Back in September, I noted that an important American-Lutheran Christian, Robert Graetz, had died. For that post, go here.
Over the weekend, I learned that his wife, Jean, has also died. To read her obituary, go here.
Robert and Jean Graetz deserve to be better known for their public Christian witness. May they rest in peace, and may light perpetual shine upon them.
One of my favorite Advent hymns is “Wake, Awake…,” which has been called “the king of chorales.” It was composed by a German-Lutheran pastor, Philipp Nicolai (1556-1608). You will find it in the “end times” section of the Lutheran Service Book (#516), but it could just as easily be placed in the "Advent" section, since that season, too, at least in part, has to do with Christ's end-time return.
Nicolai, a graduate of Wittenberg University (class of 1579), was pastor of a Lutheran congregation in Unna, Germany, which fell victim to the plague in 1597-98. A great many people died.
During that fall/winter, Pastor Nicolai wrote a devotional booklet “to leave behind (if God should call me from this world) a token of my peaceful, joyful, Christian departure, or (if God should spare me in health) to comfort other sufferers whom He should also visit with the pestilence….” Three hymns were included in this booklet, including “Wake, Awake” (“Wachet auf”). So, this hymn was composed during a pandemic.
Nicolai looked forward to the Lord’s Second Coming, when disease and death would give way to God's New Creation begun in Jesus Christ.
In our time of plague, maybe we need Pastor Nicolai’s perspective more than ever. The hope for God’s perfect future lifts our eyes from despair, when everything looks dark, and points us to our Coming Savior. Yes, we are shaken and disturbed by what is happening all around us. We are visibly reminded that this fallen creation is not our true and eternal home; we are to be looking for that new creation that is coming. In the meantime, God calls us to keep watch, to wait, and not to lose hope. Soon, the night will be past….
“Wake, Awake…,” is based on the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Matthew 25.1-13), but it alludes to other Scripture texts as well, including Rev. 19.6-9 and 21.21. Look ‘em up! Here are the hymn's three stanzas:
(1) "Wake, awake, for night is flying," The watchmen on the heights are crying; "Awake, Jerusalem, arise!" Midnight hears the welcome voices And at the thrilling cry rejoices; "Oh, where are ye, ye virgins wise? The Bridegroom comes, awake! Your lamps with gladness take! Allelujah! With bridal care Yourselves prepare To meet the Bridegroom, who is near."
(2) Zion hears the watchmen singing, And all her heart with joy is springing; She wakes, she rises from her gloom. For her Lord comes down all-glorious, The strong in grace, in truth victorious; Her star is ris'n, her light has come. Now come, Thou Blessed One, Lord Jesus, God's own Son, Hail! Hosanna! We enter all The wedding hall To eat the Supper at Thy call.
(3) Now let all the heav'ns adore Thee, Let saints and angels sing before Thee With harp and cymbals' clearest tone. Of one pearl each shining portal, Where, joining with the choir immortal, We gather round Thy radiant throne. No eye has seen the light, No ear has heard the might Of Thy glory; Therefore will we Eternally Sing hymns of praise and joy to Thee!
In my opinion, Christian hymnody doesn’t get any better than this! To hear the hymn sung (and to join in singing it!), go here.
One more thing: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), the greatest musician/composer of all time (who also happened to be a Lutheran Christian!), based one of his cantatas on Nicolai’s hymn. To listen to the best online performance of it, go here.
Advent hope be with you!
Addendum (12/18/20): Brian Bartusch, who is the organist for the congregation to which my family and I belong, recently uploaded a video of Bach's piece, "Sleepers Awake, a Voice is Calling" (BWV 645), which is also based on the Nicolai hymn. Here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffm-oSw9Af8&feature=youtu.be
For the past week, I have been watching the wonderful, insightful, and engaging lectures on Abraham Lincoln by Dr. Allen C. Guelzo. I like such thirty-minute "Great Courses" lectures, since they fit perfectly with the duration of my workout routine (on an elliptical machine).
At the time he taped these lectures, Dr. Guelzo was a professor of history at Gettysburg College, which is an institution of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Now he is a Senior Research Scholar in the Council of the Humanities and Director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. In addition to his other academic degrees, he earned a Master of Divinity degree from Philadelphia Theological Seminary. Given his interest in Christian theology, it is not surprising that his most well-known and award-winning book is on Lincoln’s religious views: Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Eerdmans, 1999). (For Brian Lamb’s excellent interview with the author, go here.) (Further aside, but relevant for what follows: Back in the day, Dr. Guelzo supported Jack Kemp for president.)
