April News From the Clergy

24 Mar 2023 • From the Clergy

Lent is nearly over! We will soon be celebrating the most joyful day in the Christian calendar. Before we get there, I encourage you to take a moment to look back on the last thirty or so days and ask yourself: What have I missed most during the season now coming to a close? Perhaps it’s indulging in your favourite tipple in the evening; the cake, puddings or crisps missing from your meal times; or maybe it’s the time you no longer spend playing video games or looking on social media. Perhaps you’ve been missing the flowers in church?

On the long and varied lists you might, between you all, produce, of things you’ve missed during Lent, I wonder where “Alleluia!” might come? Maybe you haven’t even noticed its absence but, throughout the solemn season of Lent, this word has been missing. We have avoided hymns that use it and, where it begins a psalm, the first word will be omitted. Why is this?

To begin to understand this, we need to know what the word means and a glance at a dictionary tells us that it is an exclamation, meaning God be praised. In the sombre season of Lent, when we concentrate on fasting, study and prayer as we commemorate the time Jesus spent in the wilderness and the temptations he faced there, an exuberant shout of praise, such as “Alleluia!” seems inappropriate.

And yet, we could argue, this is the time when we most rightly should be shouting our praise. Jesus was tempted in the wilderness but did not succumb. He walked the dreadful path to Calvary and was not beaten. Of course, we will celebrate his ultimate victory at Easter and then our Alleluias will ring out, loud and clear but in the meantime, we keep our praise muted out of respect for the depth of suffering undergone by Jesus, not just on Good Friday, but at each new rejection, each sneer, each refusal to accept the love, forgiveness and peace he came to bring.

One of my favourite Christian poems is Studdert Kennedy’s “Indifference” in which he compares the pain and grief suffered by Christ at Golgotha, to the pain and grief we cause him today through our cold indifference. Our negligence of God and of each other makes Christ, in Studdert Kennedy’s words, crouch in the rain of modern-day Birmingham and weep for Calvary. It is a powerful image and one which, to my mind at least, banishes any wish to shout, or even whisper “Alleluia!”

And yet, that love, that compassion and mercy which took Jesus to death on the cross, paved the way to the empty tomb and the joy of Easter Day. We often remind ourselves that life is a cycle of good and bad, happy and sad times; that we cannot have one without the other. We know that Jesus could not have won his final victory over death, that there would be no glorious Easter Day, without the terror and awfulness of the days that went before. That is why I suggest that, although we cannot speak it aloud, our hearts should still be saying “Alleluia” even in the darkest days of the Lent and Passiontide seasons because it is then, in his suffering, that Jesus most eloquently expressed his love for us.

When Easter Day arrives, we will fill our churches with light and music, and beautifully arranged flowers will make a most welcome return. Alleluias will ring out as we celebrate this triumphant festival and it is right and good that they do so. But Christian praise of our God is not – or should not be – a “fair weather friend.” In their hymn paraphrasing Psalm 34, Tate and Braddy wrote:

“Through all the changing scenes of life, in trouble and in joy,

The praises of my God shall still my heart and tongue employ!”1

Sometimes, hard though it is to see, it is the dark times that ultimately bring the greatest joy and benefit. This is certainly the message of Easter; that out of the depths of darkness and despair, God brought the ultimate, perfect, joy and cause for everlasting rejoicing.

Alleluia! Christ has died.

Alleluia! Christ has risen!

Alleluia! Praise God, come what may. For ever and ever. Amen.

Sarah Cottrill

1 in public domain.