Christian vocation and The Cowboy Junkies

By Greg Jones

When I was an adolescent, coming of age, thinking about who I wanted to be “when I grew up,” God sneaked up on me. As I look back now some twenty years from the time when I began to really consider “my future,” as one so often does in college, I can recall a number of these moments when God slipped into my thoughts. One of them involved a band who I heard play in Raleigh on the campus of N.C. State.

Twenty years ago I was fascinated by the Cowboy Junkies’ album, The Trinity Sessions. The album was a blend of rock, traditional Americana and gospel, and it was recorded in an old church with a single microphone. The lead singer had an angelic voice, and the gentle sound of the band was deeply engaging for me. Several of the songs became instant favorites for me, but the one which got hold of me was the traditional gospel tune, “Working on a Building.” The song’s lyrics are few, and all center around this sentence: “I’m working on a building, it’s a Holy Ghost building, for my Lord, for my Lord.”

The song got through to me in those days and achieved the Lord’s goal of stimulating within me a desire to offer my life to more than my own personal goals and uses. As Peter wrote to the earliest disciples of Christ, “let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.” (1 Peter 2.5) Indeed, I feel that our entire goal as disciples is to allow the Holy Spirit to build us up, and the world through us, into the house of God – wherein God may abide with His people.

That’s what it means to me to follow Christ in discipleship and mission. Episcopalians, listen, we’re working on a building, a Holy Ghost building, for our Lord, for our Lord. As the old song concludes, “If I was a singer I tell you what I’d do, I would keep on singing and work on that building too.” Let us make that our song together, a song of birth pangs, growing pains, and ever building joy in Christ Jesus.

The Rev. Samuel Gregory Jones (‘Greg’) is rector of St. Michael’s in Raleigh, N.C. and the bass player in indie-rock band The Balsa Gliders — whose fourth studio release is available on iTunes. He blogs at Anglican Centrist.

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