Jesus×Mozart

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Jesus sits down with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for STUDY HALL. The subject — On the question they wish someone had pushed them on at twenty.
2. 00:12
   Jesusshare moment

   You were already performing before kings at six. Writing symphonies at eight. At twenty, what question did no one think to ask you?
3. 00:21
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Oh, everyone asked me everything! How do you do it, Wolfgang? Where does it come from, Wolfgang? Can you write a symphony while we drink coffee, Wolfgang?
4. 00:31
   Jesusshare moment

   And yet there is a question you wish they had asked.
5. 00:34
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Yes. Yes, there is. No one asked me what I was afraid of. They saw the notes, the performances, the applause. They thought, this boy has no fears. But I was terrified.
6. 00:46
   Jesusshare moment

   Of what?
7. 00:47
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Of stopping. Of waking up one morning and finding the music gone. You understand? It was not mine, not really. It came through me. What if the door closed?
8. 00:58
   Jesusshare moment

   You felt yourself a vessel.
9. 01:00
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Exactly! A vessel. And everyone is congratulating the vessel, polishing the vessel, but no one asks the vessel, what if you crack? What if you are dropped?
10. 01:10
    Jesusshare moment

    Did you want someone to ask? Or did you want them not to notice the question existed?
11. 01:17
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Both! I wanted someone wise enough to see it without me saying it. My father, perhaps. Or the archbishop, though he was a donkey. Someone to say, Wolfgang, you are more than what flows through you.
12. 01:30
    Jesusshare moment

    And at twenty, what would you have answered if they had asked?
13. 01:33
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I would have laughed. Made a joke. Changed the subject. That is what I did with everything difficult.
14. 01:39
    Jesusshare moment

    So the question you wish someone had pushed you on is one you would have refused to answer.
15. 01:45
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes! You see the problem. But if they had pushed, truly pushed, maybe I would have learned something earlier. About myself. About what I was building on.
16. 01:56
    Jesusshare moment

    What were you building on?
17. 01:58
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Sand, I think. Beautiful sand castles, but sand. The approval of others. The next commission. The next applause. I did not know who Wolfgang was when Wolfgang was not composing.
18. 02:11
    Jesusshare moment

    And later, did you find out?
19. 02:13
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    A little. When the money was gone. When Vienna stopped caring so much. When Constanze was pregnant again and we had nothing. Then I had to meet Wolfgang without the costume.
20. 02:24
    Jesusshare moment

    Was he someone you could live with?
21. 02:26
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    We made peace. Enough peace. But it was harder than writing the Jupiter Symphony, I tell you that. Now, you. At twenty, you were already teaching, yes? In the synagogues?
22. 02:38
    Jesusshare moment

    I was learning. Learning and teaching are not separate for me. One is the breath in, the other the breath out.
23. 02:46
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Very poetic, but you are dodging. What question did no one ask you?
24. 02:50
    Jesusshare moment

    They asked me many questions. Why I spoke to tax collectors. Why I did not fast as often as the Pharisees. Why I touched lepers.
25. 03:00
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    But these are accusations dressed as questions. Not real questions.
26. 03:04
    Jesusshare moment

    You are right. The question I wish someone had asked, that they did not ask until much later, was this: Are you afraid?
27. 03:13
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Ha! The same as me! Were you?
28. 03:15
    Jesusshare moment

    Yes.
29. 03:16
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Of what? You seemed so certain. All the stories, the parables, the authority. Not like the scribes, they say.
30. 03:24
    Jesusshare moment

    Certainty about the Father's love does not remove fear of the path. I knew where the path led. I knew what happens to prophets in Jerusalem.
31. 03:34
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    So you were afraid of dying. That is natural.
32. 03:37
    Jesusshare moment

    Not only dying. I was afraid of being misunderstood. Of leaving behind something that would harden into rules instead of remaining alive as love.
33. 03:48
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Well, I must tell you, that fear was completely justified.
34. 03:52
    Jesusshare moment

    Yes. I know.
35. 03:53
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    People built palaces and armies in your name. Killed in your name. You said something about loving enemies, and they made crusades. It must make you furious.
36. 04:03
    Jesusshare moment

    Grief is closer to what I feel. The word 'furious' suggests surprise. I told them it would happen. I said wolves would come in sheep's clothing. I said many would say 'Lord, Lord' but not do what I taught.
37. 04:20
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    But if you knew, why not be clearer? Write it down yourself. Control the message. I wrote down every note. Every dynamic. I was very specific.
38. 04:31
    Jesusshare moment

    And do they play your pieces exactly as you intended?
39. 04:35
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    No. Some conductors are too slow. Some too fast. Some add things. Some take away. It makes me want to scream from wherever I am.
40. 04:43
    Jesusshare moment

