The Lamb and the Sheep: Handel’s “Messiah” and Me

BACKGROUND

Since January 2013 I’ve sung high soprano in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and with them I’ve been able to both record and perform the full “Messiah” oratorio a handful of times over the years.

Prior to joining the Choir, I had heard “Messiah” only once in its entirety, with a few little sporadic exposures throughout my childhood to some of the more well-known choruses and arias. Back in high school, I think I once was assigned to sing He Shall Feed His Flock/Come Unto Him as a duet with an alto student whose identity I do not remember, but if my memory’s not completely failing me, I think we didn’t do too pathetic of a job.

The Choir worked hardcore for months to learn the twenty choruses by heart, starting in the fall of 2013 and stretching into the following spring, when we and the Orchestra would perform the whole thing at Easter as well as record it onto what would be a two-and-a-half-hour-long album intended for release two calendar years later. But it took so much more than a typical two-and-a-half-hour Thursday-night rehearsal to prep for it all. After everything was said and done by mid-2014, I carefully reviewed what our “Messiah” rehearsal/performance/recording schedule had been to-date, summed up all the time we had spent, and the grand total of on-Temple-Square hours was well above 100. A hundred. That’s nearly equivalent to someone sitting through the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s “Messiah” concert FORTY consecutive times with no breaks, it was almost that exhausting. That was a trying yet terrific season, and it planted a seed inside the soils of my soul.

PRESENT DAY

Welcome to Eastertime 2018. The Choir and I have just finished yet another “Messiah” season, whose crowning jewels were back-to-back evenings of giving the glorious concert that featured four incredible guest soloists (as well as our brand-new Tabernacle organist seated at the granddaddy instrument’s beastly console). Thanks to how cool technology sometimes is, the concert was able to get streamed across the globe, to God’s children all around the world. I pray that those who were watching and listening were somehow changed for the better, as I certainly was.

I had given my two tickets for Thursday’s show to two friends with whom I attend church on Sundays. In the hours leading up to showtime, the three of us kept a group text going with each other. At one point I had expressed my sincere hopes that they’d enjoy the performance. And to that, one of them replied, “Handel’s ‘Messiah’ is extremely spiritual and combined with the greatest choir on earth (he is SO kind!) will no doubt deepen conversion.” He hit the nail on the head when he said it would “deepen conversion,” because I’m pretty sure it deepened mine.

HOW I’VE CHANGED

I asked a couple of different Choir friends what their favorite parts of “Messiah” were, and they said it seems to change each time we revisit the piece. Same here. That’s me, too. For me personally, I was surprised by which choruses became my new favorites this time around. I didn’t see it coming.

It was the first half of Part II (of three Parts). The heavy part. The somber and sometimes angry-sounding songs that were laced in anguish; yet at the same time, laced in wonder. Beginning with Behold the Lamb of God, approximately until the tenor soloist beautifully presents an excerpt from the Lamentations in the Old Testament: “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto [His] sorrow…”

The living, breathing spirit that existed in the music transported my mind’s eye right to where Christ was those 2,000 years ago, to behold what was happening to Him. The scene in my imagination was vivid. While I was among a crowd of onlookers, it still felt like I was the only person there, watching Him go through all those tremendously hard things He had to go through. He was aware of my presence. He knew how I felt about Him, knew that I loved Him. I knew He loved me. There was an intimate, one-on-one ambience to it all.

It hurt to witness the cruel lashes, the malicious mocking, the spiteful spitting, the long road He trod in His weakened state while having to tow His own burdensome cross... But I understood that this was the Father’s will, and it was humbling and amazing to know that my perfect and perfectly-loving Brother, Jesus Christ, would have endured anything and everything—up to and including death—if the mission were to save me and me alone. He would do that for any single one of us.

“Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God…” (Doctrine & Covenants 18:10)

I tremble to know that for me

He was crucified

That for me, a sinner, He suffered,

He bled and died

WORD PAINTING OF THE INDIVIDUAL SONGS

Behold the Lamb of God — You’re standing on the ground, looking up at Him. He has just been nailed to the cross. The night is dark. Emotions are as thick as the clouds that are converging low in the sky. It’s about to rain.

He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief — The winds are calm and everything is still. The rain gently commences. The tears similarly fall delicately upon the cheeks of those who love Him, you included. You struggle to understand how anyone in the world could not have loved Him. You’re overwhelmed by how strange and surreal it is that this gloomy event is even occurring. How can it be?

Surely, He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows... The chastisement of our peace was upon Him — The weight of the event is sinking in. The thunder and lightning are starting to roar and rage above, while feelings are starting to become more unsettled. People are arriving at the realization of what Christ’s sacrifice actually meant — what it meant for you, what it meant for everyone.

“Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.” (Matthew 27:54) (I just really like that verse. Somehow this chorus reminds me of that scripture.)

And with His stripes we are healed — (Back to the here-and-now.) These seven words literally get an entire chorus all to themselves. Just the same seven words over and over again. But I was stunned by how interesting this song suddenly became to me this year. I speak only for the soprano line here, but the first four words—“and with His stripes”—are, for the most part, sung in an abrupt, jolting manner, metaphorically mimicking the movements of a whip. The last three words—“we are healed”—in contrast, are sung more soothingly.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all — As if the last chorus wasn’t fascinating enough, this one resonated MAJORLY with me. Again, totally unexpected. This chorus, all throughout the past, seemed to merely be a song that just happened to sound like happy little sheep prancing about the countryside, and then in a flash the sheep are all gone as the music shifts in tone. My perception of it used to not have much depth. A very minimal level of emotional attachment…you know…aside from the joyful chuckles my family and I get anytime we joke that it sounds like “oh, we like cheese,” which…you know…we do. But in earnest, my view of All We Like Sheep has permanently been altered.

It now contends for the title of Most Thought-Provoking of all “Messiah” songs, in my book. The lyrics are uttered from the perspective of the sheep—the people—that are conscious of the fact that they’re deviating from the course that they know they’re supposed to be on. (Of course there may be other ways to interpret; this is just what’s been swirling around inside my head lately.) The harpsichord’s steady pulsating chord progressions paint a rebellious flock that recognizes who the shepherd is, but disregards his care for them and runs away in pursuit of another life that they assert must be better.

“Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness.” (Alma 41:10)

Then you’re jerked into a harsh reality check. The atmosphere morphs into something drearier. The sheep zap out of the picture for a moment. Instead, you find yourself gazing upon the Redeemer, who’s taking all the heat for every last wrong that every last one of the sheep has ever committed.

THE LAMB AND THE SHEEP

I couldn’t help but notice that a couple of “Messiah” choruses refer to “the Lamb,” while another one refers to another type of lamb: the lamb that each of us is in THE Lamb’s flock. He shall feed His flock like a shepherd…

The dozens of times it says in the scriptures that “there shall be one fold and one shepherd” contributes to causing me to wonder if He and we are more of the same kind of lamb than we may have supposed. This is where I get a little nervous in sharing my thoughts because the last thing in the world I want to do is come across as blasphemous. I don’t count this as concrete doctrine—I’m strictly talking in Alisonisms right now—but what if there’s a correlation between the biblical sacrificial lambs and the lambs that we are?

Under the Sacrifices entry in the Bible Dictionary (KJV), it states that “the death of Jesus Christ…ended the shedding of blood as a gospel ordinance.” When came the ultimate atoning sacrifice of the Savior, the law including the offering of the firstlings of flocks was discontinued. Could this, in any small sense, remotely represent the way in which we—the lambs of His fold—need never be alone as we go through any of the grief, any of the sorrow, or really just any of the challenges we encounter along our mortal path? Because He, who is also a lamb (THE Lamb), underwent all of it for us. He descended below it all. His empathy, in all cases, is flawless. We need never suffer, in any instance, in hopelessness. Had the Savior not saved us, then we’d have a lot to worry about. But He DID save us! We need not droop! His mighty arm and His infinite Atonement are what we can rely on. He is what we must rely on. The Messiah. Emmanuel: “God with us.”

I Come to the Garden Alone

There is a hymn that turns 105 this year: “In the Garden,” written in 1913 by C. Austin Miles. We sing it in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sometimes—not as often as I’d like to! :-) It’s now dawning on me that we recorded the song exactly 100 years after its birth, for our 2014 Easter album He is Risen. Every time we get the chance to sing it, it’s the best time ever, for me at least.

We sang it again last Sunday (January 21, 2018) for our “Music & the Spoken Word” broadcast, which is the third-longest-running television show in America, and the longest continuously-running network broadcast in the world. It was born in 1929, just 16 years after “In the Garden” came to be.

As we rehearsed “In the Garden” for our Sunday broadcast, the combined powers of the Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square produced an intense impact on me. Now, sometimes you hear “intense” and you automatically envision something harsh, like the tanker that blew up into flames that Thursday night on the Salt Lake City freeway whilst we MoTab peeps were snug as bugs in rugs inside the Tabernacle. But mine was a very sweet kind of intense. It was tremendously moving in a good way. But it wasn’t anything new; Ryan Murphy’s arrangement of “In the Garden” gave me the same feeling eons ago, the first time I ever held the sheet music in my hands.

