This is something I would love to try to put into a hymn of praise.

Another theme is God as Abba, Father. This has been a distinct way that God has revealed himself to me (as promised in Rom. 8:15), and I would love to capture a mediation that brings together both the authority and strength with the tenderness and intimacy that the image arouses.

One final one . . . lately I've been thinking about some stuff that Tim Keller wrote on approaching evangelism. He argues that today, particularly in America, there are two big groups of people, and a Gospel presentation should have a different emphasis for each. One one side, there are those who grew up with a more traditional, religious worldview, and for these the Gospel is best presented in terms of "sin as separation," contrasting duty and grace. But now there is also another, more secular group, for whom these ideas of duty and grace and sin have little meaning. For them everything is about personal freedom, and so a Gospel presentation to them emphasizes "sin as slavery" and serving Christ as ultimate freedom. Both are true facets of the Gospel presented in Scripture, but each rings true with different people. There are many songs, particularly some of the great hymns of the church, that really capture "sin as separation" and emphasizing grace over duty. But I don't know of any songs that present the Gospel story in terms of "sin as slavery," and I would love to try to capture that, to create a song that can shed light on this truth of the Gospel.