I would like any comments on the use of "And let us each/all our hearts prepare / For Christ to come and enter there" from "On Jordan's Bank the Baptist's Cry."
I compare it with the well-edited LSB version of the last verse of "Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates (cf. also the Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary, which too has satisfactorily edited it), which is closer to the German sense:
Redeemer, come and open wide
My heart to Thee; here, Lord, abide!
O enter with Thy grace divine;
Thy face of mercy on me shine.
compared to
Redeemer, come! I open wide
My heart to Thee; here, Lord, abide!
Let me Thy inner presence feel,
Thy grace and love in me reveal...
I also bring attention to Gerhardt, who wrote:
You need not toil or languish
Or ponder day and night,
How in the mist of anguish
You draw him by your might.
He comes, He comes all-willing,
Moved by his love alone,
Your woes and troubles stilling,
For all to Him are known.
Is there a major difference here? How have you Lutherans taken the line in "On Jordan's Bank?"
2 comments:
Great question.
I find the previous words to be even more startling:
Then cleansed be every life from sin;
Make straight the way for God within,
And let us all our hearts prepare
For Christ to come and enter there.
I guess I normally hear the word "prepare" and read "repent" and add a Lutheran definition (repent insofar as it is possible for your sinful heart and beg for grace for the rest...)
But, considering the whole stanza, the emphasis definitely seems to be on ME doing the work of cleansing,and making straight, FIRST, and then we wait for Christ to enter!
It is interesting that in the original German for "Comfort, Comfort, Ye My People," it is the word that effects the repentance. The English says that the herald bids men to repentance and then exhorts us "O that warning cry obey / O prepare for Him a way." But the German says that the voice is heard in order to lead people to repentance. The emphasis is on the word. So then the cry to make straight the way of the Lord because the work of the Word. This is clear in Olearius' Advent hymns.
I think we Lutherans might need to clean some house on these hymns. It was a good start with "Lift Up Your Heads."
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