Getting a Handle on Handel
John Fischer

I hauled down the Christmas boxes from the attic this weekend, a little earlier than usual, but with my daughter's college graduation in mid-December, we figured we'd better get an early start on what we anticipate is going to be a short season for us. Of course with the boxes come the Christmas CDs, and the first one I popped in our player on Sunday morning was a collection of all the choruses from Handel's Messiah.

This work has a huge tug on my heart, having grown up with choirs that performed at least some portion of the Messiah almost every year. My father directed our church choir when I was a kid, and my mom and older siblings all sang in it at one time or another, as did I when I was old enough. Those choruses with the repetitive sections, as in, “For unto us a child is bo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-rn! Unto us (unto us)… a Son is give- (a Son is given)” are second nature to me. (Isaiah 9:6)

Once as a teenager home from school with the flu, I discovered the family's four album set of the complete works of Handel's Messiah, and I spent the day listening to and following the lyrics for the first time from start to finish. I was a basket case when it was over - emotionally exhausted over the power of the gospel and the meaning of the scriptures this piece contains, for there isn't one word in Messiah that doesn't come from the King James Version of the Bible.

So yesterday, I was recalling all this and something new hit me. If you know anything about this classical work, you know that every chorus is made up lyrically of no more than one sentence or even a phrase from the Bible that gradually unfolds as it is sung. For instance, there's one complete chorus with the lyric, “For as in Adam all die,” and another chorus for, “So in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:22)

There was a time when these long-winded renderings seemed laborious to me, but yesterday, I couldn't get enough, and suddenly I got it. The statements Handel chose are so significant - so deep in their eternal ramifications - that you can hear them over and over again and never exhaust their meaning.

How many times can you say, “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and it cease to amaze you? How can you ever get too much of, “Surely, He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4)? Or what part of, “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it” (Isaiah 40:5), do you not want to hear again?

Lots of local churches have Messiah sing-alongs. I highly recommend the experience, but be forewarned, you may have difficulty trying to sing and cry at the same time.

“King of Kings and Lord of Lords” (Revelation 19:16)!

“Hallelujah!”

PDL