Friedrich Christian Heyder (1677-1754), a parish pastor in Electoral Saxony, wrote the Communion hymn "Ich komm zu deinem Abendmahle" in twenty-eight stanzas, first published at Zwickau in 1710. A twenty-one-stanza version appeared in the Missouri Synod's first hymnal (New York, 1847). The Lutheran Hymnal (1941) translated fifteen stanzas as "I Come, O Savior, to Thy Table," and LSB divided them into two hymns: LSB 618, on repentance, and LSB 619, on the justification of the sinner. LSB prints the 1941 English unchanged. The hymn confesses that the body once given on the cross and the blood once shed are the very body and blood given in the Supper: "Thy body, given for me, O Savior, Thy blood which Thou for me didst shed, these are my life and strength forever, by them my hungry soul is fed." Each stanza ends with the refrain "Lord, may Thy body and Thy blood / Be for my soul the highest good," which the LSB companion reads as a humble plea for the forgiveness of sins, the gift the hymn points to throughout. The tune ICH STERBE TÄGLICH is an eighteenth-century German melody by an unknown composer.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026