Breaking Fast On The Beach

Today is the Feast of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury who was martyred by agents of King Henry II on this day in 1170 as he celebrated the Eucharist in Canterbury Cathedral.

Becket was an unlikely Archbishop, chosen in no small measure because he had been a real buddy of the King and was expected to be sympathetic and supportive of the King’s interests with little regard to what the spiritual implications of those interests. This notion was reinforced as Becket served as Chancellor to the King. As Chancellor it was his job to enforce the system of tribute from landowners to the King and so was of vital economic interest to the crown.

What Henry didn’t count on is that Becket would take as seriously the traditional role of the Archbishop of Canterbury as he took his role as Chancellor. It was upon his nomination to fill the See of Canterbury in 1162 that his transformation from sometime playboy and consort of the King into ascetic Primate of the English Church began in earnest.

Oral tradition holds that Becket’s assassination came about as four of the King’s night’s heard King Henry mutter, in frustration of Thomas Becket’s stubborn resistance to the will of the King, “will no one rid me of the meddlesome priest?” Apparently acting on those words, the knights sought out Becket and murdered him in Canterbury Cathedral as he celebrated Mass with one of his close associates, a monk.

The historical event inspired T.S. Eliot’s dramatic verse drama Murder in the Cathedral.

Speaking the truth to power is always part of the responsibility of the Church in every age. The same is for us today as we face injustice and violence done to the least and the lost in our midst. It is part of our charge as Christians to do the right thing in spite of the political wind that is blowing at any given time AND to accept the consequences without lowering our selves to the violent and virulent level of those whom we call to account in the name of the Gospel.

The Church today has fallen away from the inner circle of power and prestige. Maybe that’s not altogether a bad thing. Remember that the temptations for Jesus in the Wilderness were power, prestige and possessions (see Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13).

As the New Year approaches I invite us all who dare to call ourselves disciples to pray ourselves into the truth and then speak with the conviction of a Becket. Those who remain silent in the face of injustice are ultimately complicit.

Incarnation From Fr. Richard Rohr

PadreWarren — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 14:11:14 +0000

Gypsy Madonna (detail), Titian, 1510.

INCARNATION

We are too tiny, too passing, too recent to imagine any eternal greatness within us, but the Biblical pattern of incarnation always has God disguised and hiding inside of littleness, particularity, ordinariness, and seeming insignificance. God seems to want us to do the desiring and all the discovering. No one finds God who is not looking for God and willing to go to the edges to find God. Unless we leave our comfort zone, we really do not meet God at all, but merely pull God inside of our own small sphere, and it is no longer God that we meet at all. Just religion.

Those who can recognize the Divine within their own puny and ordinary souls will be the same who can freely and daringly affirm the Divine Presence in the body of Jesus and also in the body of the whole universe. Get it here, get it everywhere! Get it once, and it is true all the time! It is all one and the same pattern, and we call it the Christ Mystery. Once you are inside of this Mystery, you are indeed inside! (Maybe that is what it means to be “saved.”)

Adapted from Near Occasions of Grace, p. 6

Starter Prayer:
And the word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).

Share this meditation:

More …

Permalink (for linking to this): http://conta.cc/u137TX
Click here to forward this to a friend.

Isaiah, Jesus, Charles Jennens and Handel-A Christmas Sermon

PadreWarren — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 21:50:33 +0000

Christmas 2011

Isaiah 9:6, Charles Jennens and George Friedrich Handel

⁶ For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given:

And the government shall be upon his shoulder:

And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God,

The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Tonight I ask you to bear with me as I indulge in a bit of nostalgia while I tell for you a story of Isaiah, Jesus of Nazareth, Charles Jennens and George Friedrich Handel. I believe the way this story falls together has something say to us as Christians in the 21^st Century.

I have to confess that for many years I could not have told you that the scripture I just read were part of the Isaiah’s prophetic legacy. I first came to know these words and their implication for the Christian faith by a different route. I suspect many of you came to know them in the same way. Let me back up a bit.

When I was growing up at St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church in Boulder, Colorado, two selections from Handel’s Messiah were a staple of the Midnight Mass at Christmas. Naturally one of them was the Hallelujah Chorus. The other was the section of the Oratorio that takes Isaiah 9:6 as text.

Through my exposure to these, perhaps the most famous, parts of Handel’s masterwork, I became interested in hearing the entire oratorio. When I listened to the entire work, I heard the verse I quoted at the outset as a part of a systematic telling of the Christian story of redemption in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. Musically, I was not sophisticated enough to appreciate the mastery of Handel’s composition, but upon reading the words I became aware, for the first time, that the narrative of the Bible had mainly to do with God’s love and care for humanity and indeed for all of creation.

The fact of the matter that is at that time I was far more interested in the music of bands like Boston and The Eagles.

It wasn’t until just this week that my curiosity took me to another level. Admittedly this is in part because preaching the Lucan infancy narrative year after year presents a bit of a challenge. That was only part of it. Really it had more to do with how strongly the memories of my adolescent exposure to Handel’s Messiah and specifically of this Isaiah text rang in my heart and soul as I read through it.

I have made it a habit of sorts to preach on a hymn or piece of music at Christmas. Sometimes the stories of how others have sought to tell the story in art of music can be inspiring to us as we seek ways to tell the age old story in new ways to those who may have never heard the tale or forgotten its power.

As I read more and more about how Handel came to compose this masterpiece, I was struck about how much we, as contemporary Christians and disciples might learn from his experience in composing Messiah.

This comes from a book called 131 Christians Everyone Should Know by Galli and Olsen.

“By 1741 George Frideric Handel was a failure. Bankrupted, in great physical pain, and the victim of plots to sabotage his career, the once-great opera composer scheduled a “farewell” appearance in London in April. To the London elite, it looked like this “German nincompoop,” as he was once called, was through. That summer, however, he composed Messiah, which not only brought him back into the spotlight, but is still deemed by some to be “an epitome of Christian faith.”^[2]”

Until 1737 Handel’s primary field of composition was opera. In that year, his opera company went bankrupt and his spiral into depression began to accelerate. It was about this time that he became intrigued in a new form of composition, namely the Oratorio. His fellow countryman and contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach was taking this form, setting scripture to music with out costume or staging, to unimagined heights on the continent. Handel, who boasted of knowing Scripture “as well as any bishop” was intrigued. His first effort, a treatment of the story of Esther from the Old Testament was a flop. He was pilloried in the press for allowing ‘common mummers’ to utter scripture was outrageous. To make matters worse, as far as the critics were concerned, he dared to have the stories of God told in the theater and not even in a Church. I’m not sure the critics knew or understood the Great Commission of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel:

¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”^[3] (Matthew 28:19-20)

But back to the tale at hand.

Into the midst of Handel’s bankruptcy, public ridicule came a wealthy Anglican (Handel himself was Lutheran) named Charles Jennens. Jennens asked Handel if he would consider writing music for a libretto that he had composed, entirely from Scripture, that was intended to be an argument against the Deists in England at the time. The Deists believed in God, but denied the Divinity of Christ.

For the Deists, God was Creator who formed the world and all that was in it and then let nature, human and otherwise, take its course. Jennens not only believed that Jesus was fully divine but that Jesus was still very much at work in the redemption of all of Creation in the world through the Church. For Handel and Jennens, this was a matter of vital importance. Handel agreed. He estimated the time for completion at one year.

Soon after he was approached by a group of Dublin charities to compose a work for a benefit performance that would raise money to help release men from debtor’s prison. For this work Handel would receive a generous commission. He had a living, he had a text and he what seemed like a new lease on life.

Handel resumed composing with renewed enthusiasm on August 22, 1741. Within six days Part One was completed. In nine more, Part Two. Six more and Part Three was done. In only two more days he finished the orchestration. In 24 days he had composed 260 pages. When he finished what would become known as the Hallelujah Chorus he said, “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God himself.”

The first performance of Messiah, on April 13, 1742, before and overflow crowd of 700 at the Fishamble Musick Hall, raised enough money, 400 pounds, to release 142 men from the debtor’s prison.

Though it took more than a year for the production to be invited to London and despite ongoing controversy over the style and presentation of the work, Messiah cemented Handel’s place in the pantheon of composers, especially for sacred Oratorio in the English language.

I suspect that you’re asking, in your most polite inside yourself voices, “What does that have to do with Christmas and the coming of God into the world? What does this have to do with us?”

These are good questions. I believe there are several important lessons that we can take from Jennens and Handel’s collaboration on the most famous piece of Sacred Music in the English language.

First, we do our best work in God’s name when we cooperate. Handel and Jennens were each bearers of a piece of the message. God’s call and gifts were made manifest in them in very complimentary ways. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 3:5-9 that some plant, some water, but it is God who gives the increase. In the case of Messiah, God’s increase came only after the idea had been sown in Handel by Jennens’ commitment to the Gospel and watered by their mutual faith. God’s increase came in the form of the unexpected Irish commission for the piece. And O how did Messiah grow under God’s inspiration. In fact, it realized one of the recurring themes in Isaiah’s prophecies, indeed in all of Scripture and particularly in Jesus’ life and ministry, that true faith is judged by how we treat the widow, the orphan, the poor and the prisoner by making possible the release of those 142 men from debtor’s prison.

Secondly, God often comes most powerfully when we are most vulnerable. Instead of a farewell concert in April of 1741, Handel debuted his masterwork in April 1742 which has exposed countless folks, including a 16 year old know it all in Boulder, Colorado, to the power of Scripture and Music to communicate the Gospel.

Finally, I think this story, as does countless others, should inspire us to expression. What we have to do is follow Handel’s lead as we seek to be ministers of the Gospel, the Good News which we celebrate here tonight. We are all called to use our gifts in the proclamation of the Gospel. Namely that God came into the world in the form of the ‘Baby Jesus’ as helpless as we did and grew in wisdom, age and grace to be an example for us all of how we are to live selfless lives “proclaiming good news to the oppressed, liberty to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and to declare the year of the Lord’s favor” as told in Isaiah 61. We will likely not have as enduring a legacy has Handel’s inspiration did in Messiah, but the doesn’t make our call any less important. This anonymous quotation applies I believe, “Therefore, you may be the only bible some people will ever read so be careful how you live.”

Handel lived by faith and was inspired to produce this from the Isaiah 6:9 and through his considerable God-given talent. I hope it fills you with light and hope as we celebrate Jesus’ birth and then lay claim the promise that he will come again.

^[1] The Holy Bible: King James Version. 2009 (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version.) (Is 9:5–6). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

^[2] Galli, M., & Olsen, T. (2000). 131 Christians everyone should know (112). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

^[3] The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (Mt 28:19–20). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.