Bach’s St. Matthew Passion Triggers Sehnsucht in Me— Again
I didn’t expect to weep again. But I did.
Six years ago — at the Ad Astra Music Festival in Russell, KS.
Then last Friday — at Bethany College in Lindsborg, KS.
A sadness had been slowly building since the opening bars of this dark and tragic Passion. Unlike the more famous Handel’s Messiah, sung entirely from Scripture, Bach’s Passion is an inter-weaving of scripture with frail human voices— some of which are scripted for the audience itself.
And this frail “space” is built into the Passion from beginning to end, where two choirs face each other — one chanting the voice of St. Matthew, the other responding with voices of defiance (“Crucify him!”), Grief (“Have Mercy, O Lord!”), or incredulity (“Lord, is it I?”). So when Jesus utters the unbearable words: “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me,” a choir of a dozen voices cries out in a flurry of confusion and shock, “Lord, is it I? …Is it I?… Is it I?”
And Bach —who must have been inspired by the Holy Spirit to do this—then creates a space for the Audience to respond — with this tragic lament:
The sorrows Thou art bearing…
On me they ought to fall.
The torture Thou art feeling…
’Tis I that should endure it all.”
But just as I began to utter these words, a wave of remorse welled up from somewhere inside me, and I began to weep. This was not even good poetry. But it must be good theology. Because something happened inside me: a relief triggered by longing — a longing that must have been slowly building inside me long before the opening bars of this Passion. Some would call it Sehnsucht: a longing triggered by something far beyond this planet.
Six years ago — driving out across the barren grasslands of western Kansas to Russell — I didn’t expect much. St. Matthew’s Passion is one of Western Civilization’s greatest and most complex masterpieces, so I tried to lower my expectations as I drove through almost pitch darkness for 90 minutes before arriving at this little island of lights near nothing.
En route, I listened to the King College Cambridge performance of the Passion, with its world-famous soloists and orchestra, and reminded myself to have reasonable expectations. Merely attempting this 3-hour musical epic out here was worthy of a standing ovation. And so I adjusted my expectations accordingly.
What I didn’t expect — then or now — was to start weeping within the first few minutes — and then to still be weeping 3 hours later as Jesus’ body was laid in the grave. It wasn’t the story (I had heard it hundreds of times). Was it Bach? Was it the St. Mary Queen of Angels Catholic Church? Or was it the group of 35 master musicians and singers under the baton of Alex Underwood, director of the Ad Astra Music Festival, who had somehow managed to conjure them here from the stages of New York and LA to perform in far western Kansas?
Again, I think it was the Holy Spirit, who inspired Bach to build into his Passion a few spaces — just enough to allow us to respond to Christ’s suffering— then and now. In the words of the “Erbarme Dich” (Have Mercy) chorus:
Erbarme dich, mein Gott/ Have mercy, my God,
um meiner Zähren willen! / for the sake of my tears!
Schaue hier, Herz und Auge/ See here, before you
weint vor dir bitterlich/ heart and eyes weep bitterly.
Erbarme dich, mein Gott/ Have mercy, my God.
Sasha Hilderbrand — six years ago in Russell — took this responsive cue from Bach and added in contemporary responses of pain from a recent American school massacre — tenuously linking Christ’s Passion over 2000 years ago, to a 300-year-old German masterpiece, to a late 20th century American tragedy in Columbine.
But unless we see ourselves — then and now— implicated in these tragedies — then and now — we have missed the point both Bach (300 years ago), and Sasha Hildebrand(6 years ago), and Dr. Mark Lucas (yesterday), are trying to make: just as our sins implicated us in the terrible sufferings of Christ on the cross, so our sins cause the horrors of school massacres (then) and 33 000 Gazan deaths (now) — “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
I think this I why I wept — then and now
