An Address at Easter

There are times in life when words just burst out of you, when certain words have to be spoken, if not yelled out loud.  A week or two back, when I was struggling with a large wooden gate and the wind just caught it and it then caught and trapped the back of my foot, there were words then I just had to yell, and I have to say that I do hope there was no-one within earshot, since at least one of those words was one that perhaps a good Christian ought not to be heard shouting.

Confession is good for the soul, and that’s one off my chest.  But not all the words that just have to be spoken, that burst out of you, are negative or bad words.  There are times when the shout is one of praise, times when we want to shout ‘Hooray’.  There are times when we want to shout the word I want to spend a bit of time on today, the word ‘Alleluia’.

Let me first of all touch on the seasonality of some religious words.  At Christmas the refrain is one of ‘Glory to God in heaven, and on earth peace’.  Those are angelic words that for me form a sort of salvation manifesto. The birth the shepherds were told about, up there on the wild hillsides, was a birth that would glorify God and bring peace to men and women of faith and good purpose on earth. 

A week ago, on Palm Sunday, the word on people’s lips was ‘Hosanna’.  We quite often think of ‘Hosanna’ as a word of praise, and certainly it has a praise element to it, as it was shouted and sang to hail the king who chose to ride into Jerusalem on a donkey.  But it’s more than just that;  it’s a prayer and a plea.  If the Christmas words are a salvation manifesto, the Palm Sunday word is a salvation prayer:  it can translate as ‘Lord, save us.’  Maybe it’s also a salvation credal statement, for those who shouted it that day it was their declaration that yes, this was indeed the promised Saviour, come to claim his throne.

Of course, not even his closest disciples realised quite what that throne would be and how it would be claimed and attained.  They couldn’t for a moment imagine that the crown placed on their Lord’s head would be one of thorns, and that the title ‘King of the Jews’ would be one nailed to a cross.  So on Good Friday there are no words at all, only wailing, and that anguished cry, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ But there is also that last shout, as Jesus breathes his last - and I’m sure that we should understand that to be not a cry of despair or desolation, but a shout of triumph. ‘It is finished!’ - not in the sense of ‘It’s all over’, but rather ‘It is accomplished;  it is complete.’

The work is done.  And then comes the great Easter word of alleluia.  But surely that’s also a Christmas word? - you might ask, thinking of the traditional Christmas singing of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and in particular of the ‘Alleluia Chorus’.  Well, that’s a modern tradition, and it isn’t at all what Handel intended, or when he expected his master-work to be sung.  Alleluia is more than anything an Easter word;  of course, Christians can and probably should be using it all the time - but then of course, we are an Easter people.  Easter is what forms Christians into a single holy nation, and what unites us is that we praise the Lord.

Alleluia is an Old Testament word, but I believe it is found only in the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament.  It is a holy word, or really two words fused together.  Hallel means praise - not praise as a noun, a thing, but praise as a command;  and Yah is God, or the Lord.  Alleluia is an instruction, an exhortation, to give praise to the Lord.  In the Psalms it has exactly that role;  in those wonderful poems of worship, the word alleluia encourages the people to lift their hands and voices in praise, to be joined together as the praising people of God.

The very fact that Alleluia as a word contains the name of God (or a name of God) should encourage Christians to be careful in the way we use the word.  We should not want to be found taking the Lord’s name in vain.  But a look at how the word is used in a secular setting can be instructive, even so.  One dictionary I looked at notes that ‘Alleluia is used to denote happiness that a thing longed for or awaited has at last happened.’ 

In Anglican Sunday services, very often the minister begins the service with this greeting:  ‘The Lord be with you’, and the people respond ‘And with thy spirit,’ or these days, more prosaically, ‘And also with you.’  But at Easter, the minister may well begin ‘Alleluia!  Christ is risen!’ and the response is ‘He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!’.  Those words are written with exclamation marks, of course, in the hope that that will encourage the words to be spoken joyfully and with a sense of triumphant celebration.  The thing longed for an awaited through Lent and Passiontide has happened, at last:  the King is risen and alive, and Mary meets with him in the garden.

And the alleluias of Easter follow on from the solemn fast of Lent.  For though Alleluia is a word that Christians can use at any time, since we’re an Easter people, by tradition, we don’t say alleluia in Lent at all.  The focus of Lent is on things earthly rather than things heavenly;  on penitence rather than praise;  on pilgrimage rather than on paradise.  And Lent leads us into Holy Week, and to Good Friday when I have always tried to be aware only of the tragedy of the cross, and to link my thoughts and reflections in with what those first disciples of Jesus were thinking and feeling - that it was all ended, that it was all demolished, that all their hopes had been destroyed, that the light in which they had put their faith had been squashed and extinguished by the forces of darkness.

It’s for that reason that the first Easter service in some churches starts with the building in darkness.  And then the light is kindled and shared, and then the whole building is filled with light, and only then is that word ‘Alleluia’ sung.

For this is how I feel it to be: on Good Friday human goodness is found to be fatally flawed.  Not all our best efforts can prevent this man’s death.  Even brave, foolhardy Peter is forced onto his back foot by the accusations of those around him, so that - just as his Lord had predicted - he three times denies he even knows Jesus, before the cock crows.

We can’t do it on our own;  our end, our inescapable end, is dust and ashes.  But the good news of Easter morning is that we are not on our own, and never will be on our own.  On this day divine love is triumphant even over death.  The Lord is risen, he is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Alleluia is exactly the right word.  Praise the Lord, for without him we are lost;  praise the Lord, for without him our very best efforts are all doomed to failure;  praise the Lord, for we are set free to join with the hosts of heaven, for whom alleluia is surely their constant refrain.  Alleluia is a word of heavenly praise.  Alleluia is also a simple and profound credal statement;  it is the heart of our faith.  We belong to our Lord, for only in him can we find real life.

Alleluia seems to have been a word used in the very earliest liturgies and forms of worship of the Church.  Because it is both a call to praise and a statement of faith, it is a word that should always be used with purpose and with joy, and never in a throwaway fashion.  For this is who we are.

Whatever actually happened on that first Easter Day - and, however you read the Easter stories in the Gospels, there always remains an aura of mystery about them - whatever happened that day, it was utterly convincing.  It changed the hearts, the lives, of those frightened and defeated disciples.

Pentecost is sometimes called the ‘birthday of the Church’. If that is the case, then the great Easter season is, I suppose, the gestation, the pregnancy, the time during which the infant Church was formed and fashioned - as the risen Christ appeared to his disciples not just to dazzle and bemuse them, not just to delight and reassure them, but also to teach and prepare them.  These were men (and women) who went gladly and joyfully even to death because of what they encountered in the empty tomb and in the days that followed.

In other words, alleluia is more than just a word, a sort of Christian version of ‘hooray’;  it is a way of life.  Christians, as I’ve said twice already, Christians are an Easter people.  So we are an alleluia people;  we should be deeply infected with joy, even when things seem to be going against us;  praise should fill all that we do, even when the path is rough and steep and the day is dark;  we should be immune to defeat, because we know the victory is already won;  we should be unafraid of death, because we know our Lord went there and is there no longer.

We can’t always manage that;  there are times, of course there are, when it all gets too hard for us.  Times when the words on our lips, the words that burst out of us, are more like the one I used when my foot got trapped under that gate.  Times when despair, anger, disillusionment, pain, or for that matter shame and sorrow, tower over us and drive the alleluias out of our life.  I suppose that’s why we need this day each year, to hear the story again, to stand with Mary and the others in that garden;  to have felt the pain and the shame, to have passed through the hard times, the dark times, and to know - even if as yet we don’t quite believe what we’re seeing - that today something new is abroad in the world.  The Lord is risen;  he is risen indeed;  alleluia!