To watch a video of this sermon, click on this sentence.
Alleluia, Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia.
Alleluia, Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia.
Alleluia, Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia.
Maybe we should do that every week. After all, every Sunday of the year is a feast of the Resurrection. Martin Luther said that we should never take the word “alleluia” out of our worship, not even during Lent, because every Sunday is, in its own way, Easter Sunday. We should not deny the joy that is in us because of all that God in Christ has done for us.
But I do like to take alleluia out. Some of you know this, and you have been fairly patient with me as I removed the alleluias from our dismissal. Why did I do this? Am I dark? Am I grumpy? I could cite the rule book, or the Prayer Book, as we call it: it says very clearly in there that the alleluias are said or sung at the dismissal only during Eastertide, from the first Eucharist of Easter until the Day of Pentecost. But when clergy cite the rubrics and the rules, they are usually in trouble. Who really cares about little rules like that, and why should we care?
Okay, well, I think it’s my job to tell you why.
One reason to follow the Prayer Book’s alleluia rules is that the 1979 Prayer Book was designed with great care, by people who had been chosen for this purpose, people who represented the whole Episcopal Church, people who understood that our shared tradition matters, and it matters because it is shared: our tradition binds Episcopalians and Anglicans together worldwide, and Jesus himself prays for the unity of all of his followers. Every rubric in our book was carefully chosen, even prayed over.
Here’s another reason to step back from alleluia: if we say it all the time, it loses its potency, it becomes ho-hum, it stops being moving or exciting. If it is always Easter, we reason, then it is never Easter. We don’t say “Merry Christmas!” all year long, so why say “Alleluia!”?
But there are even better reasons to carefully choose how and when and how often to use this particular word, reasons that make a big difference to real people in the world, reasons that may truly help people who come into this room to say their prayers. This isn’t just inside baseball for a church that should be thinking bigger thoughts.
Here’s what I think is the most powerful reason to set aside the alleluia for a season: sometimes people simply cannot bring themselves to say or sing it, and we need to be here for them. Alleluia is our most fulsome song of praise. It is a Hebrew word that simply means, “Praise God.” But some of our friends here are wracked with grief; they are confused or even angry about—or at—God. They are wandering through a hard personal wilderness and are not thrilled to be expected to be happy and hearty all the time. If we sometimes step away from our best and happiest song, then we make room for these people. I was one of these people three years ago when Andrew and I moved to Virginia. I was feeling quite sad and scared. I was still on the early side of making friends here. For me, in 2017, “silence must suffice as praise,” to quote a favorite hymn of mine. Even now, when I am having a hard week, I sometimes fall silent in worship. When I feel this way, a lot of exclamation marks can really bump me out of the experience.
Alleluia can sometimes make it hard for people to pray.
The risen Lord was, and is, here for the grieving: he did not expect, nor did he receive, uncomplicated shouts of “Hooray!” when he appeared to his friends. I believe that even now, though she is glorious in the splendor of the light of God, the mother of Jesus still feels the pain she suffered at the death of her son. Life is hard. Grief is real. We, like the risen Lord himself, want to be there for people in grief.
But wait! You might say. Don’t we sing alleluia at the grave?! Yes, yes we do. In our burial liturgy we say, “Yet even at the grave we make our song, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” We sing alleluia even at the wrenching grave of our sister Rebekah Skalski, who died suddenly at the age of 14 and whose memorial service was held here yesterday afternoon. Her family was a part of St. Andrew’s many years ago. Her mother Diane’s remains rest in our burial garden, and Rebekah’s will join them soon. Even there, at such a terribly sad grave, we make our joyous song of praise to God, even if our voices are choking with sadness. So maybe we should always have it in our services, for the very people who inspire us to take it out!
How do we make sense of this?
Let us turn to Jesus Christ himself for the answer. We find him today on a very high mountain in the Galilee. That mountain is still there: it is Mount Tabor, where Christian tradition holds that Jesus was transfigured, “shining with unborrowed light,” we sing in a hymn. He was joined by Moses and Elijah—that is, he was joined by the Law and the Prophets. In Jesus we see what St. Irenaeus, an early 2nd-century bishop, calls the glory of God: for St. Irenaeus, “the glory of God is the human person fully alive.”
The glory of God is the human person fully alive. Jesus is the human person, and Jesus is the Life. The Law and the Prophets bow before him: this is God’s son, God’s beloved. We are to listen to him!
Our brother Peter seems to be an “alleluia every week” kind of person. He wants to stay on that mountain, to capture that moment of glory forever. I understand that. The transfigured Jesus shows us the full dignity of humanity in the sight of God: we, too, shine with God’s glory. Jesus is the Human One who triumphs over sin and death, and carries us with him from height into height. More is better, Peter seems to think. What’s not to like?! I get that.
But Jesus stops shining for a while. He bids his friends to go with him down the mountain, and he orders them not to tell others about this glorious vision until after the Resurrection.
This means that we do not tell others with excitement about how glorious and transcendent Jesus is without telling them about what follows that mountain scene. We are given a vision of Resurrection glory, but we can only really bring others to Jesus by talking also about the Cross. Peter knows that folks everywhere in the Galilee region, and really everywhere, would love nothing more than a brightly shining savior who makes all their problems go away. But this savior, our Savior, joins us in our battle with death. He joins us in the muck of this complicated world. He joins us in all the painful struggles of human existence, so troubled by sin, violence, ignorance, hatred, and death.
Jesus shines! The Lord is risen, alleluia. But we need to know, and we need to tell others about, the Lord who hangs on a tree, the one fully innocent Victim of Sin and Death, and therefore the one who triumphs over them once and for all. As we pray on Palm Sunday, he “went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified.”
So if Peter, James, and John run off and tell everyone about the clothes and face of Jesus shining so brightly, they risk misrepresenting who this Jesus truly is.
And who is he?
He is one who wanders: he is found in our wildernesses, the hard, desert places of our lives where we find no water, and face temptation, and work hard, and feel frustrated, and wrestle with the all-too-human demon of despair.
He is one who suffers: he knows your suffering. He sheds the tears you shed.
He is one who dies: he tastes death just like we all will, and like all those we love but see no longer.
And then we find him outside the empty tomb. After we find him in all our hard places, in all the depths of our grief and anger and fear and longing, then we see him on the mountain, fully alive, the firstborn of the dead.
So let us bid farewell to alleluia today, for a while. [At the 10:00 service] It will be buried in a basket [today], and kept beneath the altar, where we will find it on that night brighter than any day, the Great Vigil of Easter, when our risen Lord meets us and breathes on us his life and peace.
This coming week, we will go together into the Lenten wilderness. There we will find others. We will tell them about Resurrection, surely. But first we will say to them, “I am here. I understand. You are not alone.”
In the terrible places of the wilderness, even if our voices fall silent, as sometimes they should, even then, we will hear that beautiful word, that glad song, deep in our hearts: alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
Preached on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Burke, Virginia, February 23, 2020.
Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 99
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9