Hymn of the Week: November 27, 2023
Now Thank We All Our God
Text: Martin Rinkhart 1636
Translated by: Catherine Winkworth
Now thank we all our God
with heart and hands and voices,
who wondrous things has done,
in whom his world rejoices;
who from our mothers' arms
has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love,
and still is ours today.
O may this bounteous God
through all our life be near us,
with ever joyful hearts
and blessed peace to cheer us,
to keep us in his grace,
and guide us when perplexed,
and free us from all ills
of this world in the next.
All praise and thanks to God
the Father now be given,
the Son and Spirit blest,
who reign in highest heaven
the one eternal God,
whom heaven and earth adore;
for thus it was, is now,
and shall be evermore.
Today’s Devotion:
IF it were possible to wish that the Canon of Scripture had been settled other than the way it has come to be known to us all, there are many who might have welcomed the Book of Ecclesiasticus.
Perhaps…
Its better to say it like this. If a person were to read anything biblical that’s NOT a part of the Old and New Testaments, they would add one more book to the 66 that we already have. That of the Book of Ecclesiasticus; for in that rich and ample treatise there is such deep wisdom, and much that would make a shrewd appeal to any modern reader who came on it for the first time.
A few might know the 38th chapter on the community of labor, and perhaps also the 39th on the religious physician; and most people know very well the scripture passage Rev. Chakoian read during All Saints service; Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
The 44th chapter begins the final section of the book which consists of a great pageant of history, rehearsing the glories of the heroes of Israel from Abraham to Nehemiah – like Hebrews chapter 9 but on a much larger scale and with a different intention. The pageant closes in the 50th chapter with these words:
And now, bless ye the God of all,
Which everywhere doeth great things,
Which exalteth our days from the womb,
And dealeth with us to his mercy.
May he grant us joyfulness of heart,
And that peace may be in our days in Israel for the days of eternity;
To intrust his mercy with us;
And let him deliver us in his time!
And there, of course, you have the original of “Now Thank We All Our God.”
This most famous hymn of thanksgiving is known throughout churches across the globe, It is one of the truly universal hymns. No serious attempt is ever made to sing it to any other tune but the one we have always sung it to. It has gained and kept its popular place because of its brevity, its simplicity, its commonplace and unpretentious celebration of that brightest of Christian graces, gratitude.
In our country, the hymn is usually kept for some occasions that particularly call for gratitude – the harvest festivals, a proclamation of peace, or some impressive deliverance.
The true message of the hymn is not precisely that as much as we might want it to be. Indeed it is almost a direct contradiction of its intention if we keep it only for feast days or national holidays, and all in all days we find it easy to thank God. It is the mark of a person of faith, not that they distinguish between that for which they are grateful and for that which they are not grateful, but that they are grateful for ALL things, distinguishing only between those occasions when gratitude is a simple pleasure and those when it is a fortifying discipline.
Recall Ecclesiaticus. The point here is that God has done mighty things for his people over a period that historians may estimate at a mere 2500 years ago, but which was, for our purposes, the whole of history. Gratitude is always due to God for what God has done through history’s heroes, through the Luthers, the Livinstones, the Pasteurs and Einsteins and Martin Luth Kings and Nelson Mandela and Gandhi; through faithful parents and teachers and men and women of God, through saints and preachers and doctors. Those achievements of God in history stand as history. Time does not reduce the debt of gratitude. And now, more than this, more than all, a person can hardly feel like much of a mensch until they are able to feel at least once a day a sense of gratitude to God for Jesus Christ – for this birth and life and Passion and Resurrection: for Christ’s skill and patience and courtesy and for all the gifts of the spirit, and for the mighty acts which he did and which men and women have done in his name. “Who wondrous things have done: in whom his world rejoices’ - gratitude is not a matter of humor or temperament; it is not even a duty that must be performed at stated and conventional times (though to practice it as a duty is better than to not practice at all). Gratitude is the very breath of a Christian’s life.
On one essential point let there be no mistake. Thankfulness between one person and another, and between God and mankind are two very different things.
Gratitude between two people usually results in a debtedness. Many folk fly in fear of being in debt to any one person. “I don’t want your charity” they cry in desperate defense of their self-respect. There are many who are great at collecting those debts of gratitude putting that person into an almost spiritual counterpoint to a Debtors prison.
But there is nothing servile about our gratitude to God because the love of God is not smeared with patronage or pride. “It is a good thing,” the psalmist says “to give thanks to the Lord, yea, a joyful and pleasant thing it is to be thankful.” That is literally true. There are some saints on earth of whom you feel that it is a privilege to be grateful for them, not a humiliation. It is so with God. It is a poor act of public worship that contains no prayer of thanksgiving, no hymn of praise. It is better to have too much gratitude in life than too much caution and calculation.
It is no accident – it is, on the contrary, a great blessing and a great judgment – that this most famous hymn comes from the deep and gross darkness of the Thirty Years War. Its context is not really the context of the idyllic country church decorated with cornflowers and fruit. It is plague and bereavement and slaughter and famine. And they say that the hymn began its life not as a choral hymn for cathedrals but as hymns sung as Grace before mealtimes.
Thanksgiving in the midst of darkness, thanksgiving every day – these are the worship and the joy of Christian folk everywhere.
Enjoy this hymn, arranged by John Rutter and sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
