Beloved Inner Joy: Bach's Cantatas for the 6th Sunday after Trinity

Onward to Bach’s cantatas for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity, this coming Sunday. After this weekend, there are just 17 weeks in the liturgical year. Advent will begin before we know it!   

Bach's grave at St. Thomas' Church,
Leipzig (from classicfm.com)

There are two surviving cantatas for this Sixth Sunday: “Es ist das Heil uns kommen her” (BWV 9, “Salvation has come to us”), and “Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust” (BWV 170, “Contented rest, beloved inner joy”). Included on the CD (#32) is a motet attributed to Bach, “Der Gerechte kommt um” (“The righteous perish”). The photo is of an older woman in Llasa, Tibet.

In the CD notes, conductor John Eliot Gardiner comments that, in BWV 9, Bach and his text provide “a narrative thread between reflections on the Law, man’s puny attempts to give up the ‘bad habit’ of sin (‘der Sünden Unart zu verlassen’) (No.2), his need for salvation and justification by faith (No.4), and the power of the Gospel to strengthen that faith, and finally his reliance on God to determine the hour of his death (No.6).” All the recitatives are sung by the bass, in order to provide continuity to this narrative thread. Gardiner describes in some detail how Bach takes serious and somewhat abstract theological subjects and writes in a way that is comforting to the listening and even “fun-loving” in his musical inventiveness.

For BWV 170, “Bach is searching for ways to insist on spiritual peace as the goal of life, and for patterns that will allow him to make passing references to sin and physical frailty.” The mood of the cantata, to me, is peaceful but pensive until the cheerful alto aria at the end. The text by Georg Christian Lehms uses the two lessons, Matt. 5:20-27 and Romn. 6:3-11, to depict the sinful, difficult world and the protection of Christ. Christ’s love, in turn, provides peace and joy and (a theme in both cantatas) a longing for Heaven’s rest. The thought of Heaven, in fact, gives us peace as we struggle through sin and difficulty.

I am dismayed to live further,
thus accept me, Jesus!
I cower before all sins,
let me find that dwelling place
where I myself am at peace.

The narrative thread of the first cantata, following our ordo salutis, the pattern of our salvation, may be abstract, but it is also the reality of our lives. The triune God's work on our behalf is the reality on which we place our trust and have confidence in our destiny. But we don't always feel deeply that reality; we're too weak, distracted, forgetful, sunk into our everyday pressures and regrets. How wonderful that Bach used his abilities to place that salvation-drama into music, to help people rely upon and trust the Lord. 

This summer I had a health scare, which I'll write about later. It was not an illness, it was one symptom that required a diagnostic test. But that meant a period of tremendous anxiety as I awaited test results. Now, with that worrisome time just past, I listened to BWV 170 with new interest. 

I am confident in my salvation, which means that I'm humble, happy, and relieved in God's vast love and mercy. I really do believe that, if I was facing certain and imminent death, I would be joyful to be soon with the Lord. But I'm also happy in my life which, right now, I've no desire to leave. So Bach's text, with its Weltschmertz and sorrow about sin, seems so different from the happiness and gratitude I feel about my life, loved ones, work, and daily pleasures.

As I say, I'll write more about this later. But I'm thinking about how we can look forward to Christ's promised rest while also loving the lives that we have. Actually, for me, music creates a kind of arc between this life and the life to come. Music helps me experience that "beloved inner joy" of the title. Bach did his work too well: wanting us to feel confident in God's salvation, he wrote music that makes me want to stick around this life as long as possible. 

(As the CD notes indicates, all English translations are by Richard Stokes.)