December, 2016 | Janie B. Cheaney

My first Messiah performance was a university production augmented by community members. I was one of the latter–a college dropout who didn’t know much about music but knew what I liked. The director (I’ll call him Dr. Gunther) was passionate and volatile, the type who usually spells trouble for music departments. By mid-term, he had already alienated half the faculty. He dropped enough hints to indicate the nature of his faith: an artist’s Catholicism, invaluable as a source of inspiration but no use at all in curbing a rampant ego.

Gunther loved this music passionately, and over weeks of rehearsal had exhorted and molded the choir into a mean Messiah machine–or at least we thought so. “I don’t care what your religion is, or even if you believe anything,” he told us after warm-up on performance night. “But tonight–just for tonight–sing like you believe this.”

I already believed this, but was beginning to question why. Why do some have faith and some don’t? Was it entirely a choice, a Nietzschean “will to believe,” or did the Holy Spirit just muscle His way in to claim this lumpen territory for Christ? The performance didn’t answer that question, but showed me what (or Who) mattered more.

The first chorus is a ringing proclamation: “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” Each part takes turns asserting, “the mouth of the Lord has spoken it!” If God makes a promise, we can take it to the bank. Gross darkness covers the people, the bass informs us (to the accompaniment of low strings swirling like fog). “But the Lord shall arise upon them.” As his voice climbs the scale and the minor tone brightens, we hear the dawn.

The fulfillment of God’s promise is announced first to lowly shepherds. The air fills with the rustling of wings as though the angels are too excited to hold still. “Glory to God in the highest!” bursts out of the heavenly band, with “Good will!” tossed about in joyful benediction. It’s too soon over (but listen as the last angel leaves the sky, in a quiver of violins). Next, the babe has grown up and is walking among us, leading his flock in pastoral calm. “Come unto him, all ye that labor . . .”

But Part II opens with “Behold the Lamb of God,” covered in blood. The music itself, with its staggering intervals, lashing chords and jarring dissonances, lays on the stripes. But why this sudden dance tune, incongruously lively? “All we like sheep have gone astray”–can’t you hear it? Giddy, foolish sheep, turning every one to his own way, dashing madly toward the devil’s pit, skidding faster and faster–until the basses drag the bleeding Messiah forward again: “And the Lord hath laid on him–” (“on Him! on Him!” every voice echoes in stunned amazement) “the iniquity of us all.”

Part III: The resurrection does not receive a grand choral anthem; instead the tenor assures us, almost matter-of-factly, that God “did not suffer [His] holy one to see corruption.” Well, of course not! The King of glory enters heaven to a tune both regal and merry, exhorting the very gates to “lift up your heads.” What’s more, His people are destined to follow him there. “The trumpet shall sound” (and so it does, in a stirring duet with the bass soloist) and we shall be changed into creatures worthy enough to shout, “Worthy is the lamb.”

The pounding chorus of “Blessing and honor” deals a joyful death-blow to the notion that heaven consists of sitting on clouds and strumming harps–to spend eternity singing such praises to such a Savior will be glory indeed! The incredible “Amen” layers the voices of a multitude, of every tribe and nation, each in his own pitch and tone, woven into perfect harmony by Christ Himself.

At the end of that performance the choir was pumped, all excitedly congratulating each other and our sweating director. (At the same time the orchestra was muttering that Dr. Gunther didn’t know how to direct, and the alto soloist resented some of the looks he had given her.) I just sat there on the risers for a while, an emotional wreck. No wonder; I’d been given a surround-sound refresher course in the gospel, plus a glimpse of heaven.

The coming of faith is when God inhabits time–the music, the images, the controversies and the daily grind–and makes it glow. He was there, and my belief was neither act of will nor involuntary takeover. It was Him, and it will always be Him, forever and ever.

Amen.

As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace to you!” But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. Luke 23:36-37

Those two guys on the way to Emmaus—we never found out why they were going there. But we know they didn’t stay. “And they arose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem.” They left Jerusalem in gloom; they return to a buzz of excitement: “The Lord has risen indeed, and he’s appeared to Simon!” Everybody’s talking: explaining, expositing, theorizing, speculating, repeating themselves over and over like TV pundits after big breaking news: Unbelievable!

Then Jesus shows up, and it really is.

Luke is sometimes unintentionally humorous—or it just may be that he writes this piece of the story with a smile. Here they are, babbling on about the Lord’s appearances, and when he actually appears, they think he’s a ghost! Or a “spirit”—something profoundly uncanny. What were they expecting?

He probably looks different—perhaps something a little beyond human—but whatever the appearance, there’s enough of Jesus to recognize, yet something more to fear. Not a tame lion, as we’ve heard tell of another character in Christian lore. This is not the man they knew, who tramped the hills with them and broke bread with them and talked with them for hours on end. It’s not (quite) the man who suffered and sighed and bled and died.

And yet it is that man—times infinity.

They couldn’t believe because they had never seen anything like this before. No one had. This was entirely new.

And yet . . . in a way it wasn’t. That seed, planted in the virgin about 33 years ago, that microscopic marriage with a human egg—this unimaginable union of God and man they see before them–started back then. But no—

Those interminable genealogies, those tedious “begats,” casting the bloodline back through the centuries: from Joseph to Heli to Matthal to Levi to Melchi and so on, all the way back to Adam. It must have started then. But no—

Remember when Got bent down and breathed life into a mound of clay, “and man became a living being.” Surely it started then. But . . .

Even farther back, Spirit broods over potential; a word trembles on the brink. The Word. Time and place have yet to be; all is joy and bliss and glory, filling the infinite. The Glory has something in mind, and even though there’s no word for it now we’ll call it all things: each particular, various, after-its-own kind animal, vegetable, and mineral. In His mind, they are made of particles so tiny that learned men in the far future, with all their subtle instruments, will not be able to track them. But somewhere in the mind of the Maker, he draws a line at the frontier where the universe will begin.

With a “Let there be,” the future Son of Man crosses that line and brings forth all things.

touch-and-see

“Touch my hands and feet; it is myself. Touch me and see. For a spirit—as you understand spirit—does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.”

And flesh and bones—as we’ve always experienced it—doesn’t live forever. But this flesh and bones will.

We have to go back in order to go forward So he takes them back, maybe as far back as “man became a living being.” Then forward through the Law and Psalms and Prophets, and they begin to see that in him, all things hold together.*

Soon, Spirit will cross another line. Luke ends his story with a ragtag group of followers returning to Jerusalem, to be “clothed with power from on high.” With wind and fire the Spirit will rush upon them, as upon Samson and Saul in the old days, not to work God’s will through them but to be God’s will in them. But that’s getting ahead of the story—which, we see now, doesn’t really end.

The Father speaks, and light appears;

light