"'Your Cross I Place Before Me': Contemplating Christ Crucified" (Paul Gerhardt sermon series)

"'Your Cross I Place Before Me': Contemplating Christ Crucified"
(Sermon series on "The Hymns of Paul Gerhardt")

We conclude our series on “The Hymns of Paul Gerhardt” tonight with two Passion hymns, which is only fitting as now we are just days from Holy Week, the time of Christ’s Passion, his suffering and death. The two hymns we look at tonight are “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” and “Upon the Cross Extended,” both of which help us to ponder the Passion. Pastor Gerhardt’s beautiful words focus our thoughts and fix our eyes on Jesus, so that as we sing we are caught up in “Contemplating Christ Crucified.”

But first a little background on the hymns. The first hymn we sang tonight has a very interesting history. Our English hymn of seven stanzas, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” is translated from the German hymn of ten stanzas, O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden, which Gerhardt wrote some 350 years ago. And Gerhardt, in turn, based his hymn on a Latin poem written 400 years before him by St. Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century. Bernard’s poem had 35 stanzas, divided into seven parts of five stanzas each, one part for each of the seven days of Holy Week. Bernard wrote this poem as a prayer addressed to Christ on the cross, using the poetic device of addressing each part to a different part of Christ’s body. So the first part of the poem was addressed to Christ’s feet, the next to his knees, then to the hands, to the side, to the breast, to the heart, and finally to the face. Gerhardt picks up on this last section, addressed to the face of Christ, and rather freely adapts and expands it so that it becomes his own hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.”

That’s the poetry of it. Now why is it good theology? Why is that a good way to preach the gospel to us? Because it is in those holy wounds of Christ that we find our healing! “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities . . . and with his stripes we are healed.” When Christ rose from the dead, what did he show his fearful disciples? The nail marks in his hands and his feet, the spear wound in his side. Even risen from the dead, Christ wants to be known by these marks of his crucifixion. For therein is his victory and our salvation!

So now Gerhardt’s hymn directs our attention to that innocent head that had been so unjustly struck and spat upon. He addresses our prayer to the wounded, bleeding head of our Savior:

O sacred Head, now wounded,
With grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded
With thorns, Thine only crown.

It is awful to contemplate, these brutal wounds of our Savior, and yet so necessary. For nowhere else will you find a remedy, a solution, for the sin and death that holds you in its grip. Nowhere else than in the bloody wounds of Christ. “For without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” Christ’s blood is the only sacrifice that will cleanse you from your sins and thus rescue you from death. For Christ, your Lord, “has redeemed you, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won you from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil.” And he did this “with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death.”

You see, what is equally awful to contemplate is the cause for Christ’s suffering, namely, none other than my sin! Jesus died for my sin, taking my place! Gerhardt expresses this so well:

What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered
Was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression,
But Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior!
’Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor,
And grant to me Thy grace.

Contemplating Christ crucified, one effect of it, is to lead us to consider its cause in our sin, and so to lead us to contrition and repentance. I drove the nails into those innocent hands! It was my guilt those holy shoulders bore! Christ died for my sins! I deserved death; he suffered it! Repentance, deep repentance, floods my heart as with shame I look at my sinful life in the mirror of God’s law. This is what I could not atone for, never atone for, yet what the innocent Son of God bore in my place.

Gerhardt returns to this sobering theme in our other hymn tonight, “Upon the Cross Extended”:

I caused Your grief and sighing
By evils multiplying
As countless as the sands.
I caused the woes unnumbered
With which Your soul is cumbered,
Your sorrows raised by wicked hands.

But this is why we sing the whole hymn and don’t stop at stanza 4! Imagine if we stopped there! We’d be stuck in gloom and despair, realizing that we had crucified the Lord of glory and were therefore even more guilty! We might go out and hang ourselves like Judas! But thank God the hymn doesn’t stop there, just as God’s word to us doesn’t stop with the cause of Christ’s suffering. It goes on to tell us the wonderful result of Christ’s suffering! Likewise, Gerhardt’s hymn goes on to stanza 5, again addressed to Christ:

Your soul in griefs unbounded,
Your head with thorns surrounded,
You died to ransom me.
The cross for me enduring,
The crown for me securing,
You healed my wounds and set me free.

Friends, Christ’s cross of death means your crown of life! Jesus paid the price that sets you free from your sins, when he shed his precious blood for you. The wounded, bleeding body of Christ on the cross is your life and health and salvation. Look to him, take refuge in him, every day of your life and in your last hour!

You know, Paul Gerhardt, pastor and poet, lived in a time when people were keenly aware of suffering and death. The Thirty Years’ War had brought widespread devastation to Germany, including to Gerhardt’s hometown. Plague and disease decimated families, including Gerhardt’s--he lost four of his five children and his dear wife to disease. Religious persecution brought pressure to bear upon many faithful pastors, including Gerhardt, who was forced out of his office for remaining true to his confession. Suffering and death were all around.

But Paul Gerhardt knew where to turn in the midst of all this turmoil. And through his hymns, Pastor Gerhardt turns us to the same source of comfort and confidence that he found, namely, to the cross of Christ. Gerhardt’s prayer to the Savior is a fitting way to close this sermon, this series--and even a fitting way to close one’s life, entrusting yourself to your Lord:

Be Thou my consolation,
My shield, when I must die;
Remind me of Thy passion
When my last hour draws nigh.
Mine eyes shall then behold Thee,
Upon Thy cross shall dwell,
My heart by faith enfold Thee.
Who dieth thus dies well.

Upon the cross extended
See, world, your Lord suspended.

Paul Gerhardt (1607-76), born 400 years ago this month

Here are the links to the complete five-part sermon series, "The Hymns of Paul Gerhardt":

"'Hymns That Adore Him': The Baptized Life within Your Vocation"

"'Oh, May Thy Love Possess Me Whole': A Heart Warmed with Love"

"'When Life's Troubles Rise to Meet Me’: Sifted in Satan's Sieve"

"'This Lamb Is Christ, the Soul's Great Friend': The Father Sends His Willing Son"

"'Your Cross I Place Before Me': Contemplating Christ Crucified"

I also posted this article on the 400th anniversary of Gerhardt's birth:

Lutheranism's Sweetest Voice Turns 400: Paul Gerhardt's beloved hymns were a product of suffering

Gerhardt returns to this sobering theme...

Sobering has been a personal theme of mine since my encounter yesterday with a 1.75 liter bottle of Flor de Caña.

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