Now Thank We All Our God

Because Thanksgiving is this week, we closed our worship service yesterday with the hymn, Now Thank We All Our God. This is one of my favorite hymns in the hymnal. The first two stanzas were written to be sung as a blessing before mealtime. The third stanza is a Trinitarian doxology. It is an exquisite expression of both thanksgiving and the source to which our thanks is directed. It is even more inspiring when you consider the circumstances in which it was composed.

Martin Rinkart, the author of the text, was a Lutheran pastor who served in his hometown of Eilenburg, Saxony (northern Germany), from his ordination in 1617 until his death in 1649. Those 32 years of ministry included the entirety of the Thirty Years' War, which began in 1618 and ended in 1648.

The Thirty Years' War was primarily a German civil war for the first 16 years, with Emperor Ferdinand II trying to assert Hapsburg authority over the Holy Roman Empire. For reasons too complicated to go into in this space, in 1635 most of the rest of Western Europe got involved, with Sweden and France on one side and Spain and Austria on the other. Estimates are that the total number of deaths during the war, both civilian and military, range between 5 to 8 million, the vast majority from disease or starvation. In some areas of Germany, 60% of the population died.

Eilenberg, the city in which Rinkart ministered, was a walled city. During the war, thousands of people who had lost everything fled there for protection. It became an overcrowded city of sick and hungry people. As if that wasn't enough, in 1637 a disease, most likely the bubonic plague, devastated the city. As many as 8,000 people died. The two other ministers in the city died. Martin Rinkart was left there, alone, to serve the entire city. That one year he performed 4,480 funerals, sometimes 50 in one day. This included the funeral of his wife.

This is the context in which Martin Rinkart spent his entire ministry - all of his preaching, teaching, caring for people, all the hymns and dramas he wrote, were written with this going on around him. And somewhere around 1636-1637, he wrote these words:

Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices

Who wondrous things hath done, in whom this world rejoices

Who, from our mothers' arms, hath 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 every joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us

And keep us in his grace, and guide us when perplexed

And free us from all ills, in this world and the next

All praise and thanks to God, who reigns in highest heaven

To Father and to Son and Spirit now be given

The one eternal God, whom earth and heaven adore

The God who was, and is, and shall be evermore

Rinkart knew that no matter what difficulties we face here on earth, nothing changes the fact that God is good, that God blesses us with love, that God still reigns in heaven, and that, in the end, God's will will be done.

This has been a difficult year for us. I know this week will be difficult for many of us. We aren't able to see our families, to keep and observe long-standing traditions, to be with those we love. We may not see much to be thankful for.

In the midst of this, friends, I pray that we can be the kind of Christians who keep faith, who love and care for others, and who can continue to sing our praise and thanks to God, even under the most difficult circumstances, as Martin Rinkart did. 

Know that I am thankful for each and every one of you. 

Grace and peace...

PT