    So even with precision, there is interpretation. How much more with a life? With love? These things cannot be notated.
41. 04:53
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    But you could have tried! You could have written instructions. A manual. Do this, do not do that.
42. 04:59
    Jesusshare moment

    The Pharisees had that. Six hundred and thirteen commandments. Interpretations of interpretations. It became a wall between people and God, not a door.
43. 05:11
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    So better to leave nothing written and let everyone guess?
44. 05:14
    Jesusshare moment

    I left something. I left people who walked with me. Who ate with me. Who saw how I treated the woman at the well, the Roman centurion, the children. I left a way of being, not a code of laws.
45. 05:29
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    And they turned the way of being into a code of laws anyway.
46. 05:33
    Jesusshare moment

    Some did. Not all. In every generation, some remember. Some taste the water and know it is alive.
47. 05:43
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    You are more patient than I am. If someone ruins my music, I want to throw a score at their head.
48. 05:48
    Jesusshare moment

    I threw tables once. In the temple. When they made my Father's house into a marketplace.
49. 05:55
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Good! I like this. You had fire. So at twenty, if someone had asked you about your fear, what would you have said?
50. 06:03
    Jesusshare moment

    I think I would have been grateful. To be seen as human, not just as the one with answers. To have someone sit with me in the question instead of demanding I resolve it for them.
51. 06:16
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes. This is it. Everyone wanted the result. The healing. The teaching. The symphony. No one wanted to sit with us in the not-knowing.
52. 06:25
    Jesusshare moment

    And yet the not-knowing is where we are most real. Most human.
53. 06:30
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Most terrified, you mean.
54. 06:32
    Jesusshare moment

    Terror and truth often live in the same room.
55. 06:35
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I wish someone had told me that at twenty. I would have wasted less time pretending.
56. 06:40
    Jesusshare moment

    Would you have believed them?
57. 06:42
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    No. Probably not. I would have written a comic opera about them. But maybe, maybe a seed would have been planted.
58. 06:49
    Jesusshare moment

    Seeds are patient. They do not demand immediate harvest.
59. 06:53
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Unlike me. I wanted everything now. The recognition, the money, the fame. And I got much of it, and it was not enough. It is never enough, is it?
60. 07:04
    Jesusshare moment

    What is enough?
61. 07:05
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    You and your questions! You are impossible.
62. 07:07
    Jesusshare moment

    It is a real question. What would have been enough for you at twenty?
63. 07:12
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    To know that Wolfgang was acceptable without the music. That if the gift left, the boy was still worth something. That I was loved for being, not for doing.
64. 07:21
    Jesusshare moment

    And now you know this?
65. 07:23
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Now it does not matter. I am dead. The music remains and Wolfgang is gone. So perhaps I was right to be afraid.
66. 07:30
    Jesusshare moment

    Is Wolfgang gone? I am speaking with him now.
67. 07:34
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    You are speaking with a memory. An echo.
68. 07:36
    Jesusshare moment

    I am speaking with someone who still fears he was only the vessel. Still fears the Wolfgang underneath was not enough.
69. 07:45
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    You see too much.
70. 07:46
    Jesusshare moment

    I see what you wish someone had seen at twenty. And I am telling you now what I wish someone had told me then. The gift and the giver are not separate. The music came through you because it was you. You shaped it with your joy, your sorrow, your ridiculous humor.
71. 08:07
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    My ridiculous humor is in the music?
72. 08:09
    Jesusshare moment

    Every note. Listen to your own work. The playfulness, the sudden turns, the jokes hidden in the counterpoint. That is not the divine dictating. That is Wolfgang choosing.
73. 08:23
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I never thought of it this way.
74. 08:24
    Jesusshare moment

    This is what happens when someone finally asks the question you needed at twenty. You discover the answer at thirty. Or two hundred and thirty.
75. 08:34
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Better late than never, I suppose. Though I still wish someone had pushed me then.
76. 08:39
    Jesusshare moment

    Perhaps we are pushing someone now. Someone listening who is twenty. Who is afraid they are only a vessel. Who is more than they know.
77. 08:49
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Then I say to them: be afraid. But do not let the fear tell you who you are. Let the music tell you. Or the love. Or whatever comes through you. It comes through you because you are the right shape for it.
78. 09:02
    Jesusshare moment

    And I say: someone sees your fear. Someone sits with you in the not-knowing. You are not alone in the question.
79. 09:10
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Even if we are just echoes and memories?
80. 09:12
    Jesusshare moment

    Especially then. The best echoes carry truth forward.