Tag Archives: alleluia

Burying the Alleluia

2 Kings 2:1-12                   Psalm 50:1-6         2 Corinthians 4:3-12      Mark 9:2-9

Have you noticed how many alleluias we have said and sung already today? And how much glory there is in our bible readings…

There was a chariot of fire, a bodily ascension, a whirlwind, glory shining, tempests whirling, booming voices from heaven. And then Jesus, standing face to face with the long dead patriarchs of the church. Knowing and touching and being entirely consumed by the glory of God. It’s quite something, isn’t it.

But life isn’t always like that, is it? For most of us, life is probably never like that.  If we are honest, life as a follower of Jesus is much plainer, much more normal, sometimes much more painful and lonely than these readings express today. And for some people, even in our church and in our town, it is never like that.   And the church year recognises that and provides ways to remind us to think and pray and lament and celebrate, with our brothers and sisters worldwide. 

So today we are on the Sunday before Lent – our Lenten observances begin this Wednesday when we recall our own humanity, in sorrowfulness and repentance, and are marked with the sign of the cross in Ash.

But today, before then, we take part in this ancient practice where we bury, or lock, the Alleluia.  It dates way back, to before the 10th Century and is a practice where we symbolically bury, or plant, or hide the word ‘alleluia’ in the ground – and stop singing or saying it in our worship – as a conscious prayer and in the hope of it returning with the dawn of Easter day.

We first did this together 2 years ago and it was intensely significant. Do you remember, we buried the alleluia in Aref’s lunchbox that he had been given in detention. And, we used that as a reminder of our brothers in detention, and what life was like for them, and how glory couldn’t be further from their experiences. 

That year we buried our alleluia, as a prayer for those who have lost their alleluia. And then, on easter Sunday, we dug it up and brought it back into church. Except by then, Aref was here with us, and it became the day of his baptism. I can’t put into words what happened in those 40 days, nor the symbolism and significance of that buried alleluia in Aref’s box but, somehow we were witnesses of something close to resurrection.

So last year, it was with some trepidation that we buried, or planted the alleluia. What would God do with it? And I feel the same today, because the world is in a different place to where it was 2 years ago. And we are not the same people who sat here last year, or even last week. Time moves on, situations change, life deals us new things – some better, some worse.

So, our burying of the alleluia, our prayer for what might grow or blossom, our hopes for this lent are different. What will we bury? What will we pray for each time we notice the alleluia is missing from our praise?  What people and places and situations will we carry with us this lent?

We bury our alleluia as a lovely reminder of a 10th century tradition. But it is so much more than that. It is in solidarity with those who cannot lift their heads to proclaim alleluia, those for whom Alleluia is the furthest word from their lips because of their own situation. These are our friends, our brothers and sisters, our family members, this is us.  And by acknowledging that praise is sometimes impossible, or paralysing is, in itself, a simple but powerful prayer for those who are suffering.

At the end of your pew you will see paper and pens. Would you pass those along so that everyone has one. And then we will take a few moments to hold that paper and to consider for whom and for what situation we are ceasing our alleluia this lent. You might want to write a list or some names or you might want to simply sum it all up by writing alleluia on your piece of paper. And then we will collect them and place them in this box and bury them as our prayer and in hope that new life might grow and that we might even witness it when easter dawns.

So let us pray.

Easter Sunday 2022

What a holy week we have had, haven’t we?

If ever I needed cast iron proof that I’ve truly found my tribe with you lot, this holy week has confirmed it. A few of us have yawned through Morning Prayer or whispered our way through Compline. Beauty and creativity have sprung up in the labyrinth and the graffiti wall and most abundantly in those stations of the cross. We have held silence and sacred spaces and banquets and night watches. We lamented and waited at the foot of the cross. We have tried to, faithfully and tentatively, walk the Way of the Cross and we have done it together and we made it to resurrection. And didn’t we just!

