Friday, August 22, 2014

Bless Our Town: Bach's Cantatas for the 10th Sunday after Trinity

My journey through Bach's sacred cantatas continues. This week I'm listening to CD 36 of this set, with a CD photo of a boy from Afghanistan.

Sunday is the Tenth Sunday after Trinity. People in St. Louis have been pulling together this week to help out in Ferguson, MO, the city in St Louis County that has been through a lot since the Aug 9th shooting by a white officer of an unarmed black teenager. Local news reports are dominated by events and stories there, and pastors of our area (and other leaders) have been calling people to help in different ways. This coming Sunday, the prayers and help will certainly continue.

The first cantata for this coming Sunday is “Schauet doch und sehet, ob irgendein Schmerz” (BWV 46, “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow”). You might say, this cantata is about a community in crisis. The text concerns the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, which, according to conductor John Eliot Gardiner in the CD notes, might have reminded some of Bach's families of the destruction of so many German towns during the Thirty Years War. We should not say that God’s wrath causes the destruction of communities, as the scriptures attribute Jerusalem’s troubles to God’s judgment. But the cantata skillfully moves among images (both textual and musical) of God’s anger and God’s mercy, within the context of Jerusalem. The listener is left hanging a bit at the end, holding to the hope of God’s grace.

The second cantata is “Nimm von uns, Herr, du treuer Gott (BWV 101, “Take from us, Lord, Thou faithful God”), has the same gospel lesson, Christ’s tears over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-48), and the same theme of God’s anger and mercy. Using two Luther hymns, the cantata is similarly disturbing. Gardiner writes, “Clearly, the wages of sin, the overwhelming power of retribution visited upon those tempted to stray from the Lord’s path, prompted Bach to subject his first listeners to a twin-barrelled doctrinal salvo and to compose what Robert Levin described to me as ‘the most crushing work of Bach’s career’.” These words are fearful but also hopeful:

Take from us, Lord, Thou faithful God,
the grave punishment and great distress
that we with countless sins

have truly merited.

Protect us from war and famine,
contagion, fire and grievous pain...

Lead us with Thy right hand

and bless our town and our country;

give us always Thy holy Word,

protect us from Satan’s guile and murder;
grant us one single, blessèd hour,

that we may forever be with Thee.

The third cantata is “Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben!” (BWV, 102, “Lord, are not Thine eyes upon the truth!”). Gardiner goes into detail about how the music depicts the fearful text.

In waiting danger lurks;

is it your wish to lose time?

The God, who was once so merciful,

can lead you with ease to His seat of judgment.

Today you live, repent today;

before the morning dawns, all may change.
He who today is healthy, ruddy-faced, thriving,
will tomorrow be sick, or even dead.


This week, I've followed the local news and tried to do my small part. As the week moved toward the weekend, I listened to these cantatas and considered Bach's themes. How does the righteous Lord hold us accountable for sin, in this case the racism so imbedded in our hearts and in our economic and social structures? How do we see God’s anger and grace at work in a social crisis?

Spiritual repentance, arising from a fresh sense of God's righteousness, has many social implications, including a greater appreciation of the social and economic dangers into which people fall, and from which people die. Some mornings we do, indeed, awake to hear what has changed overnight, to learn from the dawn news who has suffered and died. But we also learn of people who had put themselves in harm's way in order to be at God's right hand, sharing God's love.

We continue to pray for this local situation and other tragic situations in the news.

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


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