Luther’s triumphant Easter hymn is an expansion of the older medieval Leise "Christ is Arisen" (LSB 459), itself inspired by Victimae Paschali laudes. During the Reformation, Lutherans sang its stanzas in direct alternation with that ancient sequence. Stanza 1 echoes Acts 2:24, declaring it impossible for death to hold Christ. In stanzas 3 and 4, Luther versifies the theology of his 1520 treatise The Freedom of a Christian: the crucifixion is a "strange and awesome strife," a "mighty duel" in which Christ, by the "wedding ring of faith," takes on His bride’s sins and death, swallowing them up entirely, for His divine life is stronger and more invincible than the grave. Closing Hymn: “Christ is Risen! Hallelujah!” This joyful nineteenth-century Easter hymn was written by John Samuel Bewley Monsell (1811–1875), an Irish Anglican clergyman and prolific hymn writer who penned roughly 300 hymns over his lifetime. Monsell was a passionate advocate for lively, spirited congregational singing and published this text in his 1863 collection Hymns of Love and Praise. The hymn moves through the entire Easter narrative in four stanzas: from the victorious rising of our "victorious Head," through the open gates of gladness where death and hell bend before the Victor, to the glorious morrow that transforms sorrow into joy ("He was dead, but now is living; He was lost, but He is found"), and finally to the triumphant declaration that "death or hell shall us enthrall" nevermore. The closing line, "Let us rise and keep the feast," echoes Paul’s Easter command in 1 Corinthians 5:8, sending us out from the service to live every day as an Easter celebration.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026