Thoughts on “A Mighty Fortress is Our God!” (Dave Bukey)

Way back, when I was what might charitably called a late blooming adolescent high school student, 2 of my friends and I would volunteer as ushers in the old Cincinnati Music Hall in return for getting to see the symphony performances for free. In my Senior Year I had the good fortune to sit in Row 2 and hear the great Maestro Leopold Stokowski conduct a riveting concert, capped off with a full brass chorale encore of Martin Luther’s A Mighty Fortress is Our God! (our Hymn 200) with a transcription, I think by Bach. It was a wonderful experience- great music presented by one of the Century’s masters, 20 feet away. But it was also very familiar. As an occasional doubting but generally “observant” Presbyterian I knew the hymn well. The power and certainty of the text – “a bulwark everlasting,” a God that bested our enemies “armed with cruel hate” and whose “kingdom is forever,” combined with music of great grandeur and beauty moved my then impressionable psyche. It still does.

While I have been a Unitarian for many years, I was fortunate to have had an excellent experience with Christianity and therefore to have good, rather than bad associations with many of the great old hymns. This is in contrast to my wife Rachel, whose upbringing in a strict Missouri Synod Lutheran church has left her with a very different memory of this hymn and others. So it is only natural that A Mighty Fortress, penned by the Founder of the Protestant Reformation, would evoke strong positive memories and feelings for me.

But it seems to me that there is more than nostalgia at work here. My reaction to this hymn is just one example of the profound power that music has to bridge the gap between what we believe to be the case empirically and our religious experience. We can choke up over “I know that My Redeemer Liveth” from Handel’s Messiah, without ever admitting the inkling of a belief in a Redeemer, or be comforted at the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria without thinking of Mary, Mother of God. The examples of this phenomenon, many of which we hear in this congregation, through the great musical stewardship of our Director of Music, are endless. Jon Luopa has observed that in our non creedal faith, the music may play a proportionately greater role in allowing us to tap into a spiritual side of ourselves. As someone who is more in the Christian Unitarian end of the continuum and often prefers, as we sometimes say in the Loft Choir, the “real words,” hymns like A Mighty Fortress are wonderful.

Last, I love this hymn because of who wrote it- a reformer who had the audacity to stand to Papal authority and root out corruption, a forbearer, as Jon has taught to us, of our faith and an inspiration to our principles of action. I’m not a historian and certainly recall that a number of prominent early Unitarians were burned at the stake by other Protestants, but I admire Luther’s courage and that adds to the joy of singing this hymn.

I can’t speak for others, but I sometimes think we UU’s fret a bit too much over fear of “creeping dogma” and that this trepidation occasionally surfaces in how people react to the hymns. As for me, as long as we don’t morph into “Onward Unitarian Soldiers” I favor more frequent and unabashed singing of the great and grand old hymns, of which A Mighty Fortress is Our God, is in the top tier.

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Hymn 327, Joy, Thou Goddess, and why it's my favorite. (John Pearce)

Beethoven's music for Schiller's "Ode to Joy" from his 9th Symphony may well be the best tune of all time (not to put too fine a point on it). It's inspiring, fresh though quite simple, and as catchy as anything by Mozart or Paul McCartney. I was doubly delighted to find that it was set as Hymn 327, "Joy, Thou Goddess", in Singing the Living Tradition. On one hand, it's great to know that we might be called upon at any time to sing such a terrific piece. When I've helped put together lay-led services, I've worked it in whenever the subject was even remotely connected. On the other hand, the spirit of Schiller's poem resonates deeply with my sprituality. For me, the sacred needs bubbling, danceable joy, and it needs manifest connections to our natural world. The piece invokes these masterfully. It's immensely satisfying for me to sing "Joy Thou Goddess", and to know that my denomination has chosen it as an expression of its character.

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In the second of this series on Loft Choir members' favorite hymns, Dick Morrill shares his thoughts. Dick finds about 20 hymns he likes a lot. "But my favorite is, 'I am that great and fiery force' [hymn 27]." His reasoning? "[B]oth for the music and the words. The words are extraordinarily simple yet sophisticated." And Dick remarks on Hildegard of Bingen, the author, as a remarkable person, for having survived the corruption and inequalities of the church system for which she wrote. "Musically the Deprez composition is simple, yet moving and inventive. I think it remarkable that the base part is as great a melody, yet different from the main melodic line."

Other hymns I like are "For All the Saints", "Blessed Spirit of My Life", and "As Tranquil Streams."

And the one hymn Dick would prefer not to sing? "'We are a just and angry people.' [It's a] monument to political correctness."

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In this series, Loft Choir members will share our individual thoughts on our favorite hymns in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition. The Loft Choir sings hymns with the congregation each week and as singers, musicians, members and friends, we have our favorites - hymns that are beloved for their tunes, their structure, their text or their meaning. Like many among us, I came from a different religious tradition and like my Loft Choir friends, have sung in many choirs. I have many favorite hymn tunes like Dix, Hyfredol, Lobt Gott, Ihr Christian, Sine Nomine, Lasst uns erfreuen, St. Denio, and even Leoni. Those hymns, with their erect structures and chords, stand out for me as perfect examples of church singing, and invariably I love them. And there are the tunes that come from the English, American, and African American folk traditions - I've loved singing those forever. But now that I call UUC my spiritual home, I have added many other tunes to my favorites list - and many could not be called hymns at all. Some of these include Though I May Speak With Bravest Fire (34) and Blessed Spirit Of My Life (86), From All The Fret And Fever Of The Day (90), Spirit Of Life (123), Let Love Continue Long (129), and Come Sing A Song With Me (360).

My favorites change over time, with one tune or text resonating with me for a week or a season, or longer. Right now, that favorite is One More Step (168). It has a pretty little tune in a lilting rhythm, but that's not the reason it made my current favorites list. Last week, my daughter, a brand new reader, asked me about this song and when I couldn't remember it, she found the hymnal on the piano and leafed through it until she found it. She then held open the hymnal and sang it to me, every word and every note. She learned it in the children's worship Sunday, and it's a great one for children, very readable and likable and with a universal message of goodness that kids just 'get'. When we are in church on third Sundays, my new reader stands with me as I point to the words we sing together. That is an amazing experience to share and a new and wonderful way for me to experience music and UUC!

The lyrics are:
One more step, we will take one more step, 'til there is peace for us and everyone, we'll take one more step.
One more word, we will say one more word, 'til every word is heard by everyone, we'll say one more word.
One more prayer, we will say one more prayer, 'til every prayer is shared by everyone, we'll say one more prayer.
One more song, we will sing one more song, 'til every song is sung by everyone, we'll sing one more song.