There was an interesting discussion on the ELCA clergy board concerning “A Mighty Fortress” on Reformation Sunday afternoon. The original poster wrote, ”Am I the only Lutheran pastor who finds "A Mighty Fortress" increasingly less helpful? I remember one day thinking that it resonated with me and modern life. But most Reformation days it feels very disconnected to modern life and the modern church.”
That post produced an extensive discussion that I think is helpful for us in reflecting upon how we hear hymns and weave them into our lives as worshiping Christians. I mean when we sing ”A Mighty Fortress” we are singing a hymn that is almost 500 years old. How can it possibly relate to our world today? It opens with symbolism of warfare in the first verse and our battle spiritual battle against whatever opposes the kingdom or people of God. It captures the tension between our struggles in this life in the midst of a world filled with injustice and evil and the power of God’s promises and God’s faithfulness. In the fourth verse we boldly confess that even losing everything we hold most dear in this life, house, goods, honor, child or spouse and even life God’s victory will not be denied and the Kingdom is ours forever.
These are bold ideas and confessions and they lie at the very heart of our faith and who Jesus is and what is the result of his life, death on the cross, resurrection and ascension. As Paul says in Romans 14, “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.”
Living in an era where so much of life seems so uncertain and insecure because of ordinary life threatening illnesses like cancer, rarer ones like ALS, or new ones like Ebola, a world where life is often treated with meaninglessness by beheadings or terms like “acceptable collateral damage," where foreclosures put families out of homes but banks are protected from the consequences of their own actions with terms like “too big to fail,” our world is still filled with devilish hordes that attack faith and justice. In that world singing “A Mighty Fortress” is still an act of bold confession that despite all appearances God is still and will still be ultimately victorious and our lives secure because, “we are the Lord’s.”
Just as it is the work of the preacher to mine the words of scripture to understand how they address us in the midst of our contemporary world so, too, we must approach the proclamation of God's Word in our hymnody. It is a task too often easily overlooked and often neglected. We should never think that it is sufficient to simply pick three hymns any more than three points and a poem or a joke is the basis for a good sermon. Our faith and proclamation demands better treatment.
Hymns are the breath of the Spirit and they teach us the faith, strengthen our confession, and prepare us for daily living in the Kingdom of God. Each Sunday as we sing the hymns guiding and shaping our worship for the day, listen carefully to the words and reflect on how they can connect to your life. Do not just sing the words but hear them and let them feed your faith. Pray them and let old words and tunes become a marvelous new song.