Behold The Lamb Of God: Images From Handel's Messiah Prelude to the More analytical Essay Facebook post dated 07/31/17 Handel's Messiah. I've mentioned this before. I can't take that piece in one sitting. It's not a sitting really it's more like a temporary paralysis. It takes me so many places. Many many: hopeful, happy, angry, sad, the cheer leader, dancing through the stars, absolutely exhausting, reflective. I'm the proverbial groupy. I'll follow you anywhere, look into those eyes and it's over. And then right in the middle or the beginning or somewhere in between in "He Shall Feed His Flock like a Shepard" Pearl jumps on my bed, imperious. "Look," is her insistent cry, "I don't care who you're looking at, where you are or what world you're in. It's time to feed me. Now." "Oh, are we late?" Sheepish. Am I a sheep? The independent I'll do this my way sitting here at your feet or dancing with you through the stars and here comes the cat? Haha. Well, she got fed and I got through the piece. But now I'm absolutely exhausted. It happens like that all the time. That's the only piece of music I just turn into a completely well I can't describe it, not helpless, in a trance, whatever it is. I give up. Really. It's good for me every so often when I get out of hand just to go back and spend hours with that piece. I'm never quite the same. Maybe I really do look into those eyes. They're certainly looking at me. And I'm not talking about the cat. :): The Beginnings of a crush Or maybe just a reaffirmation of one It all started on July 4, 2015 when I couldn't get to Shepard Airforce base to see the fireworks or go to the Freedom Fest hosted that year. After finding patriotic music and listening to it at home, I decided to go online and find Handel's Messiah. That seemed like a strange thing to do on July 4. But I had time and curiosity on my side. I knew about the piece from our choral days though I've never sang it to this date. Until July 4 2015, I had never experienced the entire oratorio in all its musical splendor. Of course I know the Halleluiah Chorus and �For unto us.� Who doesn't know those two choruses? If you know anything about western music you know at least those two choruses. By the end of the three hour piece, I was absolutely shaken. I was doing well till we reached �Behold the Lamb of God.� This three minute setting of the John 1:29 text, placed between His Yoke is Easy and He was Despised and Rejected, two dancing pieces almost playful in their composition, had begun to affect me. Now, there are many settings of this text with additions and variations, but none so stirring as this one. Between these two lovely and bitter sweet pieces is nestled this solemn, bass-rich, simple progression played by violins and sung by a chorus of any size depending on the arrangement. It is so simple and yet stirring and not simple at all. How he gets from Gm to D To F to E flat to B flat going back to Gm and D m my musical analysis only by ear at this point is beyond me. The progressions are full of passing tones, sustained notes, counterpoint, shifting key signatures, and common tones, all techniques employed by any composer and which I learned to identify in music theory classes and even put to use as a music major in the 1990s. At this point in the journey, I'm not really interested in the musical analysis although it certainly lends to the absolute stunning solemnness of the piece. Solemn is an incomplete way of describing the overall affect produced by this one single breath-stealing piece. Embodied for me in this stunning setting of the life-changing text are so many feelings, emotions, images, tears, awe, worship, respect, sadness, and gratitude. I want to cuddle this dear lamb to my breast and feel its heart beat, and infuse it with my strength. I love it. I have always been attracted to the crucifixion story from its inceptions to its fulfilment. Each year�s telling of Christ�s passion drains me completely. I would sit on the swing set in the fourth grade and imagine hammer and nails and crowds around a cross. I swore I could hear hammers. It has always been that way for me. My interest at this point is concentrating on wanting to know how one human being could sustain the entire sin of the world on those shoulders. It was so intense that we learn that an angel helped him through it. Hebrews 12:3 in a nut shell explains that what kept him there was the joy set before him. From a purely physical perspective, thinking about having one's hands and feet nailed to a wooden splintery cross mingled with the shame of the punishment itself could inflict a desire upon the weakest among us to run far away, screaming. Screaming always seems like an option to me in this crucifixion though I suppose it could be told of any crucifixion story. Opportunities Life as it does, moves along and in 2016 I found myself with the opportunity to pull an original composition out of mothballs and perform it for our United Methodist Church Maundy Thursday service. The song describes the Gethsemane hours. I found myself once again listening to that three minute gem tucked between these other jewels. I could not walk away from it. The words began to evoke images in my head. Look at this lamb who died for the sin of the world. I always was connected to those particular words but somehow those too perfectly resolved musical chords began to produce those images. First it was amazement. Here is this human god man who falls asleep in a boat, who weeps and is hungry, who is moved with compassion bearing the sin of the world the fulfilment of a perfect sacrifice planned by a perfect god who implemented a sacrificial system using animals till such a time as would be designated for the implementation of God himself being offered as the sacrifice. This child growing into a man, a carpenter, a person with humor and thoughts and feelings connected to the earth, a connection that must have produce such anguish, sorrow, grief, rejected by those He created and loved and still loves. If some received his mission with understanding, thee simple understanding of human history and its monumental denial of His very existence would be enough to cause the weakest among us to run away. Here is this composer setting the tune to the scripture where John points his disciples to Jesus himself, Yeshua, the rabbi, the man, the person/god I love in a style that is perfect in its resolutions almost to the point of being as one music major I once met said "too perfect.� I lay there, paralyzed, and listened. Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. I love that Lamb. I have always felt a particular connection to Christ though it has sometimes taken a back seat to my other obsessions an passions. And here I was isolated in a new town with new connections rediscovering the Messiah I love through a three hundred year-old piece of music. Now I don't think that George Frederic Handel wrote this piece with such lofty and spiritual intensions. He took some of his own work used in many of his other oratorios and incorporated it into the Messiah oratorio. Almost four hundred years after its premier in 1732 I am in tears, my breathing is quickening, my love and my thoughts are increasing, my emotions and connection to the son of God sitting at the right hand of the Father are so intense that I cannot move. It�s not that I can�t move really. It�s just that the emotion is so intense that I don�t want to move. If I move it will break the complete and total immersion into the reaction cast by listening to this one piece. I lay with my hands clasped and my eyes full of tears and my head now full of images. Cuddled in the Lamb's arms, at his feet, on his lap, on his shoulder, carried, loved, my head on his knees, my eyes on his and I am smitten. I know that no other piece of music has ever inspired such a response. And I am listening to this for hours not just once or twice. How many times, based on the timing of the piece, can I listen to Behold the Lamb of God in an hour? Maybe nineteen or twenty times? A few times between April 2017 and July 2017 I have listened to that piece four hour straight. I never walk away the same. Images and Responses And yet if you can believe this it does not end there. I began to think about this phrase and the images in my head expanded. In order to gain a deeper perspective, and to renew my already familiar acquaintance with Jesus teachings, in a six week period, I think I swallowed the first four books of the New Testament whole. At an earlier point in my life, I investigated the Jewish roots of Yeshua and fell in love with them. so to be so affected by this non-Jewish piece of music though it certainly has echoes of Hebrew music and prophecies and other ridings not biblical, I am rediscovering again, only this time I think the experience is more intense. I have conversations with Him. I want to share you. Share what you know. What do I know? I know that I have a profound love for Christ and I don't need to do a door to door sharing or pass out a tract or anything like that. When I get passionately involved in something I naturally share. So I don't need to worry about sharing, I just need to stay in love with this Lamb. Expanding Images Ok, are we done yet? NO. Each time I listened to this one three minute setting I began to get a more expanded version of the images. You would think that at his feet would be enough, being on his lap, running fingers through his hair and looking adoringly into those eyes would be enough. But, no. Something else I did was I began to look at the images in Revelation and chapter 1 stood out. Feet of brass. eyes of fire. Hair like wool. Clothed with a white robe to the foot, holding the stars in his right hand. The hand laid on the shoulder of John who was afraid and who was perhaps comforted by the gentle voice of many waters. I could imagine being at his feet curled up on his knees, or prostrate at the feet like burnished brass, or looking into the eyes like flames of fire. Touching the hem of the robe would all be enough. And then in my most recent journey I began to see and remember the other images. Here is the Lamb of God not only as the lamb but as all the other things that we see in his story. the Angel of the Lord, the captain of the hosts, the babe in arms, the toddler fleeing for his life with his parents, the twelve-year-old confounding the wisdom of the religious leaders, the man calling disciples, sleeping, eating, resting, moved with compassion, groaning with grief, exhibiting anger, driving the animals and changers of money from the temple. Then there was the man weeping over Jerusalem, hands over face, perhaps artistic license here. How painful it would have been to create a city, choose a king, be rejected, have your loved children stray away so far, come back, promise to destroy them and redeem them at once, love, cherish, and then stand over by the city and weep. Weeping is an intense physical activity: red eyes, headache, exhaustion, groaning, almost gasping perhaps, all that combined with intense sadness. Our bodies can only take so much of this and then we must have a break. This is a decidedly human moment, and it follows that it would be a God moment. What an expression of so many things on so many levels. Also in that week of such portent, he is the selfless servant taking the job of the slave washing the feet of the disciples though he has experienced so much in one week, rejection, physical clearing of the court of the Gentiles, a triumphal entry into the city he weeps over. And the week was only at its midpoint just beginning. Things would get more intense. Doctors say that the presence of blood and water in the pierced side indicate that the heart was bruised. If we say that Christ died of a broken heart inflicted by injuries suffered during the crucifixion it can't have started there. Remember all these images were simply ignited by a three minute piece from Handel's Messiah that is so intense in its portrayal that I was halted in my tracks, perhaps gently led here by the Shepard Himself. This music has left me shaken to the core, my faith intensified, my love almost too the point of not being able to bear it. Dance It doesn't end there. I decided to go to the remainder of the piece and here's what I found. The entire three hour piece began to stir intense emotion in me. I stood on the sidelines at the crucifixion, breathing every breath, feeling every pain, and cheering. You can do this! You can do this! You can do this! I was the torch bearer and at all times my eyes were on His eyes. Just before the stirring third part, the choral setting of �and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all� brought me to a heart sickness that I could by this time fully appreciate. It wasn�t the standard chord progression employed by the composer that you would expect to produce this: it was the realization that God/man was hear and I had the vision of hindsight. He sees to the end of time and only He knows what�s in store. That simple setting of Isaiah�s prophecy made me slightly queasy. What did it do to our perfect sacrifice? That road from the high priest�s palace to the cross was a monumental one and I was there for every heart-wrenching step. And then Messiah took my hand and walked me through hope, sadness, anger, rejection, peace, gentleness, care, and finally turned those hands to me and from the Who Is this King of Glory to the stirring �amen� danced me not with the stars but through the stars. We went walking across water, through stars and ended up in all those places at once. Affects I have never in my life been so emotionally affected by one piece of music. I have always had an amazing faith. A correct and complete theology is part of the journey. I personally know this son of God who has gotten me out of so many scrapes and he is the King of Jerusalem with the feet of brass, the eyes of fire, the banner King of Kings spread across the armor shown us in Revelation 19. I am so in love with the Lamb of God that I cannot even imagine how it could get any better than this. And I know I am adding to the many words already written on this subject. But, these are my words. Let them speak for themselves. Better still, let my life speak of my first love.
Copyright © 2017 Shelley Alongi |