HOTC #18: LSB 420 Christ, the Life of All the Living

Feb 26

I’m switching it up a bit this week. I had original scheduled LSB #419, “Savior, When in Dust to Thee” today, but as that hymn is pretty clearly an Ash Wednesday hymn, I have decided to shelve it until next year’s Ash Wednesday (which is also St. Valentine’s Day, just so you know) and move along into Lent today. The TLO Hymn List has been revised to show this.

*The Flagellation of Christ* by Caravaggio, 1607

The Author

Ernst Christoph Homburg was a native of the Eisenach area in central Germany, born in 1605. A lawyer by profession, he lived through the turbulent, violent, and generally deadly years of the Thirty Years’ War. In his youth he was a writer of secular poetry, mostly love songs and drinking ditties, until family tragedy and the vagaries of life in central Germany in the mid-17th Century (did I mention the Thirty Years’ War?) brought about a religious revival in his life. This found expression in his composition hymn texts. Homburg wrote largely for his own devotional purposes, but 150 of his hymns were collected published in two volumes in 1659, with two-part musical settings by the eminent composer Werner Fabricius.

Homburg died 1681, 33 years after the end of the Thirty Years’ War.

The Text

“Jesu meines Lebens Leben” is quite easily Homburg’s most famous, most recognizable, and most popular text. Right from the start, it is infused with symbolism: Christ, to whom the entire hymn is addressed, is “…the life of all the living,” and “the death of death, our foe,” right from the very first lines of the poetry. This hymn is made up of a series of Lenten vignettes, taken from across the great breadth of Scripture, winding its way through Lenten themes until landing, in the final verse, solidly on Maunday Thursday and Good Friday, the apex of Lent.

The vignettes open with the image, as noted earlier of Christ as “…the life of all the living,” (St. John 1:4) and “the death of death, our foe,” (I Corinthians 15:55) and makes plain that it is the merits of Christ that grant us salvation, the inheritance referred to by St. Paul in Romans 8:17. The whole verse is clearly centered on and takes its inspiration from the final verses I Corinthians, Chapter 15.

The second and third verses then focus on the beginnings of the Passion story: the scourging, the beatings, and the ritual humiliation that came with Roman capital punishment. Each time the verses return to the plaintive realization of the sinners: that these things were endured; had to be endured, not for any gain of Christ’s, but for our gain; for we gain only in Christ.

The fourth verse turns to the crowd - to that convenient democracy that allowed Pilate to wash his hands, and which took Barrabas, but left Christ. In this verse we get the image of the Crown of Thorns, and then, instantly in the next sentence, the reason: that we might be purchased, that “Thou mightest own me” and “…with heav’nly glory crown me.” The influence of I Peter 1:18-19 is clear here.

If fourth verse showed us the perverted democracy of the mob in the Passion story, the fifth verse leads us to the politicians, their manipulations, and their false accusations. Christ, again, is shown to bear - to “suffer,” in the words of the hymn - these things solely for our benefit, that we “…might be free,” and that we might “gain security.”

The sixth verse leads us, inevitably, inexorably, to Calvary, and to the atoning final sacrifice. The sixth and seventh verses together deal with the events of Maunday Thursday and Good Friday, and bring us to the culmination of our Lenten meditation. All of the verses up to the final one end in the same grateful though subdued refrain: “Thousand, thousand thanks shall be, / Dearest Jesus, unto Thee.” The seventh verse alters this, however, ending thus: “For that last triumphant cry, / And shall praise Thee, Lord, on high.” Here, at the conclusion of this lengthy (seven verses!!!) Lenten meditation is, just, the hint of Easter shining from the tomb. That last triumphant cry is, of course, the “It is finished.” of St. John 19:30. There is no full-throated Easter ending here - it’s all Lent and Holy Week. We’re left here, at the end of the hymn, as though we were left on Holy Saturday - Easter is hinted at, but only just, in the notion that we “…shall praise Thee, Lord, on high.”

The Tune

The most striking thing about this tune is that it is paired with this text. As somber and meditative as this text is, the major key and the really quite energetic hymntune seem at first a bit odd, until the text is examined. Each verse, after describing what Christ has done for us, repeats that it was, well, done for us. And in that we should be joyful, despite the horrors of the actual events. This tune does a good job of matching that attitude: it is energetic, but not too joyful. Indeed, by manipulating the tempo, the attitude of this hymn can be changed immensely. It should never be played slowly, lest it become too dirge-like and the phrases become almost unsingable. But a stately, modest pace does emphasize the serious dimension of the text, and may be appropriate to use during Holy Week or Ash Wednesday. By contrast, a more lively tempo is useful in lighter contexts.

The composer of this particular tune is lost to the mists of history, but it first appeared in a hymnal published in Darmstadt in 1687, and accompanied the text “Alles menchen mussen sterben” by Johann Georg Albinus. That text sprouted its own tune, ALLES MENSCHEN MUSSEN STERBEN, at some point, and it’s an absolute shame that this tune has yet to make it into a proper Lutheran hymnal, because it’s fantastic (it was in Lutheran Book of Worship, for crying out loud, why didn’t we keep it!?).

The tune is catchy and very composable: Bach has a setting and Zachow another, all of which I will record when my organ is back to making recordings again. A selection of other settings is available below.