I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy 😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the very modern hymns.
Today’s song is Christ is Risen by Matt Maher. It’s from 2009, which isn’t very far back.
As it happens, Matt Mahler is a Roman Catholic. It pleases me to see Roman Catholics focusing on Christ himself. When I was growing up in Ireland, most Catholics seemed to have very little interest in religion, and those who did tended to be part of a Mary cult.
Then, there was the Catholic charismatic movement. I had little interest in it. It just seemed like a happy clappy church folk mass sort of thing. I didn’t generally enjoy Mass, but I tended to cringe when I saw any attempts to make it feel trendy 😀.
Yet I knew a good number of people who began their evangelical lives in the charismatic movement. Many left to form little independent charismatic or Pentecostal fellowships. That was hugely controversial in 1970s Ireland. Back then, I remember hearing about a whole group leaving the Roman Catholic church in Ballaghaderreen, County Roscommon, but I can find nothing in the web about it. It was a big news story at the time. I think that I might have even met someone from the group in later years.
It’s often said that the Roman Catholic church clamped down on the movement. Perhaps it’s understandable because there wasn’t much about it that was Catholic, though some tried to make it Catholic. I remember hearing a verse added to the Bind Us Together hymn – “Mary is his mother, we must love her too” 😀.
Then, in later years, I heard that the Roman Catholic church in the US were adopting a lot of the modern cultural elements of evangelical churches, such as worship music. Many in my circles, including myself, had little interest in modern evangelicalism in any case. We saw it as a sinister development. But nowadays, I try to rejoice at any movement that proclaims Jesus. I’m reminded of something that Jesus said. His disciples were anxious about another group who casting out demons:
Mark 9:38-40
38 “Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.” 39 “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, 40
And in later years, the Apostle Paul was glad that rival groups still got the gospel out, despite his disagreements with them:
Philippians 1:15-18
15 It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. 16 The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. 18 But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.
So, however keen I am to promote my particular brand of evangelicalism, the important thing is to point people to Christ and the Scriptures. They’re not necessarily going to come to the same conclusions as me about everything 😀.
Anyway, back to today’s hymn
One verse that puzzles me is the following:
Let no one caught in sin remain
Inside the lie of inward shame
We fix our eyes upon the cross
And run to Him who showed great love
It seems to me that we should always be ashamed of sin. Why should inward shame be a lie? But I think that he means that the lie is that God rejects you and will go on rejecting you because of your sin, however much you repent. I think that Judas fell into that trap. He was sorry for what he did, but he ended up committing suicide. By contrast, what Peter did wasn’t all that different. He denied Jesus three times. He could have gone the way of Judas or simply went back to being a fisherman. But he repented and sought out the risen Christ. And a few weeks later, he was the main person proclaiming the gospel on the day of Pentecost. I don’t see him as the first Pope, but in the early years of the New Testament church, before the conversion of Paul, he was the main guy. And he wrote two epistles.
And even as Christians, shame can keep us away from prayer, reading the Bible, fellowship and evangelism. Satan loves to remind us of how bad we are to keep us from God. And the Holy Spirit will remind us of how bad we are to encourage us to call on the Saviour.
We need to accept that we do have a lot to be ashamed of. We won’t be perfect until we get to heaven. But we have a wonderful risen Saviour and a wonderful father, who, like the father of the prodigal son, rushes out to greet us when we come and repent. I can think of two older hymns that touch on the theme of repentance and forgiveness:
Getting back to today’s hymn, Christ is Risen is mainly simply rejoicing. The resurrection always fills us with joy. We’re not following someone who just claimed to see an angel or wrote a book while feeling inspired. We’re following someone who predicted that he would die and rise in three days! Seems like a mad prediction to make, but he did rise. Even those who don’t believe the Bible must account for how such a claim had so great an impact on history. Christianity didn’t spread by military means in its first few centuries. It was only when empires and nations started adopting it that religion got entangled with politics and became a factor in wars. But in the early stages, it was the Holy Spirit and knowledge of the resurrection that inspired people to spread the gospel and believe. And that’s how it is today in the multicultural society that I live in, and hopefully, throughout the world.
Here are some other versions of the Matt Maher song:
Hibernia Gospel 