A Christmas Reminder

by John V. Upton, Executive Director

Returning home late one Sunday night on that lonely stretch of road between Lynchburg and Richmond, I listened to a CD of Handel’s Messiah.  I had forgotten that the opening lines were from Isaiah 40.  I was also reminded how those opening lines were unforgettably set for a tenor’s voice, beginning with three notes simply descending like a hand on the shoulder: “Comfort ye.”  Then the voice rises to new strength: “Comfort ye my people,” saith your God. 

Listening to that CD took me back to the most unforgettable performance of the Messiah I ever attended.  It was in a church I pastored.  Two of the soloists for that evening were imported talent.  The other two, including the tenor, were talented members of our church.  What made the hour so memorable was the illness of the tenor.  We all knew he’d been sick and had a bad throat.  We wondered if he’d be able to sing, but he was there in his place.  When the overture ended, he stood and opened his mouth to sing “Comfort” – and what came out was not comfort at all.  The voice was cracked, raspy, excruciating.  We wondered if he’d stop and sit down.  The director looked at him with eyebrows raised and full of permission to quit; but he kept singing, cracking, breaking the notes like vases. 

We all developed a sudden interest in our shoes.  Everyone blushed and squirmed as the tenor kept on missing those impossible notes.  On and on he went, for six torturous minutes.  He sang about valleys coming up, but they stayed low, and the mountains wouldn’t budge for him; and by the end, to our assaulted ears, all the crooked and rough places seemed more crooked and rough than ever before.

He was a good man.  In his right voice he could sing the piece beautifully.  But on this night before all those expectant faces, he wasn’t up to it, yet he kept singing.  I’m glad now that he did.  His public agony with the words has become a sign for me and has reminded me of something important.

Specifically, it reminds me that our lives are to function as the voices of good news.  That’s the mission of my life and yours:  Be a voice of good news.  Sing out love, spend your life getting it said.  Sing out justice, spend you life getting it said.  Sing out hope, spend your life getting it said.  Sing out Christ, spend your life getting him said.

Now we see we have a problem.  Our problem is that our lives aren’t very suited to being a voice for such words as these.  How can we be a voice for Christ when our lives are so mixed up and tired and weary of so much that is wrong with us?  I don’t even think we say love very well, do you?  Some of us used to believe we could spend our lives singing and saying love – until we found out how hard the actual work of love is and how poor we are at it.  And we are supposed to be here to be the voices of all this?

As usual, we get things backwards.  Of course, we are inadequate.  Our ignorance is monumental.  We are often wrong headed and wrong hearted.  We can be more than a little foolish and selfish.  So, of course, our lives aren’t worthy of the music we’re asked to carry.

And here’s the thing to remember: whose music, after all, is it?  Our only part is to open our mouths, our hearts, our arms, our lives, and let the word and music pass through us like breath through the pipes and cords of an instrument.  Ready or not, we give ourselves to it, and our life is a good enough voice.

The world isn’t waiting for eloquence.  The world isn’t waiting for someone more perfect or with all the answers.  The world is waiting for ordinary voices, faltering as they are, to say the true word they have.  From there the Word will do its work.  Lift it up; be not afraid.  “Comfort ye my people,” saith your God.  What a good Christmas reminder.