Address at the Deo Cantamus Agape Concert

Introductory Remarks on “Jesu Meine Freude

 

Kevin T. Bauder

 

 

            The last thing that Jesus did before He left the Upper Room was to sing a hymn with His disciples. This was good Jewish tradition. Like Jesus, and like Old Testament Israel, Christians have always expressed their faith in music and verse. They have used hymnody both as a means of worshipping God and as a way of teaching and admonishing one another.

 

            Often when we think of teaching, we think of doctrines, of affirmations that tell us Who God is and what He is doing. We can learn doctrines best by reading creeds or attending lectures. Good hymnody does not neglect doctrine—indeed, the best hymns always have a strong doctrinal foundation. Good hymnody, however, reaches beyond the mere statement of doctrines: it engages our feelings. Good hymnody embodies and fosters a right emotional response toward God and His ways.

 

            In other words, good hymns are irreducibly emotional. If the emotional element is removed, we might as well be reading some dry volume of systematic theology. The whole point of hymnody is emotion, but in saying that I wish to insert two qualifications.

 

            The first qualification is that, while good hymns always express emotion, they are never about the emotion. They are about God and His ways. The emotion must be our response to a right understanding of Who God is and what He is doing, and never a response to our own emotionalism. If we are going to tell God that we love Him, for example, then let us sing about the perfections that make Him lovely, and not indulge ourselves in self-congratulation about how very, very much we feel.

 

            The second qualification is that good hymns must always be careful to express the right emotions. We experience different qualities of love, of joy, of awe, of gratitude. Some of these can rightly be offered to God, but some cannot. For example, if I express my love toward God in terms that I would normally use to express my fondness for a good hunting dog or my appetite for a plate of spaghetti, then I am being worse than silly. I am taking the name of the Lord my God in vain. Whenever we open the hymnal, we ought to remind ourselves that Jesus is not our boyfriend, not our buddy, not our therapist, not our favorite star or celebrity. He is no less than the sum of all His perfections and mighty deeds, and that is why we shall never have enough good hymns.

 

            As I have said, good hymns are always emotional. Indeed, if a hymn articulates a right emotion in the right way, I doubt that it could ever be too emotional. This emotional component is what makes Christian music different from our doctrinal statements and theology books. Because of this emotional component, good hymns will help the people of God in two ways.

 

            The first way that good hymns help us is by providing us with a language to express things that we don’t know how to say. Most of us possess a limited emotional language. We may feel deeply about certain things (our love for our spouses, our grief at the passing of a loved one, our awe at natural beauty), but most of us cannot readily express what we feel. So it is in our walk with God. As we come to know Him, we find in Him a quality of love, of peace, of joy, and of consolation that we have met nowhere else. To worship God means exactly to reflect these responses back to Him. If we do not have the language to express the emotion, then our worship will necessarily be hindered. A good hymn should give us the language that we need to verbalize the right response to God as we meet Him. That is the first use of a good hymn.

 

            Some hymns help us in a second, deeper way. Besides providing us with a language to say what we feel, they actually teach us to feel the right things. The combination of music with poetic imagery possesses enormous evocative power. A very good hymn can take us into emotions that we have never experienced before. It can open aspects of God’s character before us and induce within us exactly the response that God deserves and that He yearns to hear from us. When this happens, we are experiencing hymnody at its best; we genuinely are teaching one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

 

            This evening, Deo Cantamus will present some truly great Christian music. This music will be of two kinds. The first is music that is meant to be done by the people of God, and the second is music that is meant to be overheard by the people of God. In both of these categories, the true audience is God Himself. The music is offered to Him, for His glory and for His pleasure. The difference between these two kinds of music lies in how the music is presented.

 

            The first kind of music is written to be sung by the assembled people of God, the congregation. All of God’s people are invited to participate in the presentation of this music. To accommodate the skills of ordinary people, this music is typically simple and accessible.

 

            The second kind of music is specially prepared and presented by trained musicians, but it is offered to God in a setting in which it will be overheard by His people. It is sometimes called “special music,” and it is like a musical version of public prayer. Trained singers and instrumentalists present a musical offering in behalf of the congregation. Their skills permit a more excellent level of expression, and the listening congregation is able to enter sympathetically into the presentation. The musicians become spokespersons for the congregation, voicing in a more perfect way some sensibility that all share.

 

            Each of these categories carries its own danger. Because congregational music has to be accessible, it can slide into mere entertainment or degenerate into the trivial. Because special music requires a level of virtuosity, it can become overly complex or degenerate into art for art’s sake. The problem with either of these extremes is that the focus is drawn away from God, away from truth, and shifted to the music or the musicians. When this happens, hymnody becomes idolatry.

 

            Of course, the line between congregational music and special music is not always clear. Sometimes congregational hymns are arranged for presentation by special musicians. Sometimes special music can be simplified for congregational singing. In any event, the audience remains God Himself. The music is offered to Him. The focus is His pleasure and His glory.

 

            This evening’s program offers music of both sorts. During the latter part of the program, the choir will offer some of the great congregational hymns. In some places, you will even be asked to participate as a congregation, lifting your voices with the choir’s in an offering of praise to God.

 

            The early part of the program features Jesu Meine Freude by Johann Sebastian Bach. Of music that has been written to be overheard by God’s people, this is among the great pieces. It is often performed for its artistic merits alone, but the spiritual value of this composition is enormous. It is not merely the expression of an artist; rather, it engages the heart and soul of the pious Christian.

 

            In order to understand this composition, you must understand that Christian music is situational. By this I mean that it reflects how God meets us, how He appears to us, under specific circumstances. This is an important point, because we do not meet God in the abstract. We find Him in moments of temptation, moments of elation, moments of awe, or moments of sorrow. If we are sensitive spiritually, we come to know God in different ways during different circumstances, and especially at the crucial moments of our lives. Good Christian music explores Who God is (or will be) to us under each special circumstance.

 

            The circumstance that lies behind Jesu Meine Freude is bereavement. This music was written for those in sorrow, for people who were affected by the recent death of a person whom they loved. They were grieving, but Bach, as a Christian man, knew that they must not grieve as those who have no hope. Therefore, in Jesu Meine Freude, Bach aims to answer the question, What does God mean to me when I face deep sorrow?

 

            The answer to this question is implied by the title, Jesu Meine Freude. Jesus is my joy, no matter how deep the grief that washes over me. When you hear this music, however, you will notice that the joy of Christ is no trite thing. There is nothing chirpy or bouncy about Bach’s music, nor should there be. The joy of Christ consoles us in grief, but we do grieve nevertheless. Jesus is our joy in sorrow, but He is joy of a very definite kind.

 

            Bach wants to help us understand the nature of the joy that we find in Christ, a joy that reaches us even in our darkest moments. Therefore, when we overhear Jesu Meine Freude, it becomes a kind of sermon to us. It gives us a glimpse of a soul’s struggle as it purposes to love Christ in the face of temporal calamity.

 

            The composition is structured as a conversation. The odd-numbered movements reproduce the stanzas of an old, devotional hymn by Johann Franck. The even-numbered movements are biblical citations from Romans 8. The structure of the entire motet, therefore, oscillates between expressions of Christian sensibility and biblical responses. This becomes a dialogue between the devout soul and God.

 

            The hymn stanzas are expressions of deep longing for and consolation in the presence of Jesus Christ. According to the first stanza, He is the bridegroom and only lover of the soul; He is the soul’s joy and pasture and ornament. In the next two stanzas (movements 3 and 5), Jesus is presented as the soul’s shelter amid the storms of life. These storms are severe, even demonic in their proportions, but sheltered under Jesus, the soul is able to hurl defiance at them. In movement 7, the devout soul turns its back on wealth and worldly honor; because it cannot be parted from Jesus it remains unaffected by worldly calamity. The 9th movement employs the image of going to sleep, which in this context is ambiguous. Does the image depict a present attitude of the heart, or is the author hinting at our own eventual death? The significance is not entirely clear, but the soul bids “Good night” to the things that most people count as ultimate reality: pride, splendor, and even sin. The final movement recapitulates the message of the entire motet: present sorrow and suffering is real, but it is to be accepted as pure sweetness in the love of God. The motet closes by repeating the opening line: “Jesu, meine Freude,” Jesus, my joy.

 

            What of the even-numbered movements? They are drawn from the text of Romans 8, which is a chapter that contains marvelous promises. If we know that chapter, we will be struck by what Bach does not include in his motet. He does not mention the promise that all things work together for good. He does not quote the promise that God will, with His Son, freely give us all things. He does not repeat the promise that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

 

            Rather, Bach without exception chooses verses that mention Christ together with the Holy Spirit. These verses mark out the blessings that belong to those who are in Christ by the Spirit. Such souls escape condemnation: for them, the death sentence has been reversed. Through the Spirit they have been set free from the law of sin and death. If they belong to Christ, then they possess the Spirit by Whom they live. If Christ is in them, then the Spirit is life. This Spirit—the One Who raised up Jesus—will also make their own bodies alive some day.

 

            Theologically, these verses carry a double thrust. On the one hand, they look forward to a day when believers will be raised to be with Jesus. In that day of direct and immediate fellowship, Jesus will indeed be their joy. For the present, however, Jesus is not a distant abstraction or an unreachable person. His presence is mediated to the believer through the indwelling Spirit. Fellowship with Jesus—union with Christ—is not merely a future expectation; it is a present reality through the Holy Spirit. Jesus already is the joy of the believing heart, and that heart need not await the eschaton in order to commune with its beloved Savior.

 

            That’s a lot of heavy theology. In moments of deep pain and grief, however, God’s people don’t need to hear a shallow, jolly, “cheer up.” They need the solid consolation that grows from knowing that the lover of their soul, their Savior, is as near as their own heart. They need to know that Jesus, through the Spirit, is in them and loves them. He is “Jesus, my joy”—Jesu, meine Freude.

 

            In a few moments, you will be hearing BWV 227, Jesu Meine Freude. You will notice that the choir is singing it in German. You may wonder why.

 

            The reason is that a composition like this is an integrated work. It is not merely words set to music. It is music that has been molded with precision to the shape of a carefully crafted text. Bach has carefully bound his music to the rhythm and diction of the German original. The text could be translated after a fashion. But poetry is never really translated: it has to be rewritten in another language. Something is always lost. Even more is lost in a work like Jesu Meine Freude, where part of the power of the piece grows from the synergism of text with music.

 

            Of course, something is also lost if the audience listens to a foreign language while simultaneously reading a translation. In the judgment of this evening’s conductor, however, the integrity of the composition is maintained better by keeping the original, German text.

 

            You will not need to understand the words in order to grasp the sensibility that Bach is evoking. There is sadness here. It is the sorrow of bereavement. This is music for those who are experiencing grief. But it is a reminder that even in grief, joy remains. As the choir sings and we overhear, our hearts will be directed to the source of our joy, Jesus Christ. Jesu meine Freude.