The Hymnal: a Treasury of the Christian Faith and Life
“The hymnal connects us with our Christian heritage, a legacy that should not be denied to this generation of Christians.”
Through a felicitous turn of events, I stumbled onto the writings of the Rev. A.W. Tozer (1897-1963), a self-educated, pietistic, fundamentalist CM&A minister who was critical of the Evangelical Church of his own time for being too insular, cut off from church history, and seeing worship as entertainment. I plan on writing more about him. But the quote above from The Crucified Life: How to Live Out a Deeper Christian Experience (posthumously published in 2011) is, I believe spot on.
In musing on the hymnal, Tozer also observes:
My heart aches to see [the Christian hymnal] increasingly being neglected by congregations. The Christian hymnal is one of the great depositories of the Christian life and experiences…. Pushing the hymnal aside… is to forfeit one of the great spiritual treasures of the Christian church.
And:
Show me the condition of your Bible and your hymnal and I will accurately predict the condition of your soul. Our souls need to be nurtured and cultivated, and nothing does that better than the Christian hymnal. Hardly a morning passes when I don’t kneel down with an open Bible and a hymnal and sing comfortably off-key the great hymns of the church…. I often counsel young Christians after they have their Bible and their Bible reading established, to get a hymnal.
As Tozer laments, the loss of the hymnal is a loss of our Christian legacy, a severing of our ties to the past, to the wisdom of the past saints of the ages, leaving us as impoverished orphans who do not know our mothers and fathers, let alone our grandparents.
In the past few decades, LCMS churches have offered an alternative service called “contemporary.” The liturgical service was designated as the “traditional” service. Some churches even completed the hat trick with a third option at the Worship Buffet called the “blended” service. In time, many LCMS congregations ditched the traditional service all together. And those who have done so are thieves, brigands, scoundrels, pilferers, larcenists, and robbers. For as Tozer pointed out, the hymnal is a “treasure,” and it has been plundered from thousands of our people - as well as generations yet unborn, who will be deprived of their legacy that is rightfully theirs.
How dare you pastors and lay leaders reduce our people to a state of spiritual bastardy? You’re starving them of real meat, and replacing it with the empty calories of spiritual junk food, making them dull and fat and sporting a spiritual mouthful of cavities. Those pastors who have done this should be, to employ a turn of phrase from Luther, “pelted with dung” (LC, Preface 13).
We pastors (and congregations) are stewards of these treasures. And for Lutherans, the crime is felonious, not a misdemeanor. For our tradition has sifted out the finest of the finest, our forbears passing them along reverently to us, only to have us toss them on the rubbish heap for the bulldozer to come and push it into the landfill.
Pastor Tozer had a deep appreciation for the hymns of the ancient church, the medieval church, the Reformation (including our great Lutheran hymnody, such as the spiritual treasury of Paul Gerhardt, mentioned below), and more modern hymns as well. For our hymns are not merely “songs,” but rather catechesis, praise, spiritual reflection, confession, and proclamation - put into poetic form to aid recitation and memorization - and set to music so that these treasures can be chanted by an individual in his private devotions, or sung together in harmony in congregational worship, and at other events where Christians of all ages and walks of life gather, voices blending in sweet concord, and lifting the spirits of those of us in the Church Militant, waging war against the devil, the world, and the flesh.
It is unconscionable to refuse to transmit the treasures of Lutheran hymnody to our congregations and their progeny. They should not have to discover them later on in life, and wonder why you withheld this exquisite trove from them - especially in times of crisis, need, or spiritual yearning. Like Esau, contemporary pastors have made a foolish exchange: timeless treasures for timebound trash, fine gold for tin. And they have thrown away their own birthright in the process.
For nobody in this fallen world is unscathed. Nobody’s life is free from tragedy. Nobody is immune to suffering - whether it be sudden and unexpected, or a long, drawn out period of pain - both ourselves and our loved ones. We are burdened physically, mentally, and spiritually. And it is in such times of severe trial, that the hymnal brings the applied Word of God to the Christian. And our Lutheran tradition contains the very best, hands down. Some of our greatest hymnwriters suffered unspeakable tragedies in their own lives, and yet, were able to boldly confess the goodness and mercy of the Lord, the fact that no matter what befalls us, His will is always good, and His care for us never fades. It is in such times that we need the hymnal, and we need the very best that our Lutheran hymnody has to offer.
With a tip of the hat to Mrs. Janet Frese (wife of my classmate, the Rev. Michael Frese), look at the contrast of these two hymns: one from American Revivalism, and one from our Lutheran tradition. The first is called When We Walk With the Lord, sometimes called Trust and Obey (written in 1887 by the Rev. John H. Sammis - 1846-1919). Note how the author confuses Law and Gospel, and think about how this hymn conditionally ties the comfort of Jesus to our works of obedience (rather than to His mercy).
When We Walk With the Lord (Trust and Obey)
1 When we walk with the Lord
in the light of his word,
what a glory he sheds on our way!
While we do his good will,
he abides with us still,
and with all who will trust and obey.
Refrain:
Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
2 Not a burden we bear,
not a sorrow we share,
but our toil he doth richly repay;
not a grief or a loss,
not a frown or a cross,
but is blest if we trust and obey. [Refrain]
3 But we never can prove
the delights of his love
until all on the altar we lay;
for the favor he shows,
for the joy he bestows,
are for them who will trust and obey. [Refrain]
4 Then in fellowship sweet
we will sit at his feet,
or we’ll walk by his side in the way;
what he says we will do,
where he sends we will go;
never fear, only trust and obey. [Refrain]
Notice that the hymnwriter gives with one hand, and takes with the other. In a time of trial or tragedy, the one singing or praying this hymn is encouraged to look at himself. It is a theology of glory that may well cause him to despair, thinking that God is punishing him for some disobedience. And instead of taking comfort in the Gospel, he may feel the terror of the Law and the temptation to doubt his own salvation.
Now compare this to Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me? (written some time between 1649 and 1674) by Lutheran pastor the Rev. Paul Gerhardt (1607-76). Pastor Gerhardt’s life was one of constant suffering: removal from his parish, the Thirty Years War, the deaths of his wife and several children, and the loss of benefactors. And through it all, Gerhardt’s hymns are beautiful confessions of steadfast faith.
Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me? (LSB 756)
1. Why should cross and trial grieve me?
Christ is near
With His cheer;
Never will He leave me.
Who can rob me of the heaven
That God’s Son
For me won
When His life was given?
2. When life’s troubles rise to meet me,
Though their weight
May be great,
They will not defeat me.
God, my loving Savior sends them;
He who knows
All my woes
Knows how best to end them.
3. God gives me my days of gladness,
And I will
Trust Him still
When He sends me sadness.
God is good;
His love attends me day by day,
Come what may,
Guides me and defends me.
4. From God’s joy can nothing sever,
For I am
His dear lamb,
He, my Shepherd ever.
I am His because He gave me
His own blood
For my good,
By His death to save me.
5. Now in Christ, death cannot slay me,
Though it might,
Day and night,
Trouble and dismay me.
Christ has made my death a portal
From the strife
Of this life
To His joy immortal!
Which of these hymns will offer comfort, grounded in the Holy Scriptures and the mercy of God in Christ Jesus, when your wife dies suddenly in a car accident, when your husband leaves you and your children, when your parents are suffering dementia, when your child is in a coma after an overdose, when your find yourself bleeding out on a battlefield, when you come home to discover that your house has burned down, when you are in prison for a crime you did not (or did) commit? Which of these hymns confesses the almighty will of God among the most horrific of things that inevitably transpire in this vale of tears? Which of these hymns boldly proclaims the reality that God’s will is perfect and good - no matter what the appearances are to us?
And this is only one of Paul Gerhardt’s hymns (there are seventeen in Lutheran Service Book, and many more that are not!). And Gerhardt is only one author in our Lutheran tradition of hymnwriters grounded in the theology of the cross. Our hymnal also features the very best of pre-reformation hymnody, as well as modern compositions. Not that every single hymn in every hymnal is a gem, but I defy anyone to find better hymnals than you will find in our Lutheran tradition.
These hymns are spiritual meditations can can not only be sung, but recited aloud as poetry, ruminated upon silently as prayer, and should become part of the life of the Christian before tragedy strikes. LSB includes sections of hymns, and especially powerful are those found in the Trust (708-740) and the Hope and Comfort (741-765) sections. But you will find magnificent spiritually uplifting hymns across the board, throughout the hymnal.
Like Tozer, we would do well to make the hymnal part of our spiritual and devotional life. I would urge every confessional Lutheran to buy a hymnal. You can get a smaller leather bound edition, as well as the pocket edition (which includes the family prayers, small catechism, and texts of all of the hymns without music - and you can literally carry it in your back pocket or purse).
If you belong to a church that has forsaken the hymnal, I encourage you to leave it and find another - even if you have to drive a long way. And if that is not possible, buy yourself a hymnal and make it your companion and friend - for in a very real way, by singing the words penned by Gerhardt and other hymnwriters, you are developing a friendship with them, one that will be completed when you see them in eternity, and can thank them face to face for keeping you centered on the cross of Christ and all that He has done for us.
But please don’t take my word for it, or even A.W. Tozer’s. Start leafing through your hymnal: praying and meditating upon these treasures. Look at them anew, as if for the first time, but also come back to them again and again. Make them your companions in your prayers. See how the incorporation of the hymnal affects you and edifies you. And I believe that when the thinkable happens, when your faith is sorely tried, when you are hanging on by a single thread in this fallen world, your soul will resonate with these meditations that point us to the cross, to the Word, to the Gospel, to the solid promises of your Savior.
And as we Lutherans have sung and confessed in the words of Pastor Gerhardt for nearly 500 years, let us continue to meditate:
Now I will cling forever
To Christ, my Savior true;
My Lord will leave me never,
Whate’er He passes through.
He rends death’s iron chain;
He breaks through sin and pain;
He shatters hell’s grim thrall;
I follow Him through all. (LSB 467:6)
And let us also remember, once more in Pastor Gerhardt’s words:
Hymns that adore Him
Are precious before Him
And to His throne like sweet incense arise. (LSB 726:4)