Music by Nicole Nordeman (wikipedia, website)

You are my strength when I am weak; You are the treasure that I seek; You are my all in all
Seeking You as a precious jewel; Lord, to give up I’d be a fool: You are my all in all

Taking my sin, my cross, my shame; Rising up again I bless Your name; You are my all in all
When I fall down You pick me up; When I am dry You fill my cup; You are my all in all

Jesus, Lamb of God; Worthy is Your name

Sung at Christ Church New York City on November 2
Words from Lyrics Mania

Music video by Keith & Kristyn Getty

In Christ alone my hope is found; He is my light, my strength, my song;
This cornerstone, this solid ground, Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace, When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all—Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone, Who took on flesh, Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness, Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died, The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev’ry sin on Him was laid—Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay, Light of the world by darkness slain;
Then bursting forth in glorious day, Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory, Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me;
For I am His and He is mine—Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death—This is the pow’r of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man, Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.

Words and Music by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Copyright © 2001 Kingsway Thankyou Music

Sung at Christ Church New York City on November 2

Music video by Sixpence None The Richer

Angels we have heard on high; Singing sweetly through the night.
And the mountains in reply; Echoing their brave delight.

Shepherds, why this jubilee? Why these songs of happy cheer?
What great brightness did you see? What glad tiding did you hear?
Gloria in excelsis deo; Gloria in excelsis deo.

Come to Bethlehem and see; Him whose birth the angels sing.
Come, adore on bended knee; Christ, the lord, the new-born king.
Gloria in excelsis deo; Gloria in excelsis deo.

See him in a manger laid; Whom the angels praise above.
Mary, Joseph, lend your aid; While we raise our hearts in love.
Gloria in excelsis deo; Gloria in excelsis deo.

This sketch of the human story began in a cave; the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave. There is even a shadow of such a fancy in the fact that animals were again present; for it was a cave used as a stable by the mountaineers of the uplands about Bethlehem; who still drive their cattle into such holes and caverns at night. It was here that a homeless couple had crept underground with the cattle when the doors of the crowded caravanserai had been shut in their faces; and it was here beneath the very feet of the passers-by, in a cellar under the very floor of the world, that Jesus Christ was born. But in that second creation there was indeed something symbolical in the roots of the primeval rock or the horns of the prehistoric herd. God also was a Cave-Man, and had also traced strange shapes of creatures, curiously coloured, upon the wall of the world; but the pictures that he made had come to life.

A mass of legend and literature, which increases and will never end, has repeated and rung the changes on that single paradox; that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded. It is at least like a jest in this, that it is something which the scientific critic cannot see. He laboriously explains the difficulty which we have always defiantly and almost derisively exaggerated; and mildly condemns as improbable something that we have almost madly exalted as incredible; as something that would be much too good to be true, except that it is true. …

There is in that alone the touch of a revolution, as of the world turned upside down. It would be vain to attempt to say anything adequate, or anything new, about the change which this conception of a deity born like an outcast or even an outlaw had upon the whole conception of law and its duties to the poor and outcast. It is profoundly true to say that after that moment there could be no slaves. …

Men of the people, like the shepherds, men of the popular tradition, had everywhere been the makers of the mythologies. … They had best understood that the soul of a landscape is a story and the soul of a story is a personality. But rationalism had already begun to rot away these really irrational though imaginative treasures of the peasant; even as systematic slavery had eaten the peasant out of house and home. Upon all such peasantries everywhere there was descending a dusk and twilight of disappointment, in the hour when these few men discovered what they sought. Everywhere else Arcadia was fading from the forest. Pan was dead and the shepherds were scattered like sheep. And though no man knew it, the hour was near which was to end and to fulfil all things; and though no man heard it, there was one far-off cry in an unknown tongue upon the heaving wilderness of the mountains. The shepherds had found their Shepherd.

And the thing they found was of a kind with the things they sought. The populace had been wrong in many things; but they had not been wrong in believing that holy things could have a habitation and that divinity need not disdain the limits of time and space. And the barbarian who conceived the crudest fancy about the sun being stolen and hidden in a box, or the wildest myth about the god being rescued and his enemy deceived with a stone, was nearer to the secret of the cave and knew more about the crisis of the world, than all those in the circle of cities round the Mediterranean who had become content with cold abstractions or cosmopolitan generalisations; than all those who were spinning thinner and thinner threads of thought out of the transcendentalism of Plato or the orientalism of Pythagoras. The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic, it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true. Since that hour no mythologies have been made in the world. Mythology is a search.

