Food for Thought

A Singing Savior

Rev. Dr. Wesley Smith, II

May 25, 2020  

Almost everyone knows George Frederick Handel’s Messiah. It’s so popular that it even holds its own with Jingle Bells at Christmas time. Handel’s Messiah, of course, is all about Jesus and its three parts cover his birth, his Passion and crucifixion, and his Second Coming. But have you ever noticed something peculiar about Messiah: while all the music is about Jesus, Jesus himself never sings.

I find that rather interesting especially because the historical Jesus certainly did sing. As a Jew of the first century, he would have sung at any number of social occasions, such as at weddings. He also would have sung (chanted) the Psalms in worship just as we do at Zion. There is even one instance where the Gospels tell us Jesus sang. After the Last Supper, and before Jesus went out to Gethsemane, Jesus and the disciples sang a psalm (Matthew 26:31). I wonder what Jesus sounded like when he sang?

Although the history of choral music and, to a lesser extent opera, has produced a lot of music about the Bible, rarely has sacred music featured Jesus as a soloist. One notable exception to this is J S Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. For the most part, however, Jesus has been absent from musical works.

Part of the reason for this is that English law until not too long ago considered blasphemy a crime and forbade any Biblical subject from being presented on stage during Lent. (Handel’s Messiah was not written as a stage work and could thus be performed during Lent.)

The few works which give a vocal part to Jesus generally cast him as a bass. That’s not a surprise, really, since the bass is often used for royal or dignified characters. When Richard Wagner wrote his opera Parsifal many people thought that Wagner was actually portraying Christ in his lead character. To which Wagner quickly responded in the negative: “Phew” he exclaimed. “The very idea of making Christ a tenor!” Jerome Hines felt the same way. Hines was an evangelical who was one of the Metropolitan Opera’s principal basses for nearly fifty years. In 1974 Hines wrote an opera about Jesus called I Am the Way.

Two popular musicals, Godspell and Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, both appeared in 1971 and gave prominent musical roles to Jesus. By having Jesus sing in a contemporary style, both musicals presented Jesus in a very human way. (Contrast that with Bach’s St. Matthew Passion which has Jesus accompanied by string tremolo every time he sings, which has the effect of giving Jesus a musical “divine halo”).

Considering that we know so many other things about Jesus’ human life, it’s no mere curiosity that makes we wonder how Jesus sounded when he sang. We know he had a beard, we know he was physically strong (work as a carpenter was physically demanding which would have required great strength), we know he had brothers and sisters, and we know a little about his upbringing in Nazareth, so it doesn’t seem unusual to wonder what he sounded like. Especially since music is one of God’s great gifts to us, I can’t imagine Jesus of Nazareth not rejoicing in one of the great gifts from his Father above and doing it as often as possible.

Of course, there’s no way to know today whether he was a tenor or a bass, but I do know one thing. I know that we will one day have the chance to hear him sing. I know this through the prophet Zephaniah who says this of the day when God will finally establish his kingdom in its fullness:

God will rejoice over you with gladness,

he will renew you in his love;

he will exult over you with loud singing

as on a day of festival.

God’s promise is that on the day he takes us home forever we will hear him sing loudly and with great joy. I can hardly wait. What an opportunity, to finally meet our singing Savior. Food for thought, indeed.