2007 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Lutheran pastor and hymnist Paul Gerhardt. He was born in 1607 in a village near Wittenberg, Germany and he died in 1676 in Lubben, Germany. Gerhardt wrote a total of 133 hymns. Gerhardt’s hymns were born during a life of adversity, yet they proclaim a strong trust in God’s Word.

Lutheran hymns have a rich heritage of confession, profession, and faith. Their main theme is faith in a gracious God and in Jesus as the Savior of the world. The Lutheran Sentinel pays tribute to those hymns by looking at Paul Gerhardt’s life during this year.

“Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat.” (St. Luke 22:31) These words of Jesus to Simon Peter are not just part of the story of Jesus’ Passion. This is part of the story of every Christian.

It is the story of Paul Gerhardt. In a Lutheran church in Germany, underneath a life-size painting of Gerhardt is written: “A theologian sifted in Satan’s sieve.” This March 11 will be the 400^th birthday of Paul Gerhardt. This is a year for us to get to know him, both by singing his hymns (22 of which are in our Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary), and by learning his life story. Because of Gerhardt’s hymns, you already know him even if you don’t realize it. His life—his crosses and trials—helped produce his hymns.

“Why should cross and trial grieve me? …”

A Christian’s “cross” is not just any suffering, but suffering that comes from confessing Christ faithfully. Gerhardt himself bore this cross, especially when he was removed from his pastoral position in Berlin because of his refusal to compromise his Lutheran faith even in subtle ways. But that was not all.

Gerhardt knew “trial” too, in the same way Abraham did when God tested his faith by telling him to sacrifice his son. Gerhardt had many such trials, especially when he watched four of his five children die very young, and then saw his dear wife die after only thirteen years of marriage.

Is that why he wrote, “Why should cross and trial grieve me?” Surprisingly, all those events were in the future. This hymn (ELH #377) was published when Gerhardt was 46 years old and he did not marry until he was 48.

So much sadness and death was ahead of Gerhardt, when he wrote:

Though a heavy cross I’m bearing
And my heart
Feels the smart
Shall I be despairing? … (v. 2)
What is all this life possesses?
But a hand
Full of sand
That the heart distresses. … (v. 6)

Gerhardt was able to put into words what you feel when you have a sadness, a disappointment, a death, or a cross to bear. Even though the worst of it was in the future for him when he wrote these words, he still knew some of this sadness. His mother and father both died before his fifteenth birthday. Most of life into his 40s involved waiting.

For example, Gerhardt stayed in Wittenberg for fourteen years as he finished his studies. Finally, at age 35, he became a tutor in the home of a lawyer in Berlin. He fell in love with the man’s daughter, but without a good living to support a family they could not marry. He had to wait some more, for at the age of 43 he still had no pastorate and no marriage.

But: “Why should cross and trial grieve me?” In this time of waiting, Gerhardt’s trials taught him to find Christ at his side:

Why should cross and trial grieve me?
Christ is near
With His cheer;
Never will He leave me.
Who can rob me of the heaven
That God’s Son,
For my own
To my faith hath given? (v. 1)
God oft gives me days of gladness;
Shall I grieve
If He give
Seasons, too, of sadness?
God is good and tempers ever
All my ill,
And He will
Wholly leave me never. (v. 3)

It is good for us to learn Gerhardt’s life story because no Christian can avoid having crosses and trials. Gerhardt’s hymns teach us not to avoid them but to use the crosses and trials, so that we see more clearly Christ at our side in the crosses and trials.

Just as God prepared Gerhardt ahead of time for the worst crosses and trials yet to come, we need to be prepared. Gerhardt’s hymns help prepare us. When my own father died very unexpectedly, a good friend sent me the words to verses 4 and 6 of this hymn by Gerhardt. They were the needed comfort. On his own deathbed, Gerhardt sang his own words from verse 5: “Death cannot destroy forever …” 

We can hardly know any better words than those of verses 7 and 8:

Lord, my Shepherd, take me to thee.
Thou art mine;
I was Thine
Even ere I knew Thee.
I am Thine, for Thou hast bought me;
Lost I stood
But Thy blood
Free salvation brought me.
Thou art mine; I love and own Thee.
Light of Joy,
Ne’er shall I
From my heart dethrone Thee.
Savior, let me soon behold thee
Face to face;
May Thy grace
Evermore enfold me!

Jerome Gernander is pastor of Bethany Lutheran Church in Princeton, Minnesota.