My favorite hymn used to be “Behold a Host,” but got sent out of the top slot (it still chokes me up—more on that another day) when I stumbled across this one. I was in college and it was the assigned hymn of the day in Lutheran Worship. I noticed it had two positives going for it before I even sang it. First, the music was written by Jan Bender, pronounced Yahn (for John), a German composer who once taught at Concordia, Seward, NE. Second, the text was written by Martin Franzmann, a pastor whose hymn texts are unparalleled. A hymn by this pair has to be fantastic; so it is. It is a hymn which speaks of the story of salvation, and is more than applicable today.
O God, O Lord of heav’n and earth
Thy living finger never wrote
That life should be an aimless mote,
A deathward drift from futile birth.
Thy Word meant life triumphant hurled
In splendor through They broken world.
Since light awoke and life began.
Thou hast desired Thy life for man.
The first verse talks about how not only did God create the world, He also intended man to have life. It smacks evolutionary theory in the face. I don’t know if Franzmann planned it to be such, but it takes all secular humanism and throws it out the window.
Our fatal will to equal Thee,
Our rebel will wrought death and night.
We seized and used in prideful spite
Thy wondrous gift of liberty.
We housed us in this house of doom,
Where death had royal scope and room,
Until Thy servant, Prince of Peace,
Breached all its walls for our release.
The second verse shows original sin quite distinctly. There is no one righteous, no, not one. What powerful images of rebelliousness and separation, not to mention the idea of us acting as though we know better than God and misuse His gifts. Personally, I like the text in Lutheran Worship where it says “We walled us in this house of doom” better because it echoes the language of modernity of building walls—cutting ourselves off. Christ as militant and breaking down the walls we built to keep us out; what a seeking love!
Thou camest to our hall of death,
O Christ, to breathe our poisoned air,
To drink for us the dark despair
That strangled our reluctant breath.
How beautiful the feet that trod
The road that leads us back to God!
How beautiful the feet that ran
To bring the great good news to man!
The third verse shows the contrast between the depth of our sinfulness [poisoned air] and the depth of Christ’s salvation [drink for us the dark despair]. It then comments on those who bring us the good news of Christ’s salvation.
O Spirit, who didst once restore
Thy Church that it might be again
The bringer of good news to men,
Breathe on Thy cloven Church once more,
That in these gray and latter days
There may be those whose life is praise,
Each life a high doxology
To Father, Son, and unto Thee.
The final verse always chokes me up. I don’t know the history of the tune name to this hymn, WITTENBERG NEW, but I assume the significance in that it is new and a connection to Wittenberg, birthplace of the Reformation. Throughout the history of the church, men have always wanted to take the good news of Christ and transform it to something man-made. This verse speaks directly to that; asking the Spirit to continue to restore the Church to being Christ-centered, not man-centered.
Knowing this hymn was written in some dark days of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod’s history, looking at the church today, and knowing that Satan loves a church divided; this verse is a fervent prayer by and for Christ’s people to remain faithful to the end.
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