Encouragement for a lifelong journey of faith

Category: Andrew Yang’s songs (Page 2 of 2)

September 28, 2022 — Let Us Be Free

One of my favorite experiences of the church has been writing songs for our Sunday meetings, and I’ve been honored to see how they’ve circulated in our community. Translating the poetry of Scripture and the church mothers and fathers into music is a meditative act for me, and I hope that you can get a sense of that this week. — Andrew Yang

Today’s Bible reading

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may increase? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.

Romans 6:1-4

More Thoughts for Meditation:

https://youtu.be/yBHOI4y3ubE

https://youtu.be/WT2ZtGtkX2E

Let us be free

From dead ways of living

And to share in the newness of life that You give

To be joined in Your death

And join with Your rising

And to join in the breaking of death as we live

 

We shall all be changed 

At last we’ll be remade

Made like You, we’ll rise

Death itself will die

“Let Us Be Free” was written for the Lent season of 2021, and looking back, I think it’s as much about wanting to be free of the covid-19 lockdown as much as it is about looking forward to the resurrection of the dead.

The song is based off of Romans 6, but also draws from 1 Corinthians. Specifically, verses 51, “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed,” and 26, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

We have a visceral reaction to the word sin, probably from televangelists and parents trying to make us feel bad about ourselves, but I wanted to try to recapture the sense of the word as the Apostle Paul uses it — a thing that not only arises out of individual actions, like lying or stealing, but also in social and economic ones, like the police or the suburbs, or even physical ones, like calamities or diseases; a thing that is an enemy.

So instead of “sin” I used the phrase of “dead ways of living,” which I think captures some of that. We are surrounded by dead ways of living that dishonor our neighbors, and our planet, and even ourselves. The good news of Jesus is that these ways of living will themselves die.

Suggestions for action

Since the good news of Jesus is that these oppressive ways of living will be ended by God, what role is there left for us to play? Should we, for instance, continue to be racist since God will end racism with or without our help anyway? As Paul says, “by no means!” We’re invited to participate in a new way of living and join in the breaking of death as we live. It’s worth taking into account the dead ways of living that inhabit our lives, and how we can get a foretaste of ultimate victory by continuing the process that Jesus started and will one day finish, of tearing them out, root and branch.

September 27, 2022 — Light from Light

One of my favorite experiences of the church has been writing songs for our Sunday meetings, and I’ve been honored to see how they’ve circulated in our community. Translating the poetry of Scripture and the church mothers and fathers into music is a meditative act for me, and I hope that you can get a sense of that this week. — Andrew Yang

Today’s Bible reading

Who, being in very nature God,

    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing

    by taking the very nature of a servant,

    being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

    he humbled himself

    by becoming obedient to death—

        even death on a cross!

Philippians 2:6-11

More Thoughts for Meditation:

https://circleofhopeaudioart.bandcamp.com/track/light-from-light

Take on our eyes and our hands and our feet

Cry with our lungs and the air that we breathe

The things that we were, and we are, and we do

They are now holy cause you did them too

 

Light from Light, God from God

Flesh like ours, breath and blood 

I wrote “Light from Light” for an Advent season when I was tired of singing “O Come O Come Emmanuel” every week (Although “O Come O Come Emmanuel” is still objectively the best Advent or Christmas song). “Light from Light” draws on imagery from the Nicene Creed, a statement of faith from the 4th century:

  God from God,

        Light from Light,

        true God from true God,

   begotten, not made;

   of the same essence as the Father.

   Through him all things were made.

   For us and for our salvation

        he came down from heaven;

        he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary,

        and was made human.

The Nicene Creed is some top-class poetry in my opinion. But the beauty of the creed isn’t in the high mindedness of phrases like “God from God, Light from Light.” God is big and grand and that’s all well and good, but that’s not the point of the creed or the mystery of the incarnation. The point is in that understated line at the end: “[he] was made human.”

St. Gregory of Nazianzus wrote: “That which is not taken up is not healed. That which is united to God, that will be saved.”

St. Gregory was refuting a 4th century heresy that said that God only took on parts of humanity when God became human. St. Gregory’s response is that God came to save us by becoming us, and in order to save all us, God had to take on all of what makes us, us. Otherwise, not all of us would be saved.

I did my best to reflect this idea in the final verse of Light from Light:

The things that we were, and we are, and we do

They are now holy cause you did them too

Suggestions for action

It is literal heresy to believe that any part of what makes you, you, is not shared by God through Jesus, and therefore made holy.

Because of this, any ordinary human act can be imbued with holiness, if we take the time to see it that way. In recognizing that even ordinary things that we do, eating, breathing, talking, relating to one another, are acts we share with God “by whom all things were made,” we can bring the beauty of the incarnation into our whole lives. Even more, we can recognize that the people around us are involved in sacred acts of their own, and remember that in his humanity, Jesus unites us to God and to each other.

September 26, 2022 — Psalm 139

One of my favorite experiences of the church has been writing songs for our Sunday meetings, and I’ve been honored to see how they’ve circulated in our community. Translating the poetry of Scripture and the church mothers and fathers into music is a meditative act for me, and I hope that you can get a sense of that this week. — Andrew Yang

Today’s Bible reading

You have searched me, Lord,

    and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise;

    you perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down;

    you are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue

    you, Lord, know it completely.

You hem me in behind and before,

    and you lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

    too lofty for me to attain.

Psalm 139:1-6

More thoughts for meditation

https://music.circleofhope.net/songs/detail/1060

Lord, you search me and you know me,

You know when I rest and I rise,

All my thoughts to you are open

You see through my disguise

You have made us  for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts, they are restless until (they rest in you)

This song based on Psalm 139 is drawn from a responsive litany that pairs Psalm 139 with a quote from Book I of St. Augustine’s Confessions.

St. Augustine writes, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” The quote pairs so well with the Psalm, which is about the very same idea — that God has made us with intention, and God holds us to Godself with that same intention. 

As an Asian American and a child of immigrants, I’ve often felt out of place and a lack of belonging, whether it’s because of food, or language, or the shape of my eyes, or just broadly the fact that I often feel transplanted to wherever I am. I’m never assumed to belong. For me, the idea that I was knit together, that I am held close, that I am known completely, isn’t an idea that comes intuitively. Instead I always feel the restless need to explain myself. 

Suggestions for action

The idea that God has made us for Godself has a special resonance for me. I think it should hold a special resonance to anyone who feels out of place, but especially BIPOC, LGTBQIA+, and disabled folks, where it often feels impossible to rest because the powers-that-be are always making us justify our existence to them. In the face of that, it’s a matter of survival to remind ourselves that God knit us together with purpose and delight from the beginning, that God is with us whether we’re close or far, that God sees us even shrouded in darkness. I’ve found that it’s when rest feels most impossible that it’s most important to repeat to myself the truth that’s found in Psalm 139, that Augustine used to describe God’s pull on his life.

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts, they are restless until they rest in you.

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