HOTC #19: LSB #421, Jesus, Grant That Balm and Healing
The Author
Johann Heermann
Johann Heermann knew a thing or two about healing - indeed, he had been so sickly as a child that his mother had prayed and promised God that she would pay for young Johann to attend university if he survived. As a result of his sicknesses, he was in and out of schools and apprenticeships until he entered the university at Strasbourg in 1609, at the age of approximately 24. He wrote his first poetry at the age of 17.
Just a year later, however, he returned back to his native Silesia, having contracted yet another ailment - in this case a serious eye infection. The journey across Germany from Strasbourg (in modern-day eastern France) to his homeland (in modern-day western Poland) was a difficult and arduous one, and Heermann arrived in a very poor state of health. He apparently recovered substantially while home, however, and was ordained a deacon in the Lutheran church, beginning his work among the Lutherans of Köben (modern Chobienia, in Poland) on Ascension Day in 1611. The pastor there died a few days later, and Heermann took up full pastoral duties, having been in town something like a week. This arrangement became permanent a few months later.
A terrible string of events seems to have coincided with Heermann’s pastorate in Köben: in 1613 the town was struck by plague, then in 1616 a fire swept through and destroyed a large portion of the town. In 1617 his first wife died (he would remarry the following year), and then Heermann fell ill again in 1623 (in 1634 he is recorded as being too ill to preach). Then the Thiry Years’ War struck, and Catholic troops devastated the town and surrounding area in 1623, 1633, 1634, and 1642. On doctor’s orders, he retreated across the border into Poland and died in that kingdom, at Leszno, on February 17, 1647.
Heermann has several contributions to Lutheran Service Book aside from the one we’re considering in this blog post: LSB #439, LSB #568, LSB #696, LSB #774, and LSB #839. That’s a pretty high-quality output.
He is the third of the triumvirate of hymnwriters commemorated on October 26, along with Philipp Nicolai and Paul Gerhardt.
The Text
Clearly, Johann Heermann was a man who could speak from experience about the “Pains of body and of mind” and the need for a “balm and healing” in the physical sense. As a Lutheran clergyman he could also, undoubtedly, speak authoritatively on the contents of Luther’s Small Catechism. In this text he uses the former to meditate upon one of the most important sections of the latter.
The ailment his text is getting at here, however, is the sickness of sin. From the Small Catechism’s explanation of the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed come the thundering words that resonate across the ages from Luther’s pen:
“I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity.”
The first verse deals with the frailty of fallen humanity; the inherent inability of a sinful humanity to resist evil thoughts and the sins that arise from within. This is the “…own sinful flesh” bit of the traditional three sources of sin: “the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh.” The verse ends with the hymnwriter imploring Jesus to “Keep me from its [sin’s] first beginning.”
The second verse turns from sin caused by our own sinful flesh to the temptations brought on by Satan. This verse highlights the second part of what Luther has pointed out in the Small Catechism excerpt, above: that Christ has “…purchased and won me…from the power of the devil.” There is a strong allusion here to Jesus’ own temptation, which we focused on in last week’s blog post.
The third verse then takes on the world, filling out the “the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh” motif described above. Heermann isn’t shy about it: “If the world my heart entices / With the broad and easy road,” is pretty clear, and recalls the third temptation of Christ, when Satan offers Him all the kingdoms of the world.
Heermann’s text then turns to temporal suffering and human frailty - something he had a lot of experience in, as we read earlier. The fourth verse has a Job-like quality to it, and knowing the backstory of the author clearly enhances the poignancy of the words here: whatever befalls him, he is determined to hold fast to his faith that Christ’s “…all-atoning passion / Has procured my soul’s salvation.”
The final verse recalls Psalm 46 (the same text that inspired Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” [LSB #656 and LSB #657]) with its image of God as a “rock and tower.” The writer restates his faith in the atonement bought for him by the death and resurrection of Christ. The hymn ends on the very word “resurrection,” pointing us forward toward Easter and the empty tomb as well as our promised resurrection at the Last Judgement.
The Tune
Luther’s AUS TIEFER NOT, LSB #607
The tune DER AM KREUZ is the product of the German Baroque composer Johann Balthasar König. König had been born in southern Germany in late 1690 or early 1691, and rose to prominence as musician of the Katharinenkirche in Frankfurt. He was primarily a composer of hymntunes (he produced a hymnal in 1738 that collected over 1,913 hymntunes). It is from that source that this hymntune arises.
He was also noted as an associate of the prolific German Baroque composer Georg Philipp Telemann.
The opening figure (A-E-A-B) seems to my ear to recall Luther’s much earlier tune AUS TIEFER NOT (LSB #607), which was used to set Psalm 130, a penitential psalm particularly known in that time for its use in funerals. Whether this tune derives from AUS TIEFER NOT is not certain, but it seems likely to my ear. The tune is, obviously, not original to the text (König was born some four-and-a-half decades after Heermann died), but original accompanied the Passion hymn “Der am Kreuz ist meine Liebe” - “He on the Cross is my love.”
König was a near-contemporary (slightly younger) than J.S. Bach, and the collection from which this tune was first known was produced just twelve years before Bach died. Bach, therefore, never wrote a setting of it, and it post-dates most of the other great Lutheran church musicians of the Baroque, such as Buxtehude and Pachelbel. Most settings (including those listed below) are the product of modern church music.
Settings of this hymn and/or tune can be found in:
For organ:
Concordia Hymn Prelude Library, Vol. 3
Four Preludes for Lent - Bernard Wayne Sanders