As I type this I've just thumbed through the 260 pages of manuscript paper it took the composer a mere 24 days to fill--Handel's Messiah. What a masterpiece!
Handel composed Messiah in August and September of 1741. You have perhaps heard that when a servant interrupted Handel near the completion of his work, the composer, with tears streaming down his face said, "I think that I did see all of heaven open before me, and the great God Himself."
Messiah was first publicly performed in 1742, but it didn't receive popular praise during Handel's lifetime. Instead, it was some twenty-five years after his death, during a series of performances at Westminster Abbey to celebrate the centenary of his birth, that Messiah began to gain great popularity.
Here's a bit of Messiah's story that I'll bet you didn't know; strange but true.
In 1784 as Messiah was becoming the talk of the town, preacher John Newton took strong exception. The name John Newton you'll recognize, as his life and coversion are so well known in history--the composer of the great (and autobiographical) hymn Amazing Grace. Newton, the preacher at St. Mary Woolnorth in London at the time of the Westminster Abbey performances of Handel's work, took issue with Messiah saying it was a "base rendering of the texts from which it was drawn" and given to "secular venue performance." Newton set out to preach the very sacred texts Messiah was based upon, and did so every Sunday for nearly two years, railing against the public performances of Messiah week in and week out from his pulpit.
Base and secular. Would those two words ever enter anyone in the church's thinking about Messiah today?
Strange but true, and worthy of giving us pause. Often times in the history of our faith, good men have disagreed about what is good and worthy, and what is base and secular. We look back over a couple hundred years and see the contributions to the expression of our faith of both G.F. Handel and John Newton as invaluable. And to think that in their day they would have been at odds about it.
Strange but true, the same thing happens today. Especially where culture in the church--music, art, literature and technology are concerned. What lessons can we learn?