Zephaniah 3:17 (ESV) The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.
God sings over his beloved children a lullaby (albeit a loud one) to comfort their hearts. And so Christians have ever taken up the same method of singing to comfort to one other in the spirit of St. Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians: “He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.” The hymns we look at today fall into an old category that has disappeared from our modern hymnals but that used to be called hymns of “cross and comfort.”
Our first hymn just so happens to be my favorite. My wife knows that she has to have this sung at my funeral, and so as not to forget that, she had its opening line tattooed upon her back! Well, okay, it just might also be her favorite hymn too. How many of you find #708 is your favorite hymn too? Raise your hands. Excellent. The rest of you are wrong. Repent.
Pastor Martin Schalling (d. in 1608) first penned these stunning words shortly after he had been dismissed from his parish in Amberg and turned out from his home with wife and children, during Holy Week no less (Holy Tuesday treachery, anyone?), in 1568 at the insistence of the Calvinist elector who could not abide Pr. Schalling’s unswerving Lutheran confession. Pastor Schalling, clearly meditating upon Psalm 73, turned his heartache into a prayer and set it to music and that prayer has held a special place in the heart of so many of God’s people ever since. J. S. Bach famously borrows the third stanza to close out his monumental St. John passion, and that same stanza has found a place in our rite for the commendation of the dying. Let’s stand to sing this.
#708 Lord, Thee I Love
Sigh. We can all go home now, right? Come, Lord Jesus! Our next hymn was written by Catherina Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel (d. 1768) and is also a meditation upon a psalm, this time the Reformation Psalm, 46, specifically verse 10: “Be still and know that I am God.” So here the Christian speaks to her heart the sweet promises of God: that God is for us unchangeably. That He knows what’s up with the twists and turns of our earthly pilgrimage and we can trust His leading. That He is the comfort in the face of the departure of dearest friends and family. That at the end, we will be forever with the Lord. The tune is Sibelius’ profoundly moving Finlandia.
#752 Be Still, My Soul
Whenever I think of our next hymn, I think of an Advent sermon of Dr. Luther’s in which he said: “It is well with a man who belongs to an eternal kingdom. He can dance through life forevermore.” That sentiment is captured perfect by Cantor Johann Lindemann (d. 1631) in his marvelous “In Thee Is Gladness.” You see, in Jesus, the Christian will always have a reason for joy, even “amid all sadness” and so we join in all heaven’s rejoicing. And, by the way, I challenge you to keep your feet from moving and your body from swaying as you join in Giovanni Gastoldi’s jaunty tune. You’re going to end up dancing, I know you are. How could you not? You too belong to an eternal kingdom!
#818 In Thee Is Gladness
Told you; you ended up dancing, didn’t you? Next up is a very different flavor of comfort. It comes to us from the pen of the immortal Paul Gerhardt, another Lutheran pastor who ended up knowing quite a bit about suffering and cross-bearing. He lived through the ravages of the 30 years war; he, like Schalling, lost his parish in Berlin because he would not swerve from his ordination vows, he ended up burying his beloved wife as well as four of his five children. Yet from this man like from none other rose up a body of hymnody of a quality that still astounds even centuries later. Of his 134 German hymns, 29 are hymns of cross and comfort, and this perhaps the greatest in that collection. I should note that with all the sorrows, he was blessed to have a great working relationship with two outstanding musicians: first, Johann Crüger and then, Johann Ebeling. This tune is by the latter.
#756 Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me
Well as you just sang: “for I am His dear lamb” and the next hymn will rejoice in that beautiful imagery. It’s one of several English paraphrases of Psalm 23, which is THE psalm that Christians have sung to themselves and to each other through many valley of the shadow of death. This paraphrase is by Henry W. Baker (d. 1877), an Anglican clergyman, and he was the driving force behind the very famous Anglican hymnal Hymns Ancient and Modern. Of this setting, another famous Anglican priest, John Ellerton noted, that this really is the best of the paraphrase of the psalm. And it even captures a little bit of the LXX or Vulgate translation of the Psalm with “Your cup of inebriation; how pleasant it is” coming through with “and oh, what transport of delight from Thy pure chalice floweth.”
#709 The King of Love My Shepherd Is
Divine comfort indeed. Now for a contemporary hymn of cross and comfort, written by Joyce Anstruther (though her published name is Jan Struther, d. 1953). She actually started with the Irish melody SLANE and wrote the words to fit, by imaging how they’d impact a child sitting in the pew. It is a child’s comfort that rings through this that runs through the day as an image of our life, our earthly pilgrimage, which has its dawn, its day, its evening, and its sleeping.
#738 Lord of All Hopefulness
I’ll not forget the day that Stormy Greer walked into my office with that look on his face. I was pastor of a small parish at the time, and Stormy’s family was one of our cornerstones, his wife was also my organist. And he began by saying: “What God ordains is always good.” You see, they were moving and we were going to lose them and it would be very hard on our whole parish family. That Stormy turned immediately to this hymn and rattled off its opening lines shows how deeply Samuel Rodigast’s words sink in. He had written it originally for a friend whom he thought God was taking away with serious illness, but the ailing musician improved and actually wrote the tune for this text upon his sickbed. How amazing is that? Pachelbel’s partita on this tune is one that I look forward to hearing every year at our parish, and Gunter Stiller claims that Bach used this hymn in his Cantatas more than any other. Let’s stand and belt it out to our good and gracious Lord God!
