The Easter Alleluia - Pastor's Column April 2023
The season of Easter begins this month on Sunday, April 9 as we celebrate the Resurrection of Our Lord. We all know what that means… Yes, it’s time for those big Easter hymns accompanied by full organ as we sing in full voice the many, many “alleluias” until our throats began to ache. That’s actually one of my earliest Easter memories. I remember singing “Christ is Risen, Alleluia,” “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today, Alleluia,” “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today, Alleluia,” “Christ has triumphed! Alleluia!,” “Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. The strife is o’er…” and many others from a very young age. I remember that the pitches of those hymns with their many repeated alleluias seemed quite high, and that my throat indeed started to hurt before worship was over. I also remember thinking to myself, “Good grief! Why so many alleluias? Jesus has risen. We’re glad and joyful. I get it. Enough already!”
I joke with our musician each year that for the first Sunday of Easter, we can skip having a hymn during the communion distribution because we’re probably already exhausted from singing by that point in the worship service, and we’ve still got the closing hymn to go.
While such singing can be quite tiring, we know that this rejoicing is not without cause. This is the chief festival of the church, for here we celebrate the resurrection of Christ and the triumph over the grave. We embody in the musical tradition the very gospel proclamation: “The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!” This is the point to which we have been headed since our celebration of Christ’s birth at Christmas. This is the climax of the Gospel, for in his resurrection, Christ has destroyed death and opened the gates to eternal life for us.
Even Luther remarked on the tiring task of hymn singing, but he would not let that trump our Easter joy. In referring to one particular Easter hymn from around the year 1100, “Christ Is Arisen,” Luther said, “After a time one tires of singing all the other hymns, but ‘Christ Is Arisen’ one can always sing again. The text of that hymn as translated for our Lutheran Book of Worship follows:
Christ is arisen from the grave’s dark prison.
So let our joy rise full and free;
Christ our comfort true will be. Alleluia!
Were Christ not arisen,
Then death were still our prison.
Now, with him to life restored,
We praise the Father of our Lord. Alleluia!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
Now let our joy rise full and free;
Christ our comfort true will be. Alleluia!
I love the line, “Were Christ not arisen, then death were still our prison. Now, with him to life restored, we praise the Father of our Lord.” This is indeed worthy of our praise, which is exactly what those alleluias are all about. The word “alleluia” comes from the Hebrew “hallelujah.” Literally translated, it is an imperative that