This weekend was the Calvin Oratorio Society’s 104th annual performance of Handel’s Messiah, and Rebekah was in the orchestra on violin. I took off work a little early, Sara and the kids picked me up on the way, and up we went to Grand Rapids. Rebekah was feeling lousy—she figured it for a case of food poisoning—but God sustained her through the afternoon, and she played through the concert without a hitch. It was a joy and a blessing to be able to be there, both for her and for the music. I’ve heard the Messiah I don’t know how many times and sung a number of the choruses in choir, but this was the first performance I’ve ever attended.
If you’re familiar with the work, you know the text is a montage of Scripture passages, beginning with Isaiah 40:1-5; the opening command, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,” filled the auditorium literally and spiritually. As it should, for it introduces an extraordinary promise of extraordinary deliverance. I don’t want to get too far into this, given that Isaiah 40 is a passage for next week, not this week, but that promise also introduces a puzzle which has challenged Jews and Christians at least as far back as the twelfth-century rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra. Isaiah was a prophet in the southern kingdom of Judah in the eighth century BC, during the period in which the Assyrian Empire obliterated the northern kingdom of Israel and nearly conquered Judah. Isaiah 40-55, however, are clearly addressed to the people of God in the sixth century BC, after Judah has fallen to the Babylonians—which might not be a problem, except it seems equally clearly to be addressed from the sixth century BC as well. The exile is not prophesied as a future consequence of Judah’s unfaithfulness, it’s the starting point for the deliverance which is prophesied as an expression of God’s faithfulness. What do we do with that?