The Symphony as a Lens
Handel composed his Messiah in three or four weeks — 260 pages of music that tells the story of the life, passion, and resurrection of Jesus. Watching it performed for the first time, there is a “gobsmacked” wonder that long-time attenders can lose. The question the sermon poses: Are you still gobsmacked by Jesus? Is He still a symphony to you, or just familiar words on a page?
Hearing with Fresh Ears
Two new believers — Sarah, a student from China with no prior exposure to Christianity, and Landry, who had studied multiple world religions — both encountered Jesus and couldn’t get enough. They heard the symphony. To them, Jesus was profoundly, inexplicably different. They didn’t need to be told to read the Gospels; they were absorbing them. The challenge: who am I more like — the first-time listener wide-eyed with wonder, or the long-time attender who thinks they know the story?
The Complexities of Jesus’ Love
Jesus took on the shame of a sinful woman and gave her back her dignity. He ate with the most despised. He healed lepers, welcomed Samaritans, and forgave the accused. More than physical healing, he brought spiritual wholeness — cleansing guilt from the deepest part of the heart. “You don’t know what I did.” Jesus does — and he still forgives, setting us truly, fully free.
The Symphony of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15)
The parable opens with an act of profound cultural shame: a younger son demands his inheritance while his father is still alive — the equivalent of saying “I wish you were dead.” In that society, the village would have been appalled. Yet the father divides his property between them, absorbing the disgrace.
The son squanders everything in wild, extravagant living and ends up in the mud with pigs. He “comes to his senses” and rehearses a speech: I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me a servant. Rabbis of the day would have taught that such a son had no right to return to the family — and must repay every penny.
But while he was still a long way off, the father sees him, is filled with compassion, and runs. Ancient Middle Eastern patriarchs do not run — it is undignified. He doesn’t care. He reaches the son before the son reaches him. He interrupts the confession speech, calls for the best robe (his own robe, restoring the son’s standing), a ring, sandals, and the fattened calf — the rarest, most expensive feast, shared with the whole village. As one book puts it: this is not the prodigal son but the Prodigal God — the Father is the wasteful one, extravagant and reckless in love.
The Older Brother: Working Without Hearing the Music
The older brother hears the party from the fields and refuses to go in. He has done his chores, kept the rules, stayed home — but harbors bitterness. He can’t see the symphony of love because of what is in his heart. His complaint — “I’ve been slaving for you and you never threw me a party” — reveals that he has been working for the father rather than enjoying being with the father. The father’s reply: “You’ve been here all along. Everything I have is yours.”
The younger son was dead and is now alive. The older son is alive but dead — lost while living right under the father’s roof. The music was always playing; he just couldn’t hear it.
A Dark and Beautiful Symphony: Communion
The passion of Jesus is like music in a minor key — haunting, dark, yet beautiful. Jesus is the Passover lamb; sacrifice and blood and ransom flow through the story. We have all been involved in our own kind of wild living. Yet the Father runs to us, covers us with his robe, and throws the feast. He was crushed for our sins. His death heals our souls.
As one put it about Harry Potter: “To have been loved so deeply… will give us protection forever. It is in your very skin.” May the symphony of love be in our very skin — not just that He loves us, but that He enjoys us, delights in us, and has composed this beautiful life for us to enjoy together.