#760 What God Ordains Is Always Good
“This is my comfort in my affliction; your promise gives me life.” Psalm 119:50. A huge thank you to Professor Jonathan Kohrs for his leadership on the organ and to Pastor Leonard Payton for the fine work upon the piano. Let’s give them a nice round of applause!
#708 Lord, Thee I Love
Sigh. We can all go home now, right? Come, Lord Jesus! Our next hymn was written by Catherina Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel (d. 1768) and is also a meditation upon a psalm, this time the Reformation Psalm, 46, specifically verse 10: “Be still and know that I am God.” So here the Christian speaks to her heart the sweet promises of God: that God is for us unchangeably. That He knows what’s up with the twists and turns of our earthly pilgrimage and we can trust His leading. That He is the comfort in the face of the departure of dearest friends and family. That at the end, we will be forever with the Lord. The tune is Sibelius’ profoundly moving Finlandia.
#752 Be Still, My Soul
Whenever I think of our next hymn, I think of an Advent sermon of Dr. Luther’s in which he said: “It is well with a man who belongs to an eternal kingdom. He can dance through life forevermore.” That sentiment is captured perfect by Cantor Johann Lindemann (d. 1631) in his marvelous “In Thee Is Gladness.” You see, in Jesus, the Christian will always have a reason for joy, even “amid all sadness” and so we join in all heaven’s rejoicing. And, by the way, I challenge you to keep your feet from moving and your body from swaying as you join in Giovanni Gastoldi’s jaunty tune. You’re going to end up dancing, I know you are. How could you not? You too belong to an eternal kingdom!
#818 In Thee Is Gladness
Told you; you ended up dancing, didn’t you? Next up is a very different flavor of comfort. It comes to us from the pen of the immortal Paul Gerhardt, another Lutheran pastor who ended up knowing quite a bit about suffering and cross-bearing. He lived through the ravages of the 30 years war; he, like Schalling, lost his parish in Berlin because he would not swerve from his ordination vows, he ended up burying his beloved wife as well as four of his five children. Yet from this man like from none other rose up a body of hymnody of a quality that still astounds even centuries later. Of his 134 German hymns, 29 are hymns of cross and comfort, and this perhaps the greatest in that collection. I should note that with all the sorrows, he was blessed to have a great working relationship with two outstanding musicians: first, Johann Crüger and then, Johann Ebeling. This tune is by the latter.
#756 Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me
Well as you just sang: “for I am His dear lamb” and the next hymn will rejoice in that beautiful imagery. It’s one of several English paraphrases of Psalm 23, which is THE psalm that Christians have sung to themselves and to each other through many valley of the shadow of death. This paraphrase is by Henry W. Baker (d. 1877), an Anglican clergyman, and he was the driving force behind the very famous Anglican hymnal Hymns Ancient and Modern. Of this setting, another famous Anglican priest, John Ellerton noted, that this really is the best of the paraphrase of the psalm. And it even captures a little bit of the LXX or Vulgate translation of the Psalm with “Your cup of inebriation; how pleasant it is” coming through with “and oh, what transport of delight from Thy pure chalice floweth.”
#709 The King of Love My Shepherd Is
Divine comfort indeed. Now for a contemporary hymn of cross and comfort, written by Joyce Anstruther (though her published name is Jan Struther, d. 1953). She actually started with the Irish melody SLANE and wrote the words to fit, by imaging how they’d impact a child sitting in the pew. It is a child’s comfort that rings through this that runs through the day as an image of our life, our earthly pilgrimage, which has its dawn, its day, its evening, and its sleeping.
#738 Lord of All Hopefulness
I’ll not forget the day that Stormy Greer walked into my office with that look on his face. I was pastor of a small parish at the time, and Stormy’s family was one of our cornerstones, his wife was also my organist. And he began by saying: “What God ordains is always good.” You see, they were moving and we were going to lose them and it would be very hard on our whole parish family. That Stormy turned immediately to this hymn and rattled off its opening lines shows how deeply Samuel Rodigast’s words sink in. He had written it originally for a friend whom he thought God was taking away with serious illness, but the ailing musician improved and actually wrote the tune for this text upon his sickbed. How amazing is that? Pachelbel’s partita on this tune is one that I look forward to hearing every year at our parish, and Gunter Stiller claims that Bach used this hymn in his Cantatas more than any other. Let’s stand and belt it out to our good and gracious Lord God!
#760 What God Ordains Is Always Good
“This is my comfort in my affliction; your promise gives me life.” Psalm 119:50. A huge thank you to Professor Jonathan Kohrs for his leadership on the organ and to Pastor Leonard Payton for the fine work upon the piano. Let’s give them a nice round of applause!
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