I cannot help but draw attention to the lecture I watched this morning. It is the penultimate one in the course. Its title is “The President’s Sword.” While the second half of the lecture does, indeed, examine the failures and successes of U. S. Grant, the first half is all about Lincoln’s own “sword,” namely, his pen.
In the lecture, the professor reminds us of the president's 1861 letter to a special session of congress that he had called. Lincoln's letter, dated July 4th of that year, ought to be read by every American citizen, especially now, when, in our present national crisis, we have a sitting president who refuses to accept or publicly acknowledge the will of the majority of citizens who voted in the last presidential election. Would that the current leaders of the Republican Party would take to heart these words of their party’s most famous father.
According to Dr. Guelzo, “[Lincoln’s] first message to congress... turned into one of the greatest defenses ever offered for the essential role of [the] peaceful transfer of power as a key element of democracy…. In a democracy, majority rule, and therefore minorities must submit…. When minorities rise up against that rule and refuse to abide by the decision of the majority, then the very operations of democracy are disrupted, and the only result can be anarchy.”
The context to which Dr. Guelzo’s analysis applies, of course, was the aftermath of the 1860 presidential election.
Here’s a key paragraph from Lincoln’s letter:
"Our popular Government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled--the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains--its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they can not take by an election neither can they take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war."
To read the full letter online, go here.
I look forward to watching the final lecture, "The Dream of Lincoln," during tomorrow's workout.
When I was an infant and young boy, my dad, who was usually the one to put us to bed, always ended our bedtime ritual by singing a prayer. One of the stanzas went, “Now the light has gone away. Savior, listen while I pray. Asking thee to watch and keep, and to send me quiet sleep.” On some nights, we sang other stanzas to the same tune, including “Jesus Savior, wash away, all that has been wrong today. Asking Thee to watch and keep, and to send me quiet sleep.” (For the original German of "Muede bin ich, geh zur Ruh,", as well as an English version of the whole prayer-hymn, see Lutheran Service Book #887, "Now the Light Has Gone Away.") On still other nights the lyrics of the prayer-song changed yet again, while the tune remained the same: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
When my wife Detra was pregnant with Jacob, I used to sing these same lullabies to him. That ritual was continued, as his childhood bedtime was marked by those same sung prayers/hymn stanzas. For the first decade of his life, those prayers were a part of our bedtime ritual. (I’m pretty sure he’s continued to say them himself even though he’s now a mature 21-year-old….) When I was a young father, I learned from my own dad that when he was a child, those same lullabies were sung by his dad, my grandfather. Of course, he sang them auf Deutsch, which is how my dad learned them. So, these lullaby prayer-songs have been passed down from generation to generation. They are songs that pass on Christian faith as trust and confidence in God.
After hearing them sung a few years, it dawned on me that those prayer-songs were also rather sobering. They reminded me each night that I am mortal, that in fact I could die that night. Nevertheless, if I did die, I could trust that God would take me to be with him in heaven. So those lullabies helped to establish a safe place for me as a kid in an environment where I knew that, yes, I could die, and that someday I will die. Lullabies hold—and check—our fears about a world that’s full of mortality, a world that is often unforgiving, cruel, and downright evil.
How many of you have sung lullabies to your children or grandchildren before they go to sleep? Lullabies are nearly universal. This morning I was reading the Dec issue of National Geographic. In it is an article about lullabies. That article was what made me think of those prayer-songs my dad would sing with us kids every night. As the article points out, lullabies have a way of giving a person identity and comfort, of creating kinship and group membership. To sing a lullaby with a child is to make a connection. Lullabies help to bring quiet at the end of a bustling day. They are almost a kind of protest against the pressures and cruelties of the day. Sung in our most intimate spaces—usually a bedroom—these songs help to establish safe spaces for children. I suspect that during this pandemic, lullabies have become even more important. They help to preserve tender moments between parents and their young children. There is even a growing body of scientific evidence that indicates lullabies help soothe both the parent and the child. Stress drops for both the singer and the one to whom the song is sung.
Sung across cultures, lullabies echo the histories of those who sing them. And that brings us to Mary’s lullaby, which we call “the Magnificat” (Luke 1.46ff.). I don’t know if you’ve ever thought of this psalm or prayer-song as a lullaby, but it dawned on me this morning, as I read that article, that this could very well be a lullaby, one that Mary didn’t just sing on that one occasion with Elizabeth but one that she likely sang throughout the rest of her life. It was a song that was passed down “from generation to generation,” and that included her son’s generation as well. Maybe Mary sang this song as a lullaby that would comfort her child Jesus in the midst of a cruel world, where the rich and mighty hold all the power, and where the poor and lowly are threatened and often trampled upon. Just as the lullaby that my dad sang with me reminded me that I was mortal, but that God was greater than my death, so Mary’s lullaby reminded her and Jesus that this fallen world is not always fair and just, but that God would ultimately bring about his justice and would vindicate those who had suffered injustice at the hands of cruel and evil people.
