CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: Why does a religious work still have this impact?
This afternoon the Hallelujah Chorus will triumphantly fill the Royal Albert Hall in London. It’s the Royal Choral Society’s traditional Good Friday performance of ‘Messiah’ by George Frideric Handel.
‘Messiah’, first heard in Dublin in 1742 is a profoundly Christian work, focusing on the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, ‘king of kings, and Lord of lord’ who will ‘reign forever and ever’.
Charles King, author of a recent book, ‘Every valley: the story of Handel’s Messiah’ notes that attending performances of ‘Messiah’ - there are hundreds around the world each year - ‘has become the most sacred act that a mass secular audience will ever undertake together’. Why, he wonders, does a religious work still have this impact?
Handel’s work offered hope to a conflicted, fearful, mid-18th century culture - a hope rooted in Jesus. It still offers this hope. To individuals and to the world, Christ offers radical transformation.
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Initially, I winced at Charles King’s explanation of the popularity of ‘Messiah’ in a largely secular society. It’s an inspirational story of one man’s journey through rejection and despair to vindication and hope, he seems to suggest. We sing ‘Hallelujah’ because Jesus’s story encourages us not to give up, not to despair, but to persevere in hope.
But for Christians, the Jesus story is so much more than another inspirational biography. Christians believe that through his death and resurrection Jesus overcame the powers of darkness, frees us from the shackles of our sinfulness and makes change possible for everyone. What we need therefore, isn’t just positive thinking, but the transformation which Jesus brings.
But Charles King also suggests something deeper is happening at ‘Messiah’ performances than takes place at, say, a showing of an uplifting biopic: people, he says ‘report finding something like truth - intimate, magnetic, awesome’.
It seems to me that there is a strong tide of energy in the world prompting and leading us towards love and peace and justice, an energy which beckons us onwards to a new beginning on the far side of despair. This tide of energy is nothing less than an invitation to partner with the God who, at the first Easter, showed us the full extent of divine love.
And when that energy touches us, we know it! I believe that what King’s audience members are describing is nothing less than a powerful summons from God.
Charles Jennens, the man who assembled the words from the Bible for ‘Messiah’ had realised, says King, that ‘living differently required thinking differently’. Easter is an invitation to think differently about Jesus.
God loves us. God came among us in Jesus. God promises that ‘every valley shall be exalted’ that all will be made new. Small wonder then that ‘Hallelujah’ fills our hearts.
