Author: Higher Things

By Monica Berndt

One hymn that helps illustrate how Luther used hymns to both spread his ideas and teach the common people is Vater Unser im Himmelreich. This directly translates in English to ‘Our Father in Heaven’ which is the German translation of the first line of the Lord’s Prayer. Luther’s setting of this prayer was not the first time it had been translated into German, nor the first time it was set to music.¹ However, Luther’s treatment of this text is slightly different from other settings because he uses it to reinforce the questions and ideas presented in his Small Catechism, a book Luther wrote for lay people explaining important doctrines of the church. Vater Unser im Himmelreich is the musical setting of these questions and answers for the Lord’s Prayer. It demonstrates the close connections between the doctrine Luther wanted people to know about, spread largely through the Small Catechism, and the hymns that he composed.^*

Vater Unser im Himmelreich was composed sometime between 1538 and 1539. There are nine total verses to match the eight lines of the Lord’s Prayer, plus one extra verse for the Amen and its explanation. Robin Leaver remarks in his book, Luther’s Liturgical Music, that Vater Unser im Himmelreich had two usages. First, it could be used in the liturgy in place of the prose Prayer, or it could also be sung to aid in teaching either at church or at home.^* This demonstrates how versatile some of Luther’s hymns could be, especially ones that had a catechetical purpose. Each verse is set in six lines each with eight syllables, which allows all verses to work effectively with the tune of the hymn.

The tune of a hymn plays just as important a role as the text, and this was something Luther understood well. For Vater Unser im Himmelreich Luther wanted a melody that would call to mind thoughtful communication with God and the reflective state that a Christian should be in during prayer.^* The melody Luther chose to write is fairly simple which meant it could be easily learned or taught to someone else, and it is a solemn sounding melody that moves slowly and methodically. A German church attendee could sing this piece and not only would the text remind him of the honor and respect due to God through prayer, the tune itself would carry the expression of the Lord’s Prayer. The melody reinforces the text the same way most of our hymns still do today.

Source:

^[1] Leaver, Robin A.. Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007

Monica Berndt is the music director at Messiah Lutheran Church in Seattle, WA and studies music and history at the University of Washington. This is the first part of a paper written for her Medieval Music History course last spring. She can be reached at acinomtdnreb@gmail.com.

Rev. Michael Keith

It’s October. The weather turns a little cooler or a lot cooler, depending on where you live. On the farms the harvest is often still in full swing. It is the month that Thanksgiving is properly celebrated. (you Americans are always a month behind on that.) In October the routines of life have returned after the summer break and pumpkin spice is everywhere! And in the Lutheran Church it’s the time of year when we celebrate the Reformation. In fact, my grade 8 class that I teach each morning will be studying the Reformation and preparing a research paper for the entire month of October. I make a pretty big deal of it.

So, the Reformation is all about Martin Luther and his friends and how they stuck it to the man, right? How the little guy stood up to the big, bad, mean Roman Catholic Church, right? How Luther and his cronies went toe to toe with the Pope and didn’t blink, right? This time of year Lutherans pound on their chest and roar, “Here I stand!”

And there is some good to this. We ought to know our history. We need to know where we came from. We need to know as Lutherans what we believe and why we believe it. This is essential. We need to be aware of the struggles and battles of the past. We need to have the same boldness that remains faithful to Jesus and what He has revealed to us through the Word of God, no matter the consequences.

However, there is a danger here. We can make the Reformation about Martin Luther and how wonderful he was. We can make it about describing the story of all the political intrigue that surrounded those important events. We can make the Reformation about how Lutherans are better than Roman Catholics and the Calvinists and the Zwinglians and, well, pretty much anybody else. We can make the Reformation a triumphant retelling of our Reformation superheroes that defeated the arch-villain Roman Catholic Church and the Pope for us and then we as good Lutherans can go out like vigilantes in our time and imitate them looking for more villains to vanquish. We can stand up tall and pray: “I thank God that I am not like those Roman Catholics and evangelicals. I studied the catechism, I sing ‘A Mighty Fortress,’ I don’t pray to the Virgin Mary.” But if we do that we miss the point. You see, the Reformation is not really about Martin Luther and how wonderful we Lutherans are. It’s about Jesus.

You have been set free from the burdens of the Law. You have been set free from the punishments of your sin. You have been set free from death and hell. You have been set free and have been given new life. Jesus has set you free. “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). Jesus has never left or forsaken His Church. To say that the Gospel had vanished from the Church before the Reformation is the same as saying that Jesus had left His Church and this is false. Jesus promised to be with His Church until the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). It is true that the Gospel had become unclear. It had become entangled with man-made rules and regulations and traditions. The Gospel had become muted. The Gospel had become very hard to hear with all the other “noise” that surrounded it. It is also true that the Church had gotten her hands into the things of this world and confused the right hand kingdom with the left—leading to disastrous results. But Jesus was still there in His Church. He worked through the people of that time, including Martin Luther, to chip away at that which had obscured the Gospel so that the Gospel would be proclaimed more clearly. During this time Jesus worked through the people in order that the Gospel would be the center of the proclamation of the Church so that all would be comforted in knowing that we are saved by Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone.

So, while we ought to remember Martin Luther and the other faithful people—both clergy and laypeople, who had a hand in the Reformation—we above all need to recognize on Reformation Day that the focus is to be on Jesus. It’s not a time to throw a parade for Luther; it’s not a time to pat ourselves on our backs and “tsk tsk” the non-Lutherans around us. It’s a time to gratefully receive the gifts Jesus brings through His Word and Sacraments: forgiveness, life, and salvation. To remember your baptism and make the sign of the holy cross. To confess your sins and hear Holy Absolution pronounced to you as if it was Jesus speaking to you because it is! To kneel at the altar and receive the very Body and Blood of Jesus. To rejoice that Jesus will never leave His Church and this can give us confidence even as we face struggles in the Church in our day. To respond with thanksgiving and praise because you have been set free in Jesus.

So, when you hear the Gospel reading from John 8 appointed for Reformation Sunday telling you that you are free in Jesus don’t be filled with pride and arrogance and look down on others who are not Lutherans. Instead, give thanks for those who have gone before you and who have delivered to you the Good News that you are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. Humbly receive this inheritance. Rejoice in it. Draw comfort from this great Good News. But above all on Reformation Day, give thanks to Jesus.

By Monica Berndt

The Reformation, sparked when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the cathedral door in Wittenburg, spread across most of northern and eastern Europe with such determination and speed that it shocked the Catholic Church. One of the questions that is often asked about this reformation is how Luther’s ideas managed to spread throughout Germany and resonate with enough people that they abandoned the relative safety of Catholicism for Lutheranism. An important part of this spread lies in the rich vernacular hymn tradition of the Lutheran Church; a tradition that Luther himself started by composing many new German language hymns for congregations to sing. These hymns were instrumental in spreading and teaching Lutheran ideas to laymen who had never even heard a church service in their own language before. Hymns functioned as a kind of propaganda for the Lutheran church by spreading Luther’s basic teachings in German through songs that everyday people could sing whenever they wanted.

Luther wanted to keep the basic structure of the Catholic Mass, yet make it more accessible to the German people. Officially, all Catholic Masses were done in Latin, a tradition begun in the early days of the Holy Roman Empire and lasted through the 20^th century. While we cannot know exactly how each particular parish celebrated the Mass, we do know that there were many prohibitions passed by the Catholic church forbidding the use of German hymns and replacing the Latin Masses with German from before Luther’s time.¹ Luther’s primary concern was that services and hymns should be in the language of the people participating so that they could know exactly what they were being taught.² His hymns gave the common people the power to understand their own beliefs and an access to theology that they had been previously denied. The music of the Reformation became “an instrument to improve literacy, unlock scripture, and to promote evangelical learning,” which allowed the everyday man to understand the basic doctrines taught in the church.³ Hymns had a clear purpose grounded both in Luther’s beliefs about the position of music and in the idea that people other than the clergy could participate in services.

Sources:

¹ Herl, Joseph. Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation, and Three Centuries of Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
² Schalk, Carl. Music in Early Lutheranism. Saint Louis: Concordia Academic Press, 2001.
³ Loewe, J. Andreas. “Why Do Lutherans Sing? Lutherans, Music, and the Gospel in the First Century of the Reformation.” Church History, vol 82, no. 1. (2013): 69–89. Accessed April 16, 2017.

Monica Berndt is the music director at Messiah Lutheran Church in Seattle, WA and studies music and history at the University of Washington. This is the first part of a paper written for her Medieval Music History course last spring. She can be reached at acinomtdnreb@gmail.com.