Alleluia Anyways: November 10

Year B, Pentecost 25                                      Psalm 146                                                                             

            I often direct people to the Psalms when they are struggling with prayer. Many times people need direction in prayer and get insecure about what to say or they are just overwhelmed with the enormity of it all. I understand because I sometimes feel the same way, this week for instance.  The great thing about the psalms is that they encompass virtually every human emotion: anger, envy, frustration, joy, fear and utter desolation.  While there are 150 psalms, often times you will encounter several contrasting emotions in one psalm. I like it because it is true to life.  One moment you are on top of the world, the next moment you are asking God to vanquish your enemies.  Some days are like that.

            Given the last week, I had hoped we would have a good lament psalm.  One third of the psalms in the Bible are lament psalms, so I felt that the odds were in my favor. But no, not this week. This week was a praise psalm with the first word—Hallelujah.  I imagined how it would sound if I asked you all to say it. It would be a bit like when I ask my son to apologize for something he’s confident he bears no guilt.  Hallelujah. When I think of the word Hallelujah, I think of Easter and joy that cannot be contained— but it’s more than that.

It’s actually a transliteration of two Hebrew words that translate to: Praise God. It’s one of the few Hebrew words in the Hebrew Bible that wasn’t translated to Greek, then Latin, then English. All the other words were translated, but not this word. A music professor at Yale said it suggests the word was already charged with an emotion that transcends its linguistic meaning.[1] It’s like it was too beautiful, too lyrical, to translate it.

            When I think of praising God, I consider the times when it has just come out of me spontaneously, which frankly has been rarer than I would like to admit.  We praise God every Sunday through prayers, music and the celebration of the Eucharist.  But what I hear when I spend a lot of time contemplating the word Hallelujah, is singing the Alleluia chorus. It’s powerful and enthusiastic song of praise. I think so many of think of Alleluia in that context.  But the word Alleluia appears in all kinds of music.  I was struck by one piece the choir sang in our All Soul’s service last week.  It was a Ukranian piece written in 2007.  The whole piece is just Alleluia, but it’s much more contemplative and less triumphant then you would expect.  The author of the piece said he wrote it after a mission trip to Ukraine.  It was meant to be the “quiet voice of faith, praise and hope in the midst of suffering and tragedy”. That is how the composer of the piece described it. We don’t have to associate Hallelujah with joy.

            The Hebrew word is actually an imperative---it’s a command.  One commentator described it as a discipline. That means that even when we don’t feel it, we still say it.  We praise God not because of the wonderful things that are going on in our world.  We praise God because our God is worthy of praise. It’s not supposed to be easy.  It’s not supposed to be something that we only do when things are going our way and we are grateful to God for all the blessings in our life. We can’t just believe in a good God when all is right in the world.

That’s easy to preach, but how can we praise when we find ourselves in times of despair, when we have lost faith in people, when we have worked so hard and not achieved the outcome we wanted.  We grieve.  We act.  We organize. We remember the verses of this psalm that tell us not to put our trust in rulers, because they cannot save us…even when we have a really good one who we voted for. They cannot ruin us, no matter how very bad they are.  Only God can save us.

Because we still worship a God who loves us, a God who gives justice to the oppressed, food to the hungry, sets the prisoners free, opens the eyes of the blind and cares for the immigrant, the orphan and the widow.  When our human leaders let us down (and they will, because they are humans---and some of them are very flawed humans), we cannot lose hope.  Our hope is not based on who we elect or don’t elect.  Our hope has one source—God. So we continue to praise the Lord, not because we are pleased with what is happening in our nation and our world, but in spite of it.  Let your praise be your protest. 

            And I know how hard that is. Praising God is part of my job description and I still find it difficult in the midst of division and hatred.  There will be moments when we can’t praise God and instead we pray Psalm 13, “How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” There have been many moments over the last several years when I have asked, “How long?” I don’t care what political party you are in, I don’t know anyone who believes things are going swimmingly.  I don’t know anyone who feels that our government is doing a great job of standing up for the poor, the oppressed, the immigrant, the imprisoned, all those people that the God of justice, (the God of psalm 146) promised to love and lift up.

What I fear more than anything, is hopelessness, people giving up hope.  So I ask that when we sing our final hymn, we will sing with whatever energy we have left-- these words: “Save us from weak resignation, to the evils we deplore..  Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, serving thee whom we adore.” Let us not forget who we serve. We serve a loving God who cares deeply for all those people the world just tosses aside.

Because of that, we keep saying Hallelujah, even if it’s barely a whisper. You don’t have to say it with triumph.  You don’t even have to say it with joy.  Say it however feels right in your soul. You know how we don’t say Alleluia during Lent? The one exception is at funerals. Because even in the midst of death and grief, we make our song—Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. Even when we feel that all is lost, our God continues to save us and the people we love.  Let our Alleluia be our protest, our protest to the division, the hatred, the misogyny, the racism, the homophobia---all of those things that create walls instead of bridges. No one gets to take Hallelujah away from us.  Don’t stop praising God. Let our praise be our protest.

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[1] Hallelujah! The remarkable story behind this joyful word - Los Angeles Times.  Quote is from Markus Rathey, a professor at Yale

Grace in the Wilderness: Easter

Year A, Easter                                                                       

Jeremiah 31:1-6                                                                                         

How can we shout Alleluia and announce a risen Christ in the midst of such grief, illness and death? Many are lamenting our loss of an Easter celebration because of the recommendations to shelter in place and the order that we not gather in groups of more than 10.  But really, even if there wasn’t a fear of infecting one another and rules about staying home, would we really be able to celebrate with so much death around us?

            This past week the Surgeon General declared this week to be our Pearl Harbor and our 9-11, the week that would test the strength and endurance of Americans.  Even if we were able to gather without fear of getting sick or infecting another unknowingly, it would be hard to celebrate in the midst of such pain and anguish. While I grieve our inability to gather as a community, I have to admit that I am relieved that we don’t have to pretend that all is well when we know all is not well.

One of the things that distinguishes St. John’s in terms of our Easter celebration is the Easter Egg hunt in our cemetery.  It seems an odd tradition and the first few times you see young children weaving between tombstones carrying Easter baskets, you can’t help but recognize the bizarre juxtaposition, seeing such life and vitality in the midst of death.   Yet my friends, that is exactly what Easter is, what Easter has always been.  We can never forget that the very first Easter was in an empty tomb.  It was in the midst of grief, fear and weeping. 

Every Easter, I preach on the Gospel.  Anyone coming to Easter Sunday service wants to hear about the empty tomb and the appearance of the risen Christ.  But this isn’t your average Easter Sunday, so instead, I am going to talk about our Old Testament reading from Jeremiah.  Jeremiah was such a depressing prophet, he carries the unfortunate nickname of “the weeping prophet.”  Like other Old Testament prophets, much of his book was about encouraging people to repent from their sins and turn back to the one true God.

Typically there is a shift somewhere later in the book where the prophet moves away from judgment and warning to hope and comfort.  Our reading for today depicts this very shift.  But it’s more than just comfort.  It’s not the chicken soup for the soul kind of comfort that reminds us to look for the silver lining or search for the bright side.  This is about restoration.  This is about re-creation. It is a reminder that we worship a creator God and if God can create the world, he can re-create it as well.  That is what Jeremiah means when he writes, “Again I will build you, and you shall be built.”

These are words to people who have seen their homes destroyed and seen many loved ones die.  Some have lost faith in their God.  They have questioned why God would allow so much pain, so much unnecessary loss to a people he is supposed to love. They are a people who are weary, terrified and frustrated.  (Sound familiar?) Yet Jeremiah reminds these people that they are the same people who found grace in the wilderness. He is referring to the Exodus, when the Hebrew people escaped slavery in Egypt only to wander in the wilderness for 40 years.  Jeremiah reminds them that they found grace in the wilderness.

I was struck by that phrase.  I feel as though this period we are in right now is very much a wilderness period.  We are isolated, even though we are surrounded by the news and social media.  We have plenty of food as they did in the wilderness (because God provided) but we still feel the need to hoard.  We still feel anxiety for what we might lose.  We are in the wilderness.  Like others before us, we can find grace in this wilderness.  I often hear myself using the word stuck when I am talking about my current situation, which is not a good word for this situation.  We are not stuck.  We are free.  We are free because we have a God who loves us with an everlasting love. That is what Jeremiah calls it. 

One of the reasons I feel Jeremiah is so perfect for where we are now is because he uses past, present and future tense in these verses.  After reminding them of their wilderness period of the past, he writes, “Again I will build you, and you shall be built/ Again you shall take your tambourines, and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers. Again you shall plant vineyard on the mountains of Samaria…”  Today is not the day for tambourines and the dance of merry makers.  It is not the day to plant a vineyard.  Today is not the today for countless lilies, sumptuous food and an overflowing church.  But it is still a day for Alleluia.  It is still a day when we announce the risen Lord. 

One of the things I like to remind people at funerals is that the funeral liturgy is the one time we are allowed to say Alleluia during Lent. We believe that when we die, our lives are changed, not ended.  We are people of the resurrection.  Even in the midst of death, we still embrace the hope of the resurrection.  So yes, we are in a horrible period in our world where far too many people are dying, not just in other parts of the world, but here in Virginia, even in Hampton Roads. Yet as our funeral liturgy says, “even at the grave, we make our song Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”  We sing that song with tears in our eyes and a lump in our throats, but we still sing the song.  Even in the wilderness, we find grace.

            Sometimes in church we act like Easter is the end of this long marathon and we can all relax and go back to our normal lives. But that has never been true.  Easter is not meant to be the end.  It is a new beginning.  That is why in our Gospel story, Jesus tells Mary that she cannot cling to him, because he’s not done yet.  He has more to do.  We know, that even after the peak of this virus is past us, there will be more work to do.  We will need to rebuild.  We will need to comfort those who are mourning.  We will need to take measures to keep our people safe.  Things will never be as they were before.  That’s ok.  That doesn’t mean we cannot mourn the loss of people, jobs, financial security, and experiences.  It just means that we keep going.  We discover a new normal.  And most importantly, we can’t let ourselves grow complacent and comfortable as we were before.  While people were not dying at alarming rates even a month ago, I think we can all agree that things were not ok.  It was only ok because the bad things didn’t affect many of us. 

            Now, we are all in this wilderness together. Perhaps we should stop trying to escape the wilderness and instead, find some grace in it.  Grow into our better selves.  Grow into the people God created us to be.  And then we can truly let our voices soar when we say together, “Alleluia.   Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.”

So What? April 15, 2018

Luke 24: 36-48                                                                                   
Year B, Easter 3                                                                                 

 

Alleluia. Christ has risen

The Lord has risen indeed. Alleluia.

So what?  That is what I want to ask sometimes.  Our liturgy offers such succinct and elegant ways of articulating what we believe.  This liturgy has been honed over 100s or even 1000 years.  The benefit is that it’s a constant.  We can always fall back on the words of our liturgy and the words of the Book of Common Prayer.  When we do not have the energy or perhaps even the faith to create our own prayers, or talk to God, we can always turn to what we have in front of us.  But the problem is that we do not always think about what we say.  We say it because it is written and we have always said it that way.  Sometimes I wish we could adlib a little and after  you say, “The Lord is risen indeed!” I could say, “So what?”  Why does it matter that he is risen indeed?

Let’s consider the way the disciples reacted to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  We know that after his death they ran and hid.  They thought it was over.  They were probably just trying to figure out where to go next.  They could not stay in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the scene of failure and death.  It was the end of a movement that they had dedicated their life to.  And while Jesus had told them he would be back, they did not know what he meant by that.  Thus their initial reaction to the empty tomb and accounts from those who claimed to have seen Jesus alive was doubt and incredulity.  Those are fairly logical reactions to news that a dead person is back. 

In today’s reading, the disciples aren’t just dealing with an empty tomb or stories of the risen Christ, they are actually seeing Jesus alive in front of them.  He came to where they were. He opened with a greeting that should have eased their anxiety.  “Peace be with you.” That is the kind of opening you would expect from Jesus.  They did not break into tears. They did not run to him and fall at his feet. They did not say, “The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!” They were startled and terrified.  They could not process what they were seeing.  He was supposed to be dead. 

Jesus’ first reaction to their stunned silence was to ask why they were frightened. He knew why they were frightened, but he still had to ask.  The next thing he did was a little strange.  He showed them his hands and feet.  Now most of us do not identify people by their hands and feet.  If we are trying to recognize someone, we look at their face.  Or we can identify someone by their voice…but the hands and the feet.  That’s just odd. 

Of course we have all seen portrayals of the crucified Jesus. His hands and feet were nailed to the cross.  We know that.  Most likely his disciples would have known that  as well.  But why would Jesus want to draw their attention to his wounds?  He could have turned water into wine.  He could have transfigured before them as he had before.  He could have made them believe.  There were so many things he could have done that would have been a lot more divine and godly.  But no…he showed them his wounded hands and feet. 

The crazy thing is that was fairly effective…mostly effective.  They reacted with joy and disbelief.  They were joyful because they really recognized him.  They knew this was not some mirage. This was the man they had lived with…the man who was tortured and killed, the man they loved.  Yet despite this recognition, they could not quite believe because it was too much…too much to take in at once. 

Jesus understood this and so he did another odd and undivine thing—he asked them for some food.  “Have you anything here to eat?”  This line amuses me every time I read it because I picture Jesus looking around at these bewildered men trying to make them understand the unfathomable.  I imagine ideas running through his head…what can he do to make them believe and his solution is to ask for some food. Is that the best he can do??

There are theories about why Jesus chose this moment to eat some fish.  Most assume it was so he could show them that he was flesh and blood—not a ghost.  Yet I wonder if it was something less cerebral.  Perhaps he really was hungry or maybe he was just doing that thing you do when you get together with friends, you share a meal together. He let them take care of him---take care of one of humanity’s most basic needs (food) which is amazing given that the disciples had done such a horrible job of caring for him when he needed them the most.

Ironically, it was Jesus’s humanity and vulnerability that helped his disciples believe and see him, finally see him for who he was, not just any god, but the God. The God who suffered like all humans suffered, suffered even more than most suffer, the God who still carried the wounds of that suffering, the God who forgave them despite the fact that they had abandoned him, the God who loved them to the end, the God who died and came back from the dead just to see them again.

I can be fairly certain of how you would react when I say, “Alleluia, Christ is risen!”  We will be saying that every Sunday during the Easter season.  I hope that during this season, you will consider how you would react if Jesus actually came to your home and said, “Peace be with you.”  Would you know it was him?  Would you want to see his hands and feet or would you want to see him perform a miracle? Would you want to fix him dinner, or would you want some evidence that this really was the risen Christ? 

I believe that the way Jesus interacted with his disciples is exactly how he wishes to interact with all of us today.  He wants to be real.  He doesn’t just want to show us his scars.  He wants to see ours.  He wants to know our joy and our pain.  He wants to be part of our everyday activities, like eating and spending time with friends and family.  I love our liturgy--the beauty and majesty.  Our liturgy is a wonderful way to worship God and God wants to be worshipped.  God wants this time with us when we are entirely devoted to him.  But God also wants to see us when we aren’t wearing our robes and Sunday best.  God wants every part of us.

Why does it matter that Jesus was resurrected? He was resurrected to prove that death is not the end--that while he was the first one to be resurrected, he will not be the last.  Living the reality of the resurrection does not mean that we forget the crucifixion.  Our faith is one that embodies the whole human experience.  It is anxiety and peace.  It is pain and joy.  It is death and resurrection. It is real. It matters that Jesus was resurrected because it gives us hope that we will see the risen Christ and when we see him he will open our eyes to all the mysteries of life and faith.  Then there will be peace, real peace and it will be real.