WE NEED EASTER
Revelation19:1-8
Then I heard
what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude...crying out
Hallelujah!
Many
years ago Isobel and I spent a year at Princeton Theological Seminary. I taught some courses, and on one occasion
was invited to preach in the seminary chapel.
One of my students came to me prior to the service and asked whether he
could shout out "Hallelujah" from time to time during my sermon for
that was, he said, the custom in his church.
When the congregation enthusiastically agreed with the preacher, he
said, people spontaneously cried out "Hallelujah," the Hebrew word
for "Praise the Lord!" Now I
was accustomed to this because in my younger days I had attended worship
services where this was normal practice.
But it was, at least at that time, something seldom done, if done at
all, in the more sober and conservative Presbyterian environment of the
Princeton seminary chapel. I told him I
had no objection and thought no more about it.
That is, until I was preaching, when all of a sudden I heard a loud
"Hallelujah" shouted out from somewhere near the back of the
chapel. This was repeated several times
during my sermon to the consternation of some in the congregation. But I was
also a little taken aback, not because he shouted out "Hallelujah!"
but because he seemed to be doing so at inappropriate times. For example, if I said something like
":the world is in a very sorry mess," or "tragedy strikes people
when they least expect it," he would shout "Hallelujah!" But that was surely not something to praise
the Lord about.
During
Lent, as you well know, we refrain from crying out "Hallelujah" at
the end of our service. There are two
main reasons for this. The first is
because our focus during Lent is on the cost of discipleship, on the journey to
the cross. Traditionally it is the
season for repentance. Nothing to cheer
about. But every reason to shout out
"Aha!" as we remember that we are called to serve others and
acknowledge that we often fail to do so. "Aha" is, if you like, a
call to change our way of living in relation to those who are poor. A good and
necessary discipline during Lent, and, of course, throughout the year.
The
second reason is that shouting out Hallelujah can just become a meaningless
formality if we keep on saying it without thinking about what we are
doing. It becomes inappropriate. It is like shouting out the word, as my
student did, at the inappropriate time.
Of course, we can shout our "Hallelujah!" throughout the year,
during Lent as well if we want to. We do
not stop praising the Lord in Lent. But
by refraining to do so for a period we come to appreciate its meaning
again. When Easter comes there is
something very special to cheer about. "Hallelujah" becomes the appropriate
response to the good news that "Christ is risen!" Then the Hallelujah chorus demands to be
sung. The time comes when, without
forgetting "Aha!" we need to cry out "Hallelujah!" once
again. We need to affirm that we are
Easter people, people who live in the light and the hope of the Easter
message. "Christ is risen!
Hallelujah!" Yes, we need Easter as
Isobel wrote in a poem some years ago:
Lord, I see the beauty of your
world,
the sparkling turquoise of the
sea,
the solid mass of the
mountains,
the fragile loveliness of a
flower,
and I can praise you.
But there is that other ugly
world
that frightens me -
it overwhelms me, renders me
helpless:
that world where people are
prisoners to poverty,
violence and misery mark the
measure of their lives,
they trudge an endless
treadmill
without a break – to stop is
to fall off
into worse - a dark and
bottomless pit.
I can’t bear to hear about it,
to think about it.
I don’t know how – do I even
care enough? - to act.
Lord, it is Good Friday – bad
Friday - writ large,
Bad Friday, Black Saturday,
repeated
endlessly, like the treadmill.
We need Easter, Lord,
send Easter! – to the city’s
slums
to the shacks, to the
shebeens,
to the country’s desolation,
to the hearts and minds and
wills of all.
Break upon our world with
Easter.
Break open our world with
Easter.
Yes,
we need Easter. We need good news amidst
all the bad news that bombards us every day.
We can barely cope sometimes with all the problems we have to deal with
day by day, at work or at home, without even thinking about the problems facing
us in our society and the world at large.
We need something to shout "Hallelujah" about in dark times
when daily there are news reports of mass murders and plane crashes, of friends
who are dying of cancer, and corruption in high places, of Christians being
slaughtered for their faith. We need
light in the midst of darkness. We need
hope in times when we are driven to despair.
The
message of Easter is the good news that death and despair, destruction and
darkness, do not have the final say, that there is light at the end of the
tunnel, that there is something to cheer about.
This is not easy to believe or do given the circumstances in which many
people often find themselves. Like
Thomas we sometimes or even often doubt whether it can be true. But it is the very foundation on which our
Christian faith is based; it is our core belief. Without Easter there would not, could not be,
Christianity. That is why on Easter day
we cry out "Hallelujah" not once but many times, and why every
Sunday, indeed, every day from here on through the year we cry our "Hallelujah!"
not because it is liturgically correct, but because we need Easter, we need a
reason to hope, to believe, to love.
And
so John, at a time when the world was falling apart, when the iron rod of
imperial Rome was oppressing the nations, and
when Christians in the Middle East were being persecuted for the first
time, had his amazing vision which he describes in the book of Revelation. When all is said and done, when the victory
over evil is finally won, there is, as he sees and describes,, a great
multitude crying out "Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult, and give him the
glory."
We need Easter, Lord,
send Easter! – to the city’s
slums
to the shacks, to the
shebeens,
to the country’s desolation,
to the hearts and minds and
wills of all.
Break upon our world with
Easter.
Break open our world with
Easter.
John de Gruchy
Volmoed 9 April 2015
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