Corey Janz – Art & Theology

POEM SERIES: “Twelve Days of Advent” by Kate Bluett: This year on her blog, writer Kate Bluett [previously] is publishing a series of original metrical verses based loosely on the cumulative song “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” She calls it the Twelve Days of Advent and through it explores the theology of Christ’s coming. I love this creative, sacred spin on the popular seasonal ditty! Here’s where the series currently stands (my favorite poems are in boldface):

“A Partridge in a Pear Tree”: Bluett imagines, in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a bird singing (representing, as I take it, God’s word), but Adam and Eve heed not his song, and, taking the tree’s forbidden fruit, find themselves exiled. The bird weeps for the alienation of his two friends, and wings his way east of Eden, into the home of a young maiden, a daughter of Eve, who receives him, shelters him, an act that leads to restoration. Bluett uses some of the language of late medieval English folksong, such as “with a low, low, my love, my love” and “welaway.”
“Two Turtledoves”
“Three French Hens”
“Four Calling Birds”: This poem is brilliant. In it the four matriarchs in Jesus’s genealogy speak to Mary, tenderly calling her “Child” and rejoicing in her “bringing forth our life’s tomorrow.” Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba—they’ve long awaited redemption, and now they’re at its threshold. Mary’s yes to God’s call “set[s] [their] dry bones stirring, thrumming / with a hope [they’d] hardly dared.” They inform her that her vocation will involve great suffering (as we know, she’ll experience the brutal death of her son)—but her willingness to give up her son to the cross, to endure that rupture, will mean new life for the world.
“Five Gold Rings”
“Six Geese a-Laying”: Picking up the Isaianic language of the wilderness being made glad, the poetic speaker sings an eschatological vision of flocks coming home to “the orchard of the rood” (rood = cross) to lay and hatch eggs in nests once empty, now brimming with life.
“Seven Swans a-Swimming”

I eagerly await the remaining five poems!

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SUBSTACK SERIES: “Art + Advent 2025” by Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt: The art historian Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt [previously], author of Redeeming Vision and the Loving Look Substack, is one of my favorite writers. This Advent she is writing a weekly series of art reflections centered on the themes of hope, peace, joy, and love.

>> “Week 1 // Hope: Abraham’s Oak and Sarah’s Laughter”: Looking at Henry Ossawa Tanner’s painting Abraham’s Oak, Weichbrodt writes about shadowy promise. She also considers, with reference to an early Byzantine mosaic of the Hospitality of Abraham, how to hope again after being wounded, as Sarah did, is a vulnerable thing. “As Advent begins, I find myself peering into a Tanner-like mist, seeing the dim outline of longed-for goodness taking shape in the distance. Sometimes I’m full of hope, but I’m also, like Sarah, sometimes full of armored laughter.”

Tanner, Henry Ossawa_Abraham's Oak — Henry Ossawa Tanner (American, 1859–1937), *Abraham’s Oak*, 1905. Oil on canvas, 21 3/8 × 28 5/8 in. (54.4 × 72.8 cm). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

>> “Week 2 // Peace: A Stitch Pulling Tight”: “How do we do repair work in a fraying world with our own, fraying selves? What thread can stitch together all these gaping wounds?” Weichbrodt asks. She looks at Mary Weatherford’s monumental painting Gloria (new to me!), finding in the hot coral neon light blazing across the canvas resonance with Renaissance paintings of the Annunciation, which portray the Light of the World as the stitch that mends the tear between God and humanity.

Weatherford, Mary_Gloria — Mary Weatherford (American, 1963–), *Gloria*, 2018. Flashe paint and neon on linen, 117 × 234 in. (297.2 × 594.4 cm). High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

>> “Week 3 // Joy: Far as the Curse Is Found”: In this post, Weichbrodt explores nine Visitation paintings and one extraordinary embroidery. “Every time I see [a Visitation artwork],” Weichbrodt writes, “I encounter joy. It’s not that Mary and Elizabeth are always smiling. Often, their expressions are quite serious. But joy—deep, sustained, sustaining joy—circulates between them like an electrical current.” Justice, threshold, and fecundity are among the supplementary themes touched on.

Visitation embroidery — *The Visitation*, England, first half of 17th century. Embroidery, 44.1 × 57 cm (framed). Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

Weichbrodt’s final Advent 2025 post, on love, will be published this Saturday.

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SONGS:

Here are four newly released Christmas songs of note: two originals, one lyrical adaptation of a classic, and a new arrangement.

>> “War on Christmas” by Seryn: Seryn’s new album is titled War on Christmas. Here’s the title track:

The refrain is:

There is a war on Christmas
But it’s not the one you think
It’s in the news, it’s out of mind
It happens overseas
Cause as we sing the hymns and songs
With families by our sides
There is a war on Christmas
Someone’s fighting to survive

“War on Christmas” is a phrase some Christian conservatives in the US use to express their feeling of having their faith traditions attacked by the sinister forces of pluralism when people or signage greet them with a generic “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” I roll my eyes big-time when I hear people complain about this, because it’s ridiculous for any American to assert that they are impeded from or ostracized for celebrating Christmas in this country, or to take offense that a stranger does not automatically assume their particular religious affiliation.

