In the foggy
winter of 1741, an elderly German immigrant paused for breath outside a church.
He was frail, suffering the effects of a near-fatal stroke some four years earlier,
nearly bankrupt, frustrated by recent failures as a composer, and forsaken by
his friends. As the church loomed through the gloom he thought about God, but
it brought him no comfort, only questions: “Why did he grant me renewal of
life,” he whispered, “if I may no longer create?”
A bulky
packet awaited him in his shabby lodgings. It was the libretto of a sacred oratorio
prepared by his friend, Charles Jennens. He was in no mood for music, however,
and gave the pages little attention as he turned them over.
Suddenly,
words leapt from the script: “He was despised and rejected of men, a man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief” Powerfully, they resonated in his troubled
soul and he turned to the rest of the verses Jennens had collated from the
Bible. By now his mind was on fire, and for 24 days, his sleep abandoned and
his food untouched, he wrote almost non-stop as some of the most glorious music
ever written poured from his fast-moving pen.
Multitudes
of musicians will take part in performances of Handel’s Messiah every
Christmas, and thousands more sit entranced by his inspired music, but how many
understand the darkness and despair out of which it was born? Perhaps not many.
In the same way, millions will celebrate Christmas once again, but how many
will understand the dark realities out of which the Messiah—the Son of God and
Saviour of men—was born? Again, not many.
To start
with, you’d not expect to find anything of worth in Bethlehem. In Helmut
Thielicke’s words, it was a “one-horse town”, a non-descript suburb of
Jerusalem, “too little to be among the clans of Judah” (Micah 5:2, ESV).
Furthermore, a minor carpenter and his wife, with a suspicious pregnancy, were unlikely
to have any significance—just ordinary people caught in a mass shift of population
ordered by the authorities, with no clout for accommodation in a crowded town;
they were just mere numbers on a census form.
Their baby
was just another little crying scrap of humanity destined for poverty and pain.
Mary’s taste of fear as the labour pains began in Bethlehem’s stable would be
nothing compared with the overwhelming sword-thrust of anguish which would
engulf her at Calvary. The cries from the manger would be nothing compared to
the searing pain that awaited this baby as in manhood he trod the way to the
cross. Shadows in the stable pointed to “the horror of a great darkness” at
Calvary.
Inspired by
“a man of sorrows, Handel’s Messiah ends with a Hallelujah Chorus and a King who
“reigns for ever and ever.” God’s Messiah, born in the poverty-stricken
anonymity of Bethlehem’s stable, rises from his Easter tomb in final triumph
and ascends to his Father’s throne with a Name that reverberates through the
universe with the ring of absolute power and glory. Out of the darkness, light
shines.
That “dark
side” of grace took the bigoted, Pharisee Saul of Tarsus—“a blasphemer and a
persecutor and a violent man ” (1Timothy 1:13)—and transformed him into one of
the greatest Christians who ever lived. That grace still moves with
transforming power into the dark places of a fallen world where fear reigns,
hope dies, unanswered questions haunt the mind, and all seems lost. This “dark
side of Christmas” brings it into touch with the harsh realities of life, where
suffering and sin cast deep shadows that fairy lights and shining baubles can
never banish.
Jesus
came to this world at Christmas, the “light of the world” the “second Adam to
the fight and rescue”; a Saviour, sharing our human situation and dying in our
stead, “saves to the uttermost” and makes hope blaze in the darkness. So John writes,
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it”
(John 1:5, NLT), because it is “the light of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).
Excerpted from Reflections: Looking at Timeless Truths in a
Changing World, with permission, copyright © John Lancaster 2010
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