This week I attended a performance of Handel’s Messiah at Carnegie Hall in New York. It’s an annual tradition that my mom and I have done for the past ten years or so. I love the Messiah, and know most of it by heart.
For many people the Messiah calls to mind the “Hallelujah” chorus, a powerful but perhaps overplayed piece of music. For me, the most glorious moment in the Messiah is at the very end. After summing up the sweep of redemptive history, the oratorio concludes with one word, the word that concludes scripture: “Amen.” The “Amen” begins with the crisp, clean voices of the tenors. The other parts progressively blend in and wrap around each other in counterpoint, until the music crescendos with three grand “Amens,” sung together with the timpani and trumpets blaring.
The “Amen,” for me, is what the peace of Christmas is all about. God’s incarnation in Christ is a message of great joy because it sginals a new stage in the telos of history. God is offering redemption to us! Yet even as we trust in Christ and experience his redemption, we know that God’s purposes in history aren’t yet finished. We groan with all creation because of the hatred and evil that have entered the world through sin, and we feel the pain of loss and death.
But we know the “Amen” is coming. Even as God broke into history when Christ was born, he will break into history again when Christ returns, to establish justice and peace — to make everything as it should be. The “Amen” has begun, the voices are weaving together in counterpoint, and soon the timpani will roll, the trupmets will blare, and we will sing the final “Amen” together with the risen Lord. Amen!