Seryn’s song affirms that yes, there is a war on Christmas—only it’s a war not against personal religious freedoms in America but against peace, love, and the other values Christ came to teach and embody. When humans wage literal wars with literal weapons, killing and maiming each other and inducing mass terror—that’s an assault against Christ’s mass, with its message of welcome and reconciliation. So, too, when we perpetuate hate, whether on personal, national, or global scales. As another Christmas song puts it, “Hate is strong and mocks the song of ‘Peace on earth, goodwill to men.’”

>> “O New Commingling! O Strange Conjunction!” by the Anachronists: The lyrics to this new song by the Anachronists [previously]—Corey Janz, Andrés Pérez González, and Jonathan Lipps—are a paraphrase from the sermon “On the Theophany, or Birthday of Christ” by Gregory of Nazianzus (ca. 329–390), one of the most influential and poetic theologians of the early church. Gregory delivered the sermon, labeled “Oration 38” in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series, at Christmastime in 380 in Constantinople, where he served as bishop. In section 13, the Anachronists’ source for the song, he expresses awe at the beautiful mystery of the Incarnation. Below is an excerpt from the public-domain NPNF translation.

The Word of God Himself—Who is before all worlds, the Invisible, the Incomprehensible, the Bodiless, Beginning of Beginning, the Light of Light, the Source of Life and Immortality, the Image of the Archetypal Beauty, the immovable Seal, the unchangeable Image, the Father’s Definition and Word—came to His own Image, and took on Him flesh for the sake of our flesh, and mingled Himself with an intelligent soul for my soul’s sake, purifying like by like; and in all points except sin was made man. . . . O new commingling; O strange conjunction; the Self-Existent comes into being, the Uncreate is created, That which cannot be contained is contained. . . . He Who gives riches becomes poor, for He assumes the poverty of my flesh, that I may assume the richness of His Godhead. He that is full empties Himself, for He empties Himself of His glory for a short while, that I may have a share in His fullness. What is the riches of His goodness? What is this mystery that is around me? I had a share in the image; I did not keep it; He partakes of my flesh that He may both save the image and make the flesh immortal. He communicates a second Communion far more marvelous than the first.

>> “Away in a Manger (Then to Calvary)” by Sarah Sparks: Singer-songwriter Sarah Sparks [previously] released a new EP, Christmas Hymns, last month, comprising five classic carols, including one with revised lyrics that further draw out the significance of the Incarnation. I’m a big fan of Sparks’s voice and her no-frills acoustic style.

Away in the manger
No crib for a bed
The great King of Heaven
Does lay down his head
The stars he created
Look down where he lay
The little Lord Jesus
Asleep on the hay

And there in the manger
The Maker of earth
In riches and glory?
No, born in the dirt
With oxen and cattle
With shepherds and sheep
No stranger to weakness
He loves even me

And there in the manger
Is our Servant-King
He sits with the lowly
He washes their feet
Away in the manger
Then to Calvary
His birth, life, and death
And his raising for me

And there in the manger
Is my greatest friend
His mercy, his patience
His grace know no end
Be near me, Lord Jesus
For all of my days
In life and in death
Till we meet face to face

>> “Angels We Have Heard on High” by the Petersens: Last Friday the Petersens [previously] released a music video—shot at Wonderland Tree Farm in Pea Ridge, Arkansas—debuting their new bluegrass arrangement of one of my favorite Christmas carols. Banjo, mandolin, fiddle, acoustic guitar, dobro, upright bass—I love the instrumentation of the bluegrass genre and what it adds here, and the Petersens are consummate performers.

Here’s my new Spotify playlist for July:

Every month I curate a mix of old and new Christian (or Christian-resonant) song releases. For this coming month, some of the new songs come from the following five albums that were released this spring or early summer, which I’ve really been enjoying. I list them here chronologically and encourage you to listen to them each in full!

1. Jesus by Jon Guerra, released April 4, 2025: An album of original songs in conversation with the words of Christ. Guerra says that a few years ago, to reacquaint himself with Jesus, he began reading cyclically through the Gospels, and as he did, “little song fragments started coming. I was trying to really hear the words, to feel the stories again, and so I’d write little tunes around certain phrases—‘do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,’ ‘if anyone would come after me,’ ‘give to everyone who asks of you,’ ‘take this cup from me,’” etc. He then developed those into the twelve fully fledged songs that made it onto the album.

