December 19: The Messiah Offers Life Everlasting
♫ Music:
Day 21 - Saturday, December 19
Title: THE MESSIAH OFFERS LIFE EVERLASTING
Scripture: John 1:29
Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
Poetry:
Allegro
by Tomas Transtromer
(Translated by Robert Bly)
After a black day, I play Haydn,
and feel a little warmth in my hands.
The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.
The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.
The sound says that freedom exists
and someone pays no tax to Caesar.
I shove my hands in my haydnpockets
and act like a man who is calm about it all.
I raise my haydnflag. The signal is:
“We do not surrender. But want peace.”
The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;
rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.
The rocks roll straight through the house
but every pane of glass is still whole.
THE MESSIAH OFFERS LIFE EVERLASTING
This Advent, my imagination has been captured by the word “behold.” It is a common word in Scripture, especially in passages often read during Advent: “Behold darkness shall cover the earth.” “Behold, a virgin shall conceive.” “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.” “Behold, your God.” “Behold, I tell you a mystery.” “Behold, I am making all things new.”
“Behold” is the introductory word to some pretty spectacular moments of God’s story. And I’m convinced that it’s much more than an introductory word, but rather a key to receiving the life of God here and now.
I know behold is a slightly old-fashioned word, and in its lack of use we’ve reduced it to just mean “look at that” (full disclosure, I often hear it as “tah-dah!” in my imagination). But when I actually look at the word “behold,” I see two words - “be” and “hold.” And in fact, the word means not just “to see,” but “to take hold of” and “belong to.” This really amps up the phrase “Behold the Lamb of God.” John the Baptizer is not just calling us to look at Jesus, but to encounter, hold, and be held by the Savior who takes away the sin of the world.
This kind of beholding means a multi-sensory experience - engaging body, mind, and heart in knowing Jesus as the Lamb. Today’s invitation to “Behold!” is an invitation to receive God’s gift of everlasting life now. This is not a purely intellectual exercise, but rather the practice of being fully present with our whole selves. What a gift to have beauty to ignite our different senses and receive God’s life more fully! So let’s continue meditating on the artistic selections for today’s devotional:
I invite you to start the music and slowly reread the poem, noticing how your body feels. “The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.” It’s as much the spaces between each note as it is the harmonies that create the music. The poem can evoke a deep calm in the midst of harried stress. There is chaos all around, yet the music brings warmth to hands, air to lungs, strength to fragility, safety and wholeness where there should be destruction.
The poem opens my ears, and surprisingly, so does the painting. I feel very aware of the roar of water and can almost feel its crystalline droplets and smell its mineral depths. The clear, encompassing river calls to mind the musical house of glass in the poem. But instead of every pane whole and unbroken, the diamond droplets crush and crash around Jesus. Within all this swirling water, He is almost lost.
But then the beacons of red buoy my attention. In ancient iconography, the color red often represented blood and therefore symbolized life on earth. The modern iconographer and today’s artist, Ivanka Demchuk, says she often uses red halos in her work, “signifying life, victory over death, martyrdom, and Christ’s sacrifice.” God took on flesh and blood in order to pour it out and defeat Death. My eyes sense the strength, as well as deepest love and humility, conveyed by the color red. The color centers me while rocks and waves fly around me:
Here is a calm, miraculous, unshattered Man in the middle of the water, crowned with love and glory. Jesus is the dazzling freedom-bringer that Death cannot crush. To behold the Lamb is to encounter God’s glory and love, on offer for us today. Behold! May you drink deeply and see that the Lord is good.
Prayer:
Jesus, Lamb of God, help us to behold you.
Jesus, bearer of our sins, gather us in your loving arms.
Jesus, redeemer of the world,
grant us Yourself, our peace.
Amen.
Adapted from the Agnus Dei
Rachel Glazener
Alumna of the Conservatory of Music, Biola University
2020 Advent Project Music Curator
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
Baptism of Christ
Ivanka Demchuk
2015
Mixed media on board on canvas
30 × 40 cm.
