Gritty, relevant hymns

We were well into “the Christmas holiday season,” and I was becoming engulfed in the frivolous jingle-jingle bell muzak played on loudspeakers while buying potatoes and onions in No Frills. CBC Radio 2 can mix a medley that thoroughly hides any Jesus Christ in a bouquet of mistletoe and a hot toddy of warm cider. The Jacquie Lawson “singing” e-card well-meaning people send juices “Silent Night,” sung by robotic candlelight, into a sentimentality indistinguishable from the effective schmaltz of “dreaming of a white Christmas.” I wonder: could newly written church songs have current historical punch?

I happened to be busy with fresh translations of a couple of Martin Luther’s hymns that we selected for the Psalter Hymnal in 1987. Curious, I went to look at Luther’s “Erhalt uns Herr bei deinem Wort,” #598 in the Psalter Hymnal. With a little research I found out that this hymn, written in 1542, had seven stanzas including two from Justus Janos (1546), while the Psalter Hymnal had used only the first three in Catharine Winkworth’s traditional translation (1863). When I went to translate anew the first stanza I was certainly shocked: “Erhalt uns Herr bei deinem Wort / Und steur’ des Papsts und Türken Mord. . . LORD, shield us with Your Word of hope / and overthrow the Turks and Pope / who would dethrone, despise and shun / our Jesus Christ, Your blessed Son” was ingeniously muted by Winkworth into “Lord, keep us steadfast in your word; curb those who by deceit or sword / would wrest the kingdom from your Son.”

Songs of… persecution?

Winkworth kept the original thought while removing the affront of Luther’s brash wording. Luther wrote this hymn for, I believe, a boy’s choir to sing at a prayer meeting for safety against the Ottoman Turks who were threatening all of “christened” Europe. The Turks besieged and captured Constantinople in 1453 AD. Luther had been excommunicated by Pope Leo X (1520) and declared a heretic by the Dutch Pope Adrian VI (1522-23).

Of course, we can’t use Luther’s original designations, because Pope John XXIII who opened the Vatican II Council (1962) is not a scandalous Borgia pope like Alexander VI (father of Caesare Borgia, who raised havoc in Europe during Luther’s early years). And the current Jesuit Pope Franciscus (going on 10 years) is a “reforming” pope Protestants can easily pray for, not against. But it is probably true that Muslim Turkey’s government, like that of Iran today, is still harsh toward would-be followers of Jesus Christ – so is it right to sing about persecution and name names?

That question is a minefield in our woke day of “political correctness.” A speaker may carefully curse terrorist Hamas deeds and militarist Netanyahu’s mass-killing policy of retribution, but it will likely be misheard as a diatribe against Palestinians and as an anti-semite slur, which it is emphatically not. Could Luther’s first stanza be sung using “terrorists” and/or “militarists” terminology?

Advent is not idyllic

We do still have good sturdy biblical songs to sing remembering events around Christ’s birth.
Ambrose and Luther’s advent hymn “Saviour of the Nations, come” (Psalter Hymnal, #336) has grit and contemporary presence. The medieval anonymous hymn “O Amor quam Exstaticus!” (1400s) keeps a narrative, theological focus, without any political note. “Once in David’s royal city” (1849) has such a seductive, lovely melody, you tend to forget Herod’s massacre of children.

But I wish someone would compose a new hymn that celebrates the immense importance of Jesus Christ’s humiliating birth – the historical change from B.C. to A.D – and avoids sweetness and cuddly “no crying he makes” by mentioning in a vigorous rhythm the toppling of evil governments on earth. The Bible’s underlying account of “Christmas” is not a Romantic idyll of motherhood and tenderness. Cosmic “Joy to the world,” yes! But we also need Martin Luther’s frank political awareness. Bethlehem is not a tourist spot. The physical birth of God’s Son, Jesus Christ on earth, is a lusty call for us followers of the Lord to challenge the powers that enslave our lives.