Favorite tracks: “Reckoner (An Axe Laid to the Root),” “Where Your Treasure Is” (above), “Love Your Enemies”

2. Sermon on the Mount: Bible Memory Collection by The Soil and The Seed Project, released May 16, 2025: The Soil and The Seed Project is a ministry that provides intergenerational resources for people as they follow Jesus, read scripture, and talk about their faith together. One of those resources is new music, written and recorded by an expanding collective of folks. All twenty-five songs on this new double album of theirs are based on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7, which contains the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, warnings against hypocrisy, the call to be salt and light, the command to love one’s enemies, the parable of the wise and foolish builders, assurances of God’s care, and the promise that those who seek will find. For the first disc, the Project set 48 of the 111 sermon verses to music, and for the second, they invited a handful of singer-songwriters to write songs in response to what they encountered as they dwelt in the text.

The album is accompanied by a “Little Liturgies” booklet of litanies, reflection prompts, and line drawings covering eleven weeks. Both the music and the booklet (digital or physical, while supplies last) are FREE from their website!

Favorite tracks: “Come and Eat” (above), “Mountains of Treasure,” “God of Mercy, God of Peace,” “Take What You’ve Given”

3. Though It Be a Cross by Weston Skaggs, released June 20, 2025: An EP of six hymns, freshly arranged and performed by Weston Skaggs of Ohio. The album title comes from a line from “Nearer, My God, to Thee” (video below). “Sarah Fuller Flower Adams wrote the lyrics from the perspective of Jacob and his received revelation of God’s nearness. A nearness that only occurred when he felt most hopeless and alone,” Skaggs explains. “In meditating on that narrative, she determined to be like Saint Peter: who became the most like Christ his master when he was raised on his own cross.” This song and others feature backing vocals by Katy Martin.

The most stylistically daring is “For the Beauty of the Earth,” whose verses Skaggs transposed to a minor key—to allude to the beauty and brokenness of creation and relationships, Skaggs said, “invit[ing] listeners to hold both gratitude and longing in the same breath.”

Favorite tracks: “No, Not One,” “Nearer, My God, to Thee” (above)

4. Confessions by the Anachronists, released June 26, 2025: The Anachronists are Andrés Pérez González, Corey Janz, and Jonathan Lipps, three musician friends who met while studying theology at Regent College in Vancouver and who have formed a group to give renewed voice, through modern indie music, to theologians and mystics from ages past. Confessions is their debut EP, with six songs rooted in Augustine’s spiritual autobiography from the late fourth century. The songs address grief over the death of a dear friend, and God’s merciful pursuit of those who wander; a preconversion sense of dissatisfaction but as yet unwillingness to make any changes; God as the One who is fully at rest in his own self, and how we might share in that rest; struggles with distraction and pride in the spiritual life; and the promise of renewal both personal and universal.

The still life colored-pencil drawing commissioned for the album cover is by the Finnish artist Minni Havas; it portrays Easter lilies growing out of a compost heap. It was especially inspired by the concluding song, “All of Our Decayed Parts,” which is itself based on an excerpt from Book IV.16 of the Confessions:

Do not be vain, my soul. Do not deafen your heart’s ear with the tumult of your vanity. Even you have to listen. The Word himself cries to you to return. There is the place of undisturbed quietness where love is not deserted if it does not itself depart. See how these things pass away to give place to others, and how the universe in this lower order is constituted out of all its parts. “Surely I shall never go anywhere else,” says the word of God. Fix your dwelling there. Put in trust there whatever you have from him, my soul, at least now that you are wearied of deceptions. Entrust to the truth whatever has come to you from the truth. You will lose nothing. The decayed parts of you will receive a new flowering, and all your sicknesses will be healed. All that is ebbing away from you will be given fresh form and renewed. (trans. Henry Chadwick)

This album comprises just six of the thirty-some Confessions-based songs the trio has written; they are testing the waters with it to see if there is more interest and funding to record more, and then to apply this approach to other ancient and medieval theological and spiritual writings by such luminaries as Athanasius and Julian of Norwich. Some laypeople feel daunted to read centuries-old works, or assume that they’re mostly irrelevant. But the Anachronists seek to mine the riches of historical Christian thought and provide an easy access point through music, hopefully encouraging folks to seek out the sources. I’m excited to see what they do next! Follow them on Instagram @anachronists.music.

Favorite tracks: “God of the Runaways,” “All of Our Decayed Parts” (above)

5. All Shall Be Well by the Good Shepherd Collective, released June 27, 2025: This album consists mainly of gospel and hymn covers. The artists in this collective, whom I’ve mentioned many times before, are top-notch, and I’m always excited to see what they put out.

Favorite tracks: “Lift Every Voice” (James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson), “Ancient of Days” (Ron Kenoly) (this appears to be a re-release from the collective’s Gospel Songs, vol. 1; above), “My Jesus Is All” (the Staples Singers), “I Saw the Light” (Hank Williams)

Tag: Corey Janz

Roundup: Theological spinoff of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” Advent art with Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt, and four new Christmas song recordings

New albums: “Confessions” by the Anachronists, “Though It Be a Cross” by Weston Skaggs, and more