Each month we highlight a hymnwriter who authored one or more of the well-loved hymns that we sing today.
Johann Heermann 1545-1647
After losing four infants to the grave, Anna Heermann vowed to dedicate her sole living child to the public ministry. The poor family sacrificed much for his education, but the Lord bridged their social gap through several notable sponsors. Young Johann Heermann stood out among his classmates as a poet laureate of imperial class.
He first served as a teacher as he prepared for the pastoral ministry, but sickness regularly interfered with his studies until an eye disease forced him to return home in 1610. His obvious and superior gifts gained him a call as assistant preacher regardless, and not long after as regular preacher in Köben.
Then the Thirty Years’ War broke out. The imposition of a Catholic ruler over Heermann’s homeland Silesia ignited a firestorm across Europe. Up to eight million lives were lost to warfare, pestilence, and famine. One year, Heermann presided at five hundred funerals. Catholic forces resorted to terrorist tactics, and even some “Lutheran” defenders engaged in pillaging and other unchristian behaviors. Heermann narrowly evaded swordsmen and crossed rivers beneath bullet-fire. Catholic propaganda intimidated his son Samuel into conversion.
Swedish military intervention and his son’s return to the Lutheran confession offered some relief in his final days. But through it all, he longed for an eternal hope only his Savior could grant.
Heermann lost his voice in 1623. No longer capable of preaching the Gospel, he turned to expressing it through musical composition. Among his four hundred hymns, “O Dearest Jesus” stands out. J. S. Bach uses it in both his St. Matthew and St. John Passions. Its tune echoes a then-familiar setting of the 23rd Psalm:
What punishment so strange is suffered yonder! The Shepherd dies for sheep that loved to wander; The Master pays the debt His servants owe Him, Who would not know Him. (TLH 143:4)
The daily terrors of 17th-century Europe are simply incomprehensible to us today. Without our life of ease, swooning guitar ditties would hold no appeal over hymnody truly tried by fire:
There was no spot in me by sin untainted; Sick with sin's poison, all my heart had fainted; My heavy guilt to hell had well-nigh brought me, Such woe it wrought me. (verse 6)
Modern “woke” anxiety yowls at the mildest inconvenience. Heermann’s solace to every unfair treatment of life was Christ and Him crucified:
Whence come these sorrows, whence this mortal anguish? It is my sins for which Thou, Lord, must languish; Yea, all the wrath, the woe, Thou dost inherit, This I do merit. (verse 3)
Who could compare the hardships of Covid to the Thirty Years War? Yet despite horrific personal loss, Heermann upheld public worship and found retreat in Word and Sacrament:
Whate'er of earthly good this life may grant me, I'll risk for Thee; no shame, no cross, shall daunt me; I shall not fear what man can do to harm me Nor death alarm me. (verse 13)
Little did his mother know that her vow would bless Christ’s church for centuries to come:
But worthless is my sacrifice, I own it; Yet, Lord, for love's sake Thou wilt not disown it; Thou wilt accept my gift in Thy great meekness Nor shame my weakness. (verse 14)
May we so boldly dedicate our children and ourselves to Christian education as the greatest endeavor this side of glory:
And when, dear Lord, before Thy throne in heaven To me the crown of joy at last is given, Where sweetest hymns Thy saints forever raise Thee, I, too, shall praise Thee. (verse 15)
Spend some time with Johann Heermann’s works in our English hymnals:
TLH: 143, 144, 265, 268, 269, 375, 395, 417, 512, 659
LSB: 421, 439, 568, 696, 774, 839
ELH: 198, 213, 221, 292, 293, 374, 470, 475, 550, 559
is pastor of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Hecla and Aberdeen, South Dakota, and Redeemer Lutheran Church in Bowdle, South Dakota. He also serves on the CLC Board of Missions.