Drawing upon the traditions of icon painting, Demchuk is one of the new iconographers who brings a more abstract treatment to her work. In her most recent works, Demchuk has moved toward an abstracted mystical style by painting her figures in white ethereal spaces. Demchuk says about her artwork, “All colors are figurative in the icon. They do not belong to the object or person in question, but rather reveal their theological significance. Most of my icons have a white background since, observing the life of Christ and the saints, one wants to focus on the idea of simplicity, purity, and renunciation of earthly riches…. Instead of golden halos, I often use purple ones, serving as symbols of royal or divine authority, or red ones, signifying life, victory over death, martyrdom and Christ’s sacrifice.”
https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/culture/ukraine-has-great-potential-development-modern-icon
About the Artist:
Ivanka Demchuk (b. 1990) is a contemporary Ukrainian liturgical artist. Demchuk, like many contemporary Ukrainian iconographers and artists, is a graduate of the Sacral Art Department at the Lviv National Academy of Arts, known for pushing the boundaries of a conservative art form based on traditionally historic prototypes.
http://sacredartpilgrim.com/schools/view/40
https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/culture/ukraine-has-great-potential-development-modern-icon
Music #1:
“Sonata No. 47 in B Minor, H16/32, 1. Allegro Moderato” from the album Haydn: Piano Sonatas
Performer:
John McCabe, CBE (1939 – 2015) was a British composer and pianist. He created works in many different forms, including symphonies, ballets, and solo works for the piano. He served as principal of the London College of Music from 1983 to 1990. Guy Rickards described him as "one of Britain's finest composers in the past half-century" and "a pianist of formidable gifts and wide-ranging sympathies." As a pianist, he specialized in twentieth-century music, particularly by English composers. He gave the UK premiere of John Corigliano's Piano Concerto. Another of his specialties was the music of Haydn; McCabe's "definitive" mid-1970s recording of Haydn's complete piano sonatas was described in Gramophone as "one of the great recorded monuments of the keyboard repertoire.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCabe_(composer)
Composer:
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music, and his contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet." Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy Family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original." Yet his music circulated widely and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe. In the 1790s, Haydn visited London twice and was captivated by performances of Handel’s oratorios, including The Messiah. There is no doubt that these performances deeply influenced Haydn’s own oratorios The Creation and The Seasons. Haydn was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a teacher of Beethoven, and the older brother of composer Michael Haydn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Haydn
Music #2:
Messiah, HWV 56, Pt. 1: 23. Behold The Lamb Of God
Lyrics:
Behold the Lamb of God,
which taketh away the sin of the world.
Messiah Performers/Musicians/Lyricists/Composer:
Unless otherwise noted, all Messiah performances are by Margaret Marshall, Catherine Robbin, Anthony Rolfe-Johnson, Robert Hale, Charles Brett, Saul Quirke, the English Baroque Soloists, and the Monteverdi Choir conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Biographical information for the performers and musicians can be found by clicking here.
About the Poet:
Tomas Gösta Tranströmer (1931–2015) was a Swedish poet, psychologist, and translator. His poems capture the essence of the long Swedish winters, the rhythm of the seasons, and the palpable atmospheric beauty of nature. Tranströmer's work is also characterized by a sense of mystery and wonder underlying the routines of everyday life, a quality which often gives his poems a religious dimension. Tranströmer is acclaimed as one of the most important Scandinavian writers since World War II. Critics praised his poetry for its accessibility, even in translation. He was the recipient of the 1990 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/tomas-transtromer
About the Devotion Author:
Rachel Glazener
Alumna of the Conservatory of Music, Biola University
2020 Advent Project Music Curator
Originally from Arizona, Rachel Glazener transplanted to California to attend Biola in 2006 to study flute and piano performance. From 2012 to 2016, Rachel served as Networking Coordinator for the Conservatory of Music. Rachel selected all the music for the Advent and Lent Projects this year. The Glazeners have been married since 2011 and currently live in Portland, OR, with their three beautiful children: Madeleine, Lucy, and Henri.