In the Fall of 2020 choir members were asked to submit texts for a Podcast to tell how a specific piece of music, hymn or anthem influenced our spiritual life. What follows is the text I submitted. It was chosen and broadcast a year ago.
Podcast: Since by Man Came Death
First A Bit About the Music
Everyone is familiar The Messiah, the great oratorio by George Frederic Handel.What people may not be as familiar with is the architectural structure of the work.
Briefly, the piece is divided into three sections. The first tells of the Nativity. The second tells of Christ’s Passion and ends with the great Hallelujah Chorus. The third tells of Resurrection, of the promise of redemption culminating with the final victory over sin and death.
Today I am focusing on the First Chorus of the Third section. Text is taken from Job and Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. The first Air for Soprano begins, “I know that my Redeemer liveth” and ends “For now Christ is Risen from the Dead.” Christ has died. Christ is risen.
It is followed by a short, dramatic Chorus that redefines the situation with no uncertainty both in word and music. In the first statement, man is drawn into the equation.
Since by man came death, (slow and mournful)
By man came also the resurrection of the dead. (Joyful and declarative)
A restatement makes the relationship universal.
For
as in Adam all die (slower and more excruciating)
Even so in Christ shall all be made alive (vigorous and triumphant)
“So,” you might ask. “What’s this got to do with you?
What makes this so special to you?”
Well, that’s what I’m here to talk about.
A Bit About Me
I was born with a little known uncurable genetic disease called Polycystic Kidney Disease. It began affecting me in the mid 90s when my blood pressure shot through the roof and one of the many cysts began bleeding. That was when they took out my left kidney. Prior to the surgery I went for a second opinion. The doctor said in a raised voice, “Don’t you know you have a fatal incurable disease?” I was shocked. I hadn’t thought in those abrupt terms.
Life returned to a sense of normalcy until several years later severe pain sent me back to the ER. On release I was told to prepare for the inevitable dialysis. Did I? Hell no. I responded by not going back to the doctor for a year. In denial and stubborn I was. Dialysis was a dark cloud that I knew I could just ignore.
A year later it all hit the fan. I collapsed with internal bleeding and spent two days in the ICU. Reality began sinking in. Finally my Doctor told me that I had fought a long, hard fight, but the fight was over. My options were to begin Dialysis or wait for the inevitable collapse from kidney failure.
I remember the dread, lying on the bed as the nurse threaded the long needles into my vein and hooked me up to the machine that now would be keeping me alive.
After a year of Dialysis I embarked on the path to Transplant. Once you are accepted into the program, you go through intense physical examinations. An MRI revealed a spot of cancer on my remaining kidney so the kidney was removed. It was the size of a basketball and weighed eight pounds. A normal kidney is the size of a fist.
Now with no kidneys, the darkest truths began to hit home. I was at the end of my natural life. I was at the end of my string. I was living on borrowed time by the grace of a machine.
And then, almost twelve years ago the phone rang. Three AM. Monday morning. It was Bettina, calling from All Saints Hospital in Fort Worth. “Good morning!” She said. “I have a kidney offer for you!”
I’d only been on the list for a year, there had to be a catch and there was. The kidney was considered high risk. To allow me to make a decision I learned details that are not usually shared. The donor was a young man who died in a motorcycle accident and who had had a history of intravenous drug use. He was clean now, had been for a number of years. The young man had turned his life around, gotten married and had a young son who was now fatherless. The threat of drug use had caused others to turn down the kidney. We accepted the kidney.
I remember several things about my recovery. First was a strong sense of guilt that I was alive because another man had died. Thoughts of his wife and son brought tears. Still do. The good folks in the prayer ministry after every service have shared my prayers for them on every anniversary of my transplant.
And there was a snippet of music that kept running through my thoughts. An earworm. I couldn’t figure out. A passage of music. So familiar. It stayed with me and wouldn’t’ go away. While recovering at home I finally figured out what it was. Handel. Messiah.
Since by man came death,
By man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die
Even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
The words felt so true. I am not so vain as to think that that young man died for me, that our connection was anything other than a pattern of coincidence. Death, was real for him. For me Death was avoided by the miracles of modern medicine and modern technology.
But the greater truth, the fact that I am writing this podcast nearly twelve years later, is the foundation of a deeper sense of the great blessing that is life, that is love,
Several weeks into my Recovery I decided I wanted to go church.
"Are you sure?” asked my wife. “You were supposed to stay home for another week.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s not like I’m going to go sing in the loft. We’ll sit in the congregation. We’ll come right home.”
So we went. And it happened that the anthem for the day was “Since by Man Came Death.” From the Messiah. The first chorus of the Resurrection section that had been ringing in my ears as I lay in recovery from my transplant. And here I was in church listening to it being sung by my own choir. I was blown away. As the choir sang, tears streamed down my cheeks as all my emotions were released. Of course I had had no idea that it would be sung. I have to believe that it was coincidence but it was a staggering and amazingly mysterious coincidence. A mystery that is with me to this very day.
And that was twelve years ago.
Every day I walk with that young man, his wife and young son.
Every day I walk with this new life.
Every day is another blessing.
Even so in Christ, shall all be made alive.
Thank you for listening.
Handel: Since by Man Came Death