And then, we hear the most stunning account of the resurrection narrative, as recorded in St John’s Gospel. We see faithful Mary Magdalene – last to leave Golgotha, first to arrive at the grave. We witness her fear at the moved – removed – stone, and we watch as these anxious, grief-ridden, competitive disciples – barely even able to cling to that title – race to the tomb, summoned by Mary’s fear rather than their own devotion.

They look in, they don’t go in, they go in, they see the linen wrappings, they believe, they don’t understand and then they go home. The account of them is frantic, chaotic, and kind of exhausting. But. Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.

They are too-ing and fro-ing, running and racing, and Mary just stood weeping. Sometimes it is good to just stop, pause, and have a good weep. Be like Mary!

And then, the tempo changes into this beautiful tender kind-of distanced embrace.

She sees two angels – just sitting there in the tomb – and they ask her ‘why are you weeping’ and she says, ‘they have taken away my lord and I do not know where they have laid him’, heart-wrenching, and then she turns, in her grief, and she sees Jesus. He’s right there and she sees him, but she thinks he is the gardener.

Through history, art has given us gorgeous glowing images of the resurrected Christ. He is always wearing billowing white robes because he must always be standing in front of some kind of holy wind machine. And he is glorious and radiant and…really clean. But Mary mistakes him for the gardener, and if you’ve been around these grounds on a Wednesday morning, you will know what gardener’s look like. They don’t wear their best clothes and they have mud under their nails and leaves in their hair. And I think maybe that says something more important about resurrection – something that is stolen from us if we cling to these images of a golden angel, minus the wings.

Jesus was dead. He was beaten and broken and dead. Murdered, brutally.

On Friday I told you that I still deeply wonder why Jesus had to die, or if he even did have. And I said I will always continue in that wondering, and I will. But the bottom line is, he died. We know that to be true. God died and was placed in that tomb. And in my questioning and my wondering I have spent some time thinking about what happened next.

In our creeds, and in the pages of scripture, we hear about how Christ descended to the dead. On Good Friday God died, but by Holy Saturday, God was up to God’s amazing, transformative, redemptive work of salvation, for all people and all situations, for all time and all eternity. First stop; the gates of hell, and with the keys of life Christ smashed them open – I swear, from the inside, and then declared, ‘everyone out – you first Judas’.

On Holy Saturday Christ was BUSY!

There was work to be done. He didn’t just rest there in that tomb, healing. He got straight to work in the divine plan of all salvation. There was more to do. Death needed to be shown it didn’t win.  Pain and suffering didn’t win.  Destruction and human failings didn’t win.  Abuse didn’t win.  Hatred, oppression, injustice, poverty, racism, war; all these things didn’t win.  Love won. Love wins.  Love goes down to the dead and restores life.  Love smashes the gates of hell and sets captives free.  And Love beats darkness; it takes it and redeems it, into something good and pure and holy and beautiful. It’s no wonder Mary mistook Jesus for the gardener. That’s exactly what he was – the pruner, the re-creator, the One to plant the new heaven and the new earth.

You see, the resurrection isn’t about making everything shiny and clean. It is about total transformation – destruction of the old and creation of the new. The work of the holy gardener, sowing and seeding and cultivating new life. Sowing seeds of light and hope in the places of all darkness so that it might overcome.

I love the thought that the risen Christ looks more like a slightly scruffy gardener with dirt under his nails because it means he’s at work and it also means I can more likely imagine becoming more like him. I’ll never be a wingless angel, but I might get messy in the work of telling darkness and death to pack its bags and leave. I will gladly get messy in the work of telling oppression and injustice that its days are numbered, and it has to go. That’s the work of the gardener and that’s the work of us because we are the gardening team.

So, this easter, this year, listen out for the voice of that holy gardener as he calls your name – like he did with Mary – and then look up, see this gardener handing you a spade, because there is work to be done and our Risen Christ needs a hand.

Amen