Mary’s song has the structure of a psalm, and its content ties to Israel’s history, to the mighty deeds that God has done in that history. And Mary’s lullaby holds out hope—the focus for this first week in Advent—hope that God will do new and glorious deeds in the future. So, like a good lullaby, Mary’s song is full of sober reality and hope and comfort. Her song expresses her own trust and confidence that the Lord will be mindful of her and of all God’s faithful. Just as God had been faithful to ancient Israel, now he would be faithful to Mary, his chosen servant.
This prayer-song, which I think could have functioned as a lullaby for Jesus, gave him his identity and purpose, and provided comfort to him as he developed as a young boy. It certainly shaped his future ministry, his own divine purpose, and what God was going to do in and through him. He lifted up the humble and brought down the mighty powers of evil. He filled the hungry with good things, and he had strong words of criticism against the rich and worldly. His entire ministry was one of mercy, of helping individuals in dire straits. And still, for all the good that he did, he was unjustly accused, unjustly tried, and unjustly sent to a Roman cross. Could it be that Jesus may have sung Mary’s lullaby as he went the way of that cross? Might Mary’s song have been on Jesus’ lips as he died at the hands of unjust and powerful rulers? Could that song not have given him some measure of hope amidst his suffering and dying? And as Mary herself witnessed the death of her son, might she not have hummed this very lullaby, hoping that God would vindicate her dying son?
Truth be told, God did just that. Jesus was raised from the dead by God the Father. The tables on sin and death and evil were turned. In the wake of our Lord’s resurrection, it became clear that he had not only helped Israel but all the descendants of Abraham—and that includes us, too, all who have been baptized into the family of Abraham and who have received the promised blessing that God freely gives to us in His Son, the crucified and risen One. Yes, Jesus was put down by the mighty, by those who sat on earthly thrones and who were responsible for his death. But we, too, put down Jesus ourselves: our sins and powerful misdeeds are just as much to blame for his death as were the actions of Pilate and of all the rest who conspired to send him to the cross. But, like Mary sang and prophesied, God vindicated Jesus and confirmed him as Lord and Savior by raising him from death. And in so doing, God has put down the powers of sin, evil, and death itself. He has put down your sins and your death. And he has raised you to new life in him.
So Mary’s lullaby, her lyric-poem, this prayer-song, has now become our own. We will again sing it tonight and throughout this Advent season. We, too, will be reminded that God’s mercy extends to all who are brought low because of their sins and failures. We are awed that God would show mercy to us. So we, too, glorify the Lord who has done such great things for us. We are grateful to God’s Son—Mary’s son!—for what he has done for us and for the whole creation. God is mindful of you, too. You, too, are blessed, for he has performed his mighty deed in Jesus’s death and resurrection for you.
And now we are waiting for that same Lord Jesus to come again. That’s another mighty deed for which we hope and dream, and about which we sing our spiritual lullabies and hymns. We look forward to that great day when the Lord will manifest his victory over all the principalities and powers and will fulfill his promise to make all things new. So not only can we sing, “Now the light has gone away…,” but we can also sing something like, “Rock a by baptized, do not you fear; never mind baptized, God is quite near. When you are troubled, call on his name, for he will be with you, Christ’s kingdom shall reign.” In his name. Amen.
P.S. I should add that before Jacob was born, we asked my former professor and mentor, Dr. John Scheck, to write a hymn for Jacob's baptism. (Dr. Scheck was my academic adviser at Concordia College, Portland, where he taught me history, philosophy, and the humanities. He also composed the school's song, "Out of Darkness.") We sing Jacob's baptismal song every year on the anniversary of his baptism. That song, too, has become for us a kind of spiritual lullaby. It is based on Rom. 6.4 and Titus 3.5. Here are the lyrics:
Refrain: Just as Christ was rais'd from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may have a new life.
Stanza 1: Lord Jesus Christ your death and resurrection have brot to life all those who die with you, and by the washing of regeneration, your Holy Spirit does our lives renew.
Stanza 2: Renew the life of Jacob David Becker, with living water from your well of grace; Enfold him in your arms and in your Kingdom, let him rest snugly in your love's embrace.
Stanza 3: Recall for us in all your congregations, the blessing of our own baptismal days; Let parents, sponsors, children, all your people, lift up their hearts in joy and thankful praise.