By G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, Part II On the Man Called Christ
Quoted partially in the worship program (in pdf) at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 14

Music video by Chris Tomlin

Music video by Vanessa Lynn Williams

What Child is this who, laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet, while shepherds watch are keeping?
This, this is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing;
Haste, haste, to bring Him laud, the Babe, the Son of Mary.

Why lies He in such mean estate, where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christians, fear, for sinners here, the silent Word is pleading.
Nails, spear shall pierce Him through, the cross be borne for me, for you.
Hail, hail the Word made flesh, the Babe, the Son of Mary.

So bring Him incense, gold and myrrh, come peasant, king to own Him;
The King of kings salvation brings, let loving hearts enthrone Him.
Raise, raise a song on high, the virgin sings her lullaby.
Joy, joy for Christ is born, the Babe, the Son of Mary.

Words: William Chatterton Dix, 1865
Music: Green­sleeves, a 16th Cen­tu­ry Eng­lish folk tune
Other Info: midi

Sung at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 7

Charles Wesley

Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down;
Fix in us thy humble dwelling, all thy faithful mercies crown.
Jesus, thou art all compassion, pure unbounded love thou art;
Visit us with thy salvation, enter every trembling heart.

Breathe, O breathe thy loving Spirit into every troubled breast;
Let us all in thee inherit, let us find the promised rest.
Take away the love of sinning; Alpha and Omega be;
End of faith, as its Beginning, set our hearts at liberty.

Come, Almighty to deliver, let us all thy life receive;
Suddenly return, and never, never more thy temples leave.
Thee we would be always blessing, serve thee as thy hosts above,
Pray and praise thee without ceasing, glory in thy perfect love.

Finish, then, thy new creation; pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in thee;
Changed from glory, into glory, till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love, and praise.

Words: Charles Wesley, 1747
Music: John Zundel, 1870
Other Info: midi

Sung at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 26

Posted in Church, Religion Tagged: Charles Wesley, Christianity, John Zundel, Music, Redeemer Presbyterian Church ]]> http://pietas.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/love-divine/feed/ 1 Matthew Charles Wesley http://pietas.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/an-inversion/ http://pietas.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/an-inversion/#comments Sun, 16 Nov 2008 04:41:56 +0000 Matthew http://pietas.wordpress.com/?p=409 ]]>

God’s invasion of the world has wrought an inversion: God has reversed the positions of insiders and outsiders. Those who are in positions of authority and privilege reject Jesus and the message; even Jesus’ own disciples are slow to understand his teaching. Others, however—people of low or despised position in the social world of first-century Jewish culture—receive the gospel gladly. The lepers, the demon-possessed, the woman with a hemorrhage, the Syrophonecian woman, the little children, blind Bartimaeus, the nameless woman who anoints Jesus at Bethany for burial, the Gentile centurion at the cross—these are examples put forth by Mark of faithful response to Jesus. “Many who are the first will be the last, and the last will be first.” Those of us who are familiar with the story should not underestimate the shock of this inversion.

By Richard Hays, as quoted in the worship program (in pdf) at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 9

The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord;
she is his new creation by water and the Word:
from heav’n he came and sought her to be his holy bride;
with his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died.

Elect from ev’ry nation yet one o’er all the earth;
her charter of salvation one Lord, one faith, one birth;
one holy name she blesses, partakes one holy food,
and to one hope she presses, with ev’ry grace endued.

‘Mid toil and tribultion and tumult of her war,
she waits the consummation of peace forever more;
till with the vision glorious her longing eyes are blest,
and the great church victorious shall be the church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union with God, the Three-in-One,
and mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won;
O happy ones and holy, Lord give us grace that we,
like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with thee.

Words: Samuel J. Stone, 1866
Music: Samuel S. Wesley, 1864
Other Info: hymn details, sheet music and mp3

Sung at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 9

Of all the means by which Jesus could have chosen to be remembered, he chose to be remembered by a meal…. The meal, one of humankind’s most basic and common practices, was transformed by Jesus into an occasion of divine encounter. It was in the sharing of food and drink that he invited his companions to share in the grace of God.

By C.T. McMahon, as quoted in the worship program (in pdf) at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 2