HYMN FOR THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT Forty days and forty nights
- Gracia Grindal
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
Text: George Hunt Smyttan (1822-1870) Tune: Martin Herbst (1644-1681)
1. Forty days and forty nights
You were fasting in the wild;
Forty days and forty nights
Tempted, and yet undefiled.
2. Sunbeams scorching all the day;
Chilly dew-drops nightly shed;
Prowling beasts about your way;
Stones your pillow; earth your bed.
3. Shall not we your sorrow share,
And from earthly joys abstain,
Fasting with unceasing prayer,
Glad with you to suffer pain?
4. And if Satan, vexing sore,
Flesh or spirit should assail,
Christ, his vanquisher before,
Grant we may not faint or fail.
5. So shall we have peace divine;
Holier gladness ours be due;
Round us, too, shall angels shine,
Such as ministered to you.
6. Keep, oh, keep us, Savior dear,
Ever constant at your side;
That we may with you appear
In your resurrection-tide.
REFLECTION
The Temptation of Christ is one of the accounts in Scripture that many artists have depicted or written about, the greatest, probably, Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor which explores this event in great detail. Hymns about it are not as common, although one could argue that Luther’s "Ein Feste Burg/A Mighty Fortress is our God" puts the battle with the devil as a constant for Christians. Ultimately, as that hymn concludes, even if the battle leads to our deaths, the devil has not won because God’s Word abides. Christ has already won the battle by his death and resurrection. But still the skirmishes continue with our ancient foe.
To some extent the temptations are universal and trivial for the devil is not very creative. He is, however, clever at using his same tricks on us repeatedly. So, he will pose the question of our hungers and appeal to us to satisfy them wrongly. He knows we crave power, and will betray our God in the search for it; he knows we like spectacles and will overlook our faith to exploit our love of pyrotechnics like falling from the temple heights to test God and see if the angels will save us.
What Jesus teaches us in this encounter is the meaning of the First Commandment You shall have no other gods before me. That means NO other gods. The devil knows if he can get Jesus to worship him, it’s all over for his chief rival. Adam failed the test, now Jesus, the second Adam, passes it with flying colors. He is teaching us how and why we must resist these temptations. To resist we must, like Christ, have God's Word right and at the ready. (Old Nick knows his Bible too.)
The hymn, an old chestnut, also teaches us what we often forget: If Jesus is being tempted in these ways, we also will be, and like him, after this trial, angels will minister to us. And so we pray in the words of the hymn writer "Keep, oh, keep us, Savior dear,/Ever constant at your side;/That we may with you appear/In your resurrection-tide."
HYMN INFO
George Smyttan wrote this hymn for a book called “Poetry for Lent; as sorrowful yet always rejoicing.” It was originally in 9 stanzas. It was revised to six stanzas in the great hymnal of 1861, Hymns Ancient and Modern. Smytten, born in India to an English doctor at the Bombay Medical Board, was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and became a rector of the Hawksworth church in Nottinghamshire. He was part of the Anglo-Catholic revival of the 19th century which produced many hymns that fit the liturgical year. This hymn has been the most well known of the hymns he wrote. Martin Herbst, the tune writer, was a German Lutheran pastor who served as Rector at the high school in Eisleben and served as pastor in St. Andreas church in Eisleben as well. He died of the plague which still could ravage the population.
LINKS
Concordia Publishing House https://youtu.be/D7JuNP8hMXY?si=q2b3GdWinbAcPE1A
Chet Valley Singers
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For your Lenten reading
"With these 366 sonnets, remarkable in artistry and number, Gracia Grindal has made literary history. The scriptural and theological knowledge that supports these poems is vast, but it is the imagination infused with the holy in poem after poem that reveals the poet's grace and skill and the astonishing work of the Spirit." --Jill Baumgartner, Poetry Editor, Christian Century, and professor of English emerita, Wheaton College