Professor at at Hope College and Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan.
When I was in high school a new music teacher came to town. He was fresh out of college and full of ambition. But here he was, stuck in a very rural community where people didn’t put up with (as they called it) “long-haired music,” either from the Beatles or Beethoven.
Still, he was determined to teach us good music. We were going to sing selections from Handel’s
Messiah for our Christmas concert. Most of us had never heard of Georg Frederic Handel, and when we first tried to sight-read through the selections, we became convinced we didn’t like his music. It was too hard, too complicated. More than that, Handel wouldn’t allow us to sing simple harmonies; no, he created different parts for each voice, and we in the bass section weren’t able to hide all our typical mistakes when Handel and our new director demanded that we sing alone.
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Our fearless leader did his best, but half-way to Christmas it was obvious that we were all losing: we in the choir had lost our places, he as director and new teacher on the block was about to lose face and Handel had long ago lost interest in all of us. Still, we had gone too far to turn back, and with a grace we didn’t feel, we stumbled through the first part of our concert. Our parents smiled politely, while our little sisters and brothers squirmed restlessly. Some of our grandparents with hearing problems even managed to smile.
Finally, after too many minutes of painful lapses and a competition between ourselves and the piano which neither won, we came to our last section, the one we knew best. As we raced through the opening lines, a few people actually stood up! At first we thought they were walking out on us, but they just stood there beaming until we had shouted our last “KING OF KING, AND LORD OF LORDS! HAL – LE – LU – JAH!!"
Later, of course, we learned why these few fearless folks had risen to the occasion. When the German prince George II became king of Great Britain, he had a special fondness for Handel’s music. At the premier concert of the
Messiah in 1743, the king and the crowds were deeply moved by the glory and grace of the masterpiece. When the musicians swelled the “Hallelujah Chorus” and thundered those mighty words “…and he shall reign for ever and ever!” King George – whose English wasn’t all that great – jumped to his feet thinking that they sang about him.
The whole crowd, naturally, followed suit, although they were standing more out of ceremonial habit, and thinking about a different King. Since that day, though, people have continued to stand for the “Hallelujah Chorus” to worship the glory of God whose kingdom shall know no end.
Rethinking the KingdomBut what kind of kingdom is it? How, among the many nasty dictatorships and the autocratic tyrannies and the changing number of troubled democracies of this world, do we think about the kingdom of God, especially when it plays such a large part in the teaching of the Bible?