Handel's "Messiah" confronts the grinches of Christmas

By Erich Bridges

A woman who had never been out of communist China attended a performance of Handel's "Messiah" on her first trip to the West. As the last triumphant notes faded away, she turned to her hosts with a mixture of trembling exaltation and urgent curiosity.

"I must know," she pleaded, apologizing for her inadequate English. "Who were they singing about?"

Were he still alive, George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) would be pleased to tell her. His immortal hymn of praise was beckoning another seeker - among millions -- toward the Savior.

"Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived," declared Ludwig van Beethoven. "I would uncover my head and kneel down on his tomb."

Like Beethoven, Handel had a blistering temper -- and little patience for fools. But he approached the creation of "Messiah" with reverence, humility and holy passion. He composed the towering oratorio in just 24 days, without emerging from his house and often without eating. A servant found him sobbing one day as he labored over the music. How many have wept with joy over it since?

"Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not. God knows," Handel later remarked. "I did think I did see all Heaven before me and the great God Himself."

Stuffy clerical critics were scandalized when Handel dared to premiere "Messiah" in 1742 in a theater rather than a church, thereby "prostituting sacred things." But people hungry for truth clothed in great beauty knew better, and embraced "Messiah" as their own. When it was performed in Westminster Abbey years later, Londoners nearly rioted to get in. King George was so moved when he first heard the "Hallelujah" chorus that he spontaneously stood up -- a tradition that lasts to this day.

"Messiah" originally was an Easter event rather than a Christmas one, for it celebrates Christ's birth, death and most of all His glorious rising. After conducting it for the last time in 1759, an ailing and nearly blind Handel acknowledged the ovation by saying, "Not from me - but from Heaven - comes all." He expressed the desire to die on Good Friday, "in the hope of rejoining the good God, my sweet Lord and Savior, on the day of His resurrection." He died on Holy Saturday.

A nobleman once congratulated Handel for "entertaining" the masses with "Messiah." The maestro's reply: "My Lord, I should be sorry if I only entertained them; I wished to make them better."

That is the point of "Messiah." Handel came not to bury the living Savior in a sparkling Christmas "entertainment," but to praise Him. The joyous message of "Messiah" cannot be silenced by polite applause, or contained inside the walls of sedate concert halls and sanctuaries. For its text is the living Word of God. From its opening admonition , "Comfort ye, my people. ... Prepare ye the way of the Lord" (Isa. 40:1,3) to its closing hymn of adoration, "Worthy is the lamb that was slain. ... Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever" (Rev. 5:12,13), it is a song of love to the Lord of Hosts.

So it is with the great tradition of Western music, which began with plainsong chants of King David's psalms by ragged monks and reached the heights of Handel, Bach and their successors. It is music composed to help humanity glorify God. Modern secularists admire the music, but prefer to ignore the words - or ban them altogether, as in the communist world.

America may not be far behind. If we allow our own commissars to forbid a little girl attending camp to sing "Kum Ba Yah" because it contains the word "Lord" , what will we do with "Messiah"?

Yet the living God will not be marginalized by those who seek to silence Him -- or wrap Him up in little boxes of "entertainment." He will be praised - by the very stones of the ground if necessary. But the stones are not alone. A new generation of servants is following Him into the world to lift His name everywhere. And God is steadily raising up worshipers among the nations. They are writing their own hymns of praise -- in their own languages and forms -- to lift Christ among their own peoples.

"Worship is the fuel and goal of missions," declares John Piper. "The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God. ...'Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. O let the nations be glad and sing for joy'" (Ps. 67: 3, 4 KJV).

To which Handel, the old master, would surely say, "Amen!"