You know how 10 different people can read the same verse of scripture, and that one verse can mean 10 totally different things, from person to person? How 10 different people can look at the same painting, and that painting will tell 10 individual stories, according to viewer? I’ve heard fellow MoTabbers describe what they think of as they’re either playing or singing “In the Garden,” and it’s beautiful to hear their interpretations. I’m uncertain as to whether any of their minds and hearts are transported to the same place mine are. I am taken there instantaneously, right from the starting cue of the conductor.

The trouble, though, is that I’m 100% positive I’m going to find it really, really challenging to put it all into words. But I’m prompted to try. I want to try. Even if it’s only for the solitary purpose of my wishing to revisit it, anytime I determine I’d do well to do so.

Oh gosh, how do I begin? The time, I suppose, is when the Savior, Jesus Christ, was here on the earth, “pleased as man with men to dwell,” in the meridian of time—the period around which the ubiquitously-referenced B.C. and A.D. revolve.

The elements of my would-be explanation (I’m gonna work this out, I am!) upon which I keep stumbling are what my role is in this imaginary “garden” world of mine, and what the garden even is. I know what it is in the third verse. That’s the part that’ll be easiest to explain. But I need to lead you up to that.

Nay, it’s not that I don’t know who I am in my thoughts, nor what the garden is. I know; it’s just that I don’t know how to tell you. Surely there’s no comparison to what 3 Nephi 17:17 discusses, but I’m reminded a little bit of it: “And no tongue can speak, neither can there be written by any man, neither can the hearts of men conceive so great and marvelous things as we both saw and heard Jesus speak…”

The hymn lyrics begin with:

I come to the garden alone,

While the dew is still on the roses;

And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,

The Son of God discloses.

Followed by the refrain that follows each of the three verses:

And He walks with me

And He talks with me

And He tells me I am His own;

And the joy we share as we tarry there,

None other has ever known.

I picture me entering a place that resembles what I imagine the Garden of Eden looked like. It’s not necessarily the Garden of Eden, but simply a paradise where Jesus lives, and I live, and He’s a best friend of mine, and I’m a best friend of His, and from time to time we enjoy going on walks together to talk about life, and He helps me figure things out, like how to become a better disciple and how to trust and take comfort in Heavenly Father’s plan.

The paradise, like a holographic Pokémon trading card, shifts appearances as I mentally take a small step aside. I find myself living where Christ actually lived when He was here. Israel. I’m there with Him, or observing Him, for seemingly every step of His life. It’s like I was there on that night in Bethlehem. It’s like I was among the company of doctors who listened to, learned of, and carried remarkably mature conversation in the temple with a boy who was but 12 years old, who possessed astounding wisdom and sobriety, light-years beyond his years.

He speaks, and the sound of His voice

Is so sweet, the birds stop their singing;

And the melody that He gave to me

Within my heart is ringing.

Still carefully watching Him as He continues to grow up—a truly spiritual giant of a person, living a spotless and sinless life, ceaselessly lifting others, enriching His community with light and goodness everywhere He goes, setting the most amazing example I had ever seen from anyone.

I’m there listening to His wonderful, poignant sermons. The Beatitudes. The parables. Witnessing Him perform numerous mighty miracles, all of which are born out of love and because of faith. Everything He says and does leaves me standing in awe. It all resounds in my heart. Within my heart, it’s ringing.

Facing the holograph once more, I return to where I was originally standing and I’m swiftly back in the gorgeous garden. I’m walking with Him again. I love this. I never want our walking days to come to an end…

I’d stay in the garden with Him

Tho’ the night around me be falling;

But He bids me go; thro’ the voice of woe,

His voice to me is calling.

The sun had been gloriously beaming all about, from one end of the sky to the other. The wind was calm, and the air pleasantly warm. But what were these dark clouds heading our way with the speed of a falcon? What was this storm materializing out of nowhere? What… What is this?

Fear immediately fills me, and I can’t define what’s flooding through my mind as I’m staring at His face. At what’s happening to Him. A strange and inevitable unseen connection seems to exist between Him and this violent, cold, ominous tempest, as though its destiny was to find Him, or His purpose all along was to ultimately confront it.

My instinct is to stay with Him and help Him see this through. But He bids me go, for this is something He must face alone. I obey, and as I walk away with my brow still furrowed, still intermittently glancing back at Him, His eyes suddenly meet mine across the distance. He calls out to me through His struggling voice of woe. I listen carefully…

I’ll walk with you.

I’ll talk with you.

You are my own.

And then the totality of my worry dissolves. Somehow. Somehow I know this is not the end. This isn’t the end of the walks we’ve always loved so much to take. Because of all He has done: because of His selfless sacrifice—both on the cross and in the garden—because He rose again on the third day, and because He still shows me the way even when I currently cannot see Him with my physical eyes, there will come the day when I will see Him again, and He and I can walk and talk side-by-side once more.

In fact, He walks and talks with me now, in the meantime. He is alive, He is active. He is interested and involved. He is incapable of forgetting me—whether intentionally or unintentionally—because He is perfect with a perfect charity. I still go on my daily walks, but I know I never walk alone. Because He doesn’t leave me alone. I am His own.

Oh Gratitude, What Have You Done?

Gratitude. Thankfulness. Appreciation. Acknowledgment of blessings in one's life and in their day-to-day.

I could quote an entire Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin talk that eloquently embodies nearly all the things I feel about gratitude, but since it wouldn't make one droplet of sense to copy/paste the whole address, I'll just provide the link here.

I will at least quote Elder Wirthlin quoting somebody else: "The Roman orator Cicero claimed [gratitude to be] 'not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.'"

The 2017 Thanksgiving holiday is coming up in a week, and I want to get myself into the spirit of the season—to prepare my heart. I like to write, and so what I thought I could do is attempt to express what's kind of *breathing* deep down in those Alisonian depths, regarding why gratitude is important to me, or what I've sensed gratitude has done to me over time, to change me as a person. Because I do believe conscious continual practice of sincere gratitude changes a person.

I've charged myself to make sure I always tell God something I'm thankful to Him for, in every single prayer I send up. The "something" could be a little thing. Could be big. Could've been a cloud-nine day, or it could've been horrendous. It might be an overall full-blown season of heaviness weighing down my soul—the older I get, the less uncommon those certain seasons seem to be. But what I've discovered is that, no matter what variety of season is currently on-stage, to be able to identify a profound blessing going on for me right then—whether it's big, small, lighthearted, or hefty—is never impossible. Never. It's always possible to find something good. (And the "something" often tends to be a "someone.") I think this can be true for everyone.

Expressing to God, through prayer, my gratitude on a daily basis is not without its consequences. Now, depending on how you look at things, that sentence may appear as looming with underlying scariness, but don't worry—it's actually very positive! I am, by no means, perfect in my gratefulness. I constantly see in myself where I fall short. But I do notice real benefits working within me that improve the crux of who I am, due to my counting my blessings in front of the throne of my Maker, symbolized in such scenes as kneeling at my bedside prior to sleep.

Thanking God in a prayer, in which I am keeping myself totally mindful of every word I’m saying to Him, causes me to really pause and reflect on that specific person, place, or thing (noun, haha) for which I am giving thanks. My relatives, in all their familial roles in relationship to me—from parents to cousins to pets, even. My coworkers. My friends. Every friend who did any small thing to lift me up that day. I stop and think about them—sometimes after my prayer, sometimes even in between phrases of the prayer itself. (Do I use em dashes too much? Whatever.)

When I think about the precious nouns that are human, who have bestowed and do bestow their light upon me so selflessly (and most of the time they don’t even know they are doing it), somehow I see them more in the light that God sees them in. I see fewer things that make me and them different from one another, and more ways in which we are the same. I think if my heart is in the right place, when I find myself being thankful for them, for their goodness, it helps me want to reciprocate with whatever good gifts I have to give.

Also when I pray, especially at night, I make my brain do a recap of the past 24 hours (the past week, the past recent general block of time, etc.) and turn it into a metal detector of sorts so that it may pick up anything that could be considered a sweet blessing from God, or what is sometimes referred to as a tender mercy. Anytime I do this exercise in earnest, my mental/spiritual metal detector picks up a lot. Buckets.

So what is it that gratitude does to me? To change me? I think it helps me to be kinder. I think it enables me to be more aware of what’s good and what’s bright in the darkening world. That’s not to say that it makes me blind to the dark; it doesn’t encourage one to be ignorant. Rather, it helps a person realize that there are far, far more places in which the Light of the world—our Savior Jesus Christ—shines radiant than we may have ever previously supposed, while perhaps simultaneously helping our hearts soften and become more open so that the Spirit can aid us in spotting the traps ‘round which the adversary lurks. I think regular practice of praising God for all He does for us (“does,” for He is living) helps us keep our faith and hope alive in these final days before the Savior comes again. Helps us to have hope in the Savior. Hope in Christ.

Gratitude. More than just a “thank you.” So much more.