By Neil Earle
I often write for a German church magazine called “Nachfolge – Follow Me” which keeps me in touch with friends in the home of the Reformation. To a certain extent Germany and music are inseparable.
Along with the famous three “B’s” (Bach, Beethoven and Brahms) there is Wagner’s haunting “Ride of the Valkyries” and Richard Strauss’ spine-tingling opening to “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” used in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
German church music is also outstanding. While everyone’s heard of Martin Luther’s “Mighty Fortress,” another hymn penned by a German pastor during the horrific Thirty Years War has also travelled around the world and found adherents across all denominations.
The song of course is “Now Thank We All Our God” (Nun Danket) and the story behind it is truly remarkable.
The Thirty Years War – ostensibly between Protestants and Catholics – devastated the center of Europe from 1618-1648. Just before this, Martin Rinckart, a young fan of Martin Luther, was assigned the Lutheran pastorate of Eilenburg, a walled city presently some 27 km driving distance from Leipzig. Rinckart inherited one of the most challenging pastoral ministries on record. In the midst of the horrors mass executions and starvations of the Thirty Years War young Martin found himself the only priest-pastor left in the city. Armies tore through Germany from 1618-1648 – six of them altogether, coming from such diverse areas as Bohemia, France, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Spain.
Some say Germany suffered more in proportion during the Thirty Years than she did after World War Two (1939-1945). Historians Will and Ariel Durant in their Story of Civilization, mention that population in Germany and Austria fell from 21,000,000 to 13,500,000 (The Age of Reason Begins, page 567). Writers Renard and Weulersee claim that one might travel sixty miles without seeing a village or house. Of 1717 houses standing in nineteen Thuringian villages in 1618 only 627 remained in 1649.
Both sides inflicted barely believable atrocities on each other. Both sides hired cruel mercenaries so mercy was in short supply. In Magdeburg 20,000 out 36,000 were massacred. The religious issues soon faded to the background as armies resorted to almost unrestrained rape, massacre and pillage.
Pastor Martin soon found himself dealing with starvation as refugees poured into Eilenburg. Plague soon followed. Some 6000 may have died in Eilenburg and Rinckart found himself doing 40-50 funerals a day. His own wife died. The story goes that one day in 1633 Rinckart came home for a meager meal with his children and composed a special grace. It opened like this:
Now thank we all our God,
With hearts and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done,
In whom His earth rejoices;
Who from our mother’s arms
Has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love,
And still is ours today.
How could Rinckart write such a prayer considering all that was going on around him? How could he – how could anyone – muster up the faith to declare praise to God at such a time, with his family barely having enough to eat. Ah, faith! That’s the key word, isn’t it?
Faith isn’t what many people think it is today – believing in something that may or may not be true. The Bible describes true faith as a supernatural gift from God once a person has surrendered their will and allegiance to Him (Ephesians 2:8). Faith is a charism of the Holy Spirit, a word we recognize in “charismatic” or “charisma.” Rinckart undoubtedly had placed his trust in the one true God even before those tragic years. A devout pastor, he well knew that his Savior, Jesus Christ, had promised that this gift of faith would always be with him. In John 4:14 Jesus said, “those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Jesus also said: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” John 7:38-39).
Rinckart knew that the Holy Spirit, given to Christians after sincere repentance and belief, is the very power that made the universe. That power, being personal, can take up residence inside Christians (Ephesians 3:20; John 14:23). Such a living hope made it possible for Pastor Rinckart and his tiny flock to endure.
Martin Luther, of course, had been the apostle of faith and Rinckart knew Luther’s writings well. As a young man he had written a play about his hero. Rinckart would need all of Luther’s lessons in faith. In the 1630s a foreign army appeared outside the city gates to besiege Eilenburg for the second time. The general demanded a 50,000 thaler ransom or the city would be put to the sword. Pastor Rinckart, the story goes, led some of his best followers to parley with the besieging army.
The general flatly refused to lower the terms.
According to Brian Wren’s website “Praying twice”, Rinckart then and there urged his people to pray. “Come, my children, we can find no mercy with men, let us take refuge with God.” The small flock fell on their knees and prayed fervently. They then sang one of the most popular hymns of that era, “When in the Hour of Utmost Need.”
The opposing general was impressed. He reduced the demand and the city was spared. One can imagine Rinckart returning home feeling that the second verse of his song of praise had been fulfilled:
“O may this bounteous God
Through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts
And blessed peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace,
And guide us when perplexed,
And free us from all ills,
In this world and the next.”
“Perplexed?” The Bible says Christians are often perplexed about the strange twists and turns of this life. “Perplexed,” wrote the great Bible writer Paul, “but not in despair” (2 Corinthians 4:8). Rinckart’s faith – or as he would say, Christ’s faith inside him – reached beyond all the miserable setbacks of the Thirty Years War and on into eternity. Across a life of prayer and devotion and study and good works, Rinckart possessed the evidence of the Spirit in abundance.
The inspiring last
verse of Rinckart’s song of prayer shows how we must worship God with
our
“All praise and thanks to God
The Father now be given,
The Son and him who reigns
With them in highest heaven;
The One eternal God,
Whom earth and heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now,
And shall be evermore.”
God is one and yet in some mysterious way God is three – how strange to human conceptions of logic! But a God we can explain and control is no god at all. Martin Luther, Rinckart’s mentor, used to refer to Deus Absconditus, the God who is so great that he is always beyond us, his ways often inscrutable, his greatness without measure (Isaiah 40:12-31). Yet Rinckart knew what all dedicated Christians know, that God is accessible and can be appealed to in faith and that He wants to instill that saving faith inside us. As Rinckart’s life’s experiences showed – true faith is practical and workable and brings healing in its wings.
A few years after Rinckart’s death, the chief musician at the University of Berlin, Johnan Cruger (1598-1662), set Rinckart’s stirring words to music. The great composers Bach and Mendelssohn later took a hand at rearranging it. Apparently Frederick the Great’s troops broke out spontaneously singing Nun danket after their surprising victory at the Battle of Leuthen in 1757. Even the mortally wounded joined in. It was sung at the opening of the magnificent Cologne Cathedral in 1884. In the 1850s an American scholar named Catherine Winkworth translated it into English and it became a major Thanksgiving hymn sung in almost all the churches of the New World.
Rinckart’s message thus lives on today every place his words are sung. How about you? Has the message of Nun danket reached you? What is Rinckart’s message for today? One American pastor has said of Nun danket that “no matter what the external conditions, contracting the disease of hardness of heart is not inevitable.” No matter what our outward circumstances or how far away we feel from God or if we have never prayed to him before, there are always two words to use in prayer. Those are the words “Thank you.” Even in direst difficulties we can always begin a prayer to God by offering him thanks that he is still there.
John L. Hoh, Jr. wrote: “It is the will of God that we give thanks. If we were not thankful we would go insane with the perplexities and irregularities of life’s experiences. If there was ever a time when we needed to be thankful it is in the hour of crisis; because if we are not thankful, we will be overwhelmed by despair.”
Wise words. Words and thoughts triggered by a 400 year old hymn and yet as fresh and meaningful as if it were written for us today – which it was!
(With reporting by Inge Reger at Weidhaus, Germany. Neil Earle, a pastor-journalist based in Los Angeles, teaches an online Church History class.)