Sermon.
St Michael and All Angels. Little Ilford. 24 April 2016.
Easter
5 (Year C)
Psalm
148.1-6
[BSL-Signing
'Alleluia',
until others join in...]
Okay!
Enough! There's no need to shout! For any who didn't know, we've just
been signing - using British Sign Language to say - 'Alleluia'.
I
don't know what you were celebrating in signing 'Alleluia'. There's
plenty of choice. The Queen's 90th birthday. Commemorating
William Shakespeare. St George – 'our own' national
saint (who was of
course a Turkish-Syrian-Palestinian). Or indeed, maybe you are
engaged in some bittersweet thanksgiving for the life of Prince, or
Victoria Wood. Or, if you have Jewish friends, or maybe just a
multifaith calendar, you may be marking the second day of Passover,
the festival of liberation.
You
can of course be doing all of this. But/and/and/but if you want to
please your clergy(!), you might also have near the front of your
minds that we are still in Eastertide. And 'Alleluias' rightly
dominate the whole of Eastertide, the season which begins with the
Easter fire and our Easter candle, and which continues up to and
including Pentecost. We ban the saying of 'Alleluias' in Lent,
the better to enjoy it, now. It's like the return of an old friend.
Hallelu
Yah in Hebrew means something like 'Praise Gd'. The Greek and
Latin translators of the Bible knew this. But they also thought that
there was music and beauty in the very syllables. So they often did
not translate the words, but instead 'transliterated'
them. This means they reproduced the letters in their own alphabet.
(They did this on other occasions too. With 'Hosanna' and 'Amen', for
example.) So 'Hallelu Yah' in Hebrew becomes 'Alleluia'
in Latin. 'We are an Easter people and Alleluia
is our song' said Saint Augustine (and maybe others before him). It
makes a joyful noise. And indeed, a joyful shape [signing].
Since
it is right that Alleluias dominate Eastertide, let us spend a moment
paying attention to... today's Psalm. It begins with 'Alleluia'. But
in truth, in the Hebrew, variations on Hallelu Yah occur nine
times in today's six verses. We miss this, because apart from the
first time, they are actually translated.
But
here's the thing. The whole Book of Psalms is called in Hebrew
'Tehillim', which comes from the same root (h-l-l). So
it means 'Praises'. 'Psalms' in Hebrew are 'Praises'. Now, if you've
read more than a handful of psalms, you may find this strange. For
there is a lot more to the collection of psalms than just praises:
there
is quiet reflection,
story,
and
lament;
there
is even rage,
despair,
and
worse.
It's
often said that all human life is there, unadorned and unashamed,
and
that's right.
How,
then, can it be that it they all count as praise?
Well,
a related question is: is the Book of Psalms a 'book' anyway? I mean:
is it a more-or-less random collection of different song-texts? It
brings together the worshippers 'old favourites' perhaps, but
arranges them without any pattern? Or... might it be that the
book-as-a-whole tells a story?
We
are probably used to thinking it's the former. Certainly, when we use
the psalms in our worship here, we tend to choose - or have chosen
for us - the ones which fit our theme(s), rather than work through
all 150 in order. But it was and is not always so. If you use the
Book of Common Prayer for daily prayer, you will begin Morning Prayer
each month with Psalms 1-4, and end Evening Prayer on the last day of
the month with Psalms 147-150. You do, precisely, 'work your way
through'.
This
might not be as silly as it may sound. Some scholars do say that
there is meaning in the ordering of the psalms. The argument goes
something like this. Psalm 1, the headline-psalm, is very confident.
It is confident to the point of smugness.
'Happy
are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked... but their
delight is in the [guidance] of [GOD]... They are like trees planted
by streams of water... In all that they do, they prosper. [Not so]
the wicked..'.
The speaker knows what's what; knows he is not like the wicked; he
flourishes. But! But then already in the next psalm, comes
bewilderment [Ps 2.1-2]:
'Why
do the nations conspire... against the LORD and his anointed...?'
And by Psalm 3 [verse 2] we have:
'many are saying to me, "There
is no help for you in God."'
You see? The question is very
soon pressing
and painful: why do bad things happen to good people? And
the argument that the rest of the Book of Psalms is a meditation – a
very raw meditation - on that most difficult of questions.
Today
we might say the Book is a 'psychodrama'.
The initially (self-)satisfied psalmist has to wrestle with the fact
that life is difficult, has detours, goes wrong; and
that faith and righteousness do not guarantee success. Faith and
righteousness do not even guarantee 'spiritual goods'. The psalmist,
though fundamentally faithful to Gd, knows not only poverty and
grief, but even
the spiritual agony: Remember Psalm 22 [verse 1]
'My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'
And
yet! And yet! The 'drama'
ends in praise: Alleluias dominate not just today's psalm, Psalm 148,
but the closing psalms, Psalms 146-150. How? Why?
It is as if the psalmist comes to know
in his bones
that praise of Gd does not depend on having
good luck, and is not shut up by rotten luck.
Praise of Gd is quite simply what we are made for. And if life throws
dirt at us, so that praise of Gd is hard for us, then we can
resist. We are free to resist. We fight
back. We say, as it were, nevertheless,
I will praise!
This
sort of praise of Gd does not come naturally to many of us, maybe not
to any of us. But the message of Easter is that the risen Christ
comes to us, not so much to teach us anything about life-after-death as to restore the image of Gd in us. And
part of that at least means we can learn to praise Gd, can
indeed say
our own
utterly personal,
utterly authentic,
utterly
beautiful
Alleluia.
Let us try it [signing]. Let
us not stop trying it. Amen.
[For
more insight into this reading of the Book of Psalms, see especially
the scholarship of Walter Brueggemann.]
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