For all the negative points I made about the Epistle of Barnabas, it does offer a beautiful portrait of redemption as the reenacting of God’s creation of humanity. Paul had written, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Look! The old has passed away, the new has come.” Barnabas simply restated that using the language of Genesis, and if his wording was a bit convoluted, nevertheless the image was powerful.

The image is also timeless, as evidenced by a pair of songs Gary Miller wrote for Acappella in the late 1990’s.

For those who don’t know me, the Chrisitan music group Acappella is the reason I know next to nothing about popular music from the eighties and nineties. In high school I had no fewer than 35 albums from their organization’s various groups (including Acappella, AVB, the Vocal Union, Keith Lancaster, Sweet Deliverance, His Image, and New Life Quartet), and it is no exaggeration to say that back then I could sing 300 of their songs from start to finish––and for many of them, I could sing most of the harmony parts. I’ve been to at least 10 of their concerts in 5 different states, and I’ve performed songs of theirs at church and school events with four different groups of friends spanning high school and college.

(I have a feeling that Matt, Cody, and Micah all have an idea of what I’m talking about.)

These two songs have their campy moments (the first one, no kidding, includes the lines “Let freedom ring!” and “Let children sing!”), but in both of them Miller does a beautiful job of using the creation story from Genesis, as Barnabas used it, to describe the work of Christ.

The first song speaks broadly, describing the fall of humanity and the change of the world order brought about by Christ:

from Let There Be Love
by Gary Miller (1999)

Once there was love, long ago
Sweet innocence, long ago
Please tell me where did it go?
Our of our hearts, out of our world

Then someone came in the night
Came to lead man to the light
Turn us around, make us right
Bring love to our hearts, love to our world

Let there be peace around the world
Let there by joy around the world
Let there be hope around the world
Let there be love around the world

The second song is more personal, beginning with God’s promise to Abraham and going on to proclaim God’s will as the starting point for believers’ lives and decisions, by virtue of the new beginning which God creates within people:

from Begins
by Gary Miller (1996)

To an aged man God spoke
Words that sounded like a joke
Soon his wife would bear a child
A saying hard to reconcile

So he asked, Can this thing be?
Can a nation spring from me?
With a body grown so old?
In a word this man was told:

Your life begins with God
Your love begins with God
Your hopes and you dreams
And your plans begin with God
Begin with God

I was standing on the edge of the road
Hopelessly alone in the dark
In the beginning I was empty and void
In my mind, my soul, my heart of hearts

The creator came and moved in my life
He spoke and turned my darkness to light
Day by day he’s rearranging my ways
He’s my Lord, my God, my King

The first song, of course, transforms the line “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3) into “Let there be love.” The second song is more subtle (though just barely), using the reference to the dark as well as the words empty and void, to point to the unformed earth of Gen 1:2 as a metaphor for a person’s life before they are recreated by God.

I don’t have a lot of reflections to add, except to say that I find these lyrics both beautiful and powerful. They’re another example (as I noted before of contemporary song lyrics) of how intertextuality can help theology become art.

I’m also kind of interested in the thoughts of any other Acappella junkies. Anyone want to compete for bragging rights about Acappella album collections, concert attendance, or whatever? If you were a fan when you were young, are there any albums of theirs you still listen to?