The Touch of Reality

The Touch of Reality

Reality shows are the main entrée of television network diets. Cheaper to produce, fewer stars, and fewer writers-these are the premises on which reality shows are built. The situations depicted are usually as far removed from reality as possible. Rare is the reality show that deals with sickness, disease, and death, not to mention the loss of wife and children or the loss of a job for standing your ground: These are the elements of a true show of reality. (I should keep quiet about this-who knows, someone may take me up on it.)

At first blush, some, if not many, of Paul Gerhardt’s hymns seem to be sugar-coated, with a sunny disposition, look-on-the-positive-side-of-life mentality:

Awake, my heart, with gladness,

See what today is done;

Now, after gloom and sadness,

Comes forth the glorious sun. (LSB 467:1)

That doesn’t seem to be a whole lot different than the song „Tomorrow“ from Annie. But scratch the surface a little deeper and you see the reality of our lives.

Theologus in cribro Satanae versatus is the inscription at the bottom of a life-size painting of Paul Gerhardt. The painting hangs in the last church he served-Lübben, Germany. Translated, the inscription reads, „A divine (theologian, pastor) sifted in Satan’s sieve.“ A sieve was often used in canning and cooking-mashing down the tomatoes and collecting the juice. There were days when Paul Gerhardt felt the reality of being mashed down, days of disease and death of members and loved ones (his wife and four of children), days of ravaging war (the Thirty-Years War took its toll in his life also), days of tempting theological compromise, days of being deposed from his office as pastor. So Gerhardt knew of what he sang: „Grim death with all its might….The world against me rages….Though bitter war it wages.“ These are but a few of the emblems of evil that have their source in hell and its prince, the devil.

What gave Paul Gerhardt the ability to look the onslaughts of Satan, the world, and death in the face and to dismiss them? How could he write lines like:

Now nothing ever saddens

The joy within my heart.

No gloom shall ever shake,

No foe shall ever take

The hope which God’s Son

In love for me has won.

Now hell, its prince, the devil,

Of all their pow’r are shorn;

Now I am safe from evil,

And sin I laugh to scorn.

Grim death with all its might

Cannot my soul affright;

It is a pow’rless form,

Howe’er it rave and storm.

The world against me rages,

Its fury I disdain;

Though bitter war it wages,

Its work is all in vain.

My heart from care is free,

No trouble troubles me.

Misfortune now is play,

And night is bright as day. (LSB 467:3,4,5)

What makes it possible for Gerhardt to write lines like these is the reality of what God has done through His Son, Jesus the Christ. After His death on the cross, our Savior was laid in a grave, once thought by Satan to be the trophy of defeat.

But lo, he now is routed,

His boast is turned to gloom.

For Christ again is free;

In glorious victory

He who is strong to save

Has triumphed o’er the grave. (LSB 467:2)

Gerhardt echoes the prophet Micah (5:9), „Your hand shall be lifted up over your adversaries; and all your enemies shall be cut off“ and the psalmist David (118:15-17), „Glad songs of salvation are in the tents of the righteous: ‘The right hand of the LORD does valiantly, the right hand of the LORD exalts, the right hand of the LORD does valiantly!‘ I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the LORD.“ With his hymn stanzas Paul Gerhardt picks up the hymn of proclamation and praise begun by St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (15:54-57): “ ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.‘ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?‘ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.“

Gerhardt with all the Church looks at the reality of the empty grave, the empty grave that has changed all reality, our reality. The empty grave that once held the Christ has transformed everything-pain and sorrow, tears and death. Christ, our risen Lord, is indeed the Conqueror of sin, hell, and its prince, the devil. Christ is the Comforter of all who cry in pain or sorrow. Christ is the Victor over death.

The days of conflict and contention, of disease and death-days that confronted Paul Gerhardt-are still with us. We know we will have days like those, and perhaps today is one of those days. And we know the reality of walking in tears to a grave of a loved one. But our tears have been transformed because there was an empty grave that first Easter morning outside the gates of Jerusalem. Out of that empty grave came life, joy, and hope, and the reality that death is nothing and Christ is all.

With the reality of Christ and His victory over death and the devil, how can we keep from singing with Gerhardt?

Now I will cling forever

To Christ, my Savior true;

My Lord will leave me never,

Whate’er He passes through.

He rends death’s iron chain;

He breaks through sin and pain;

He shatter hell’s grim thrall;

I follow Him through all. (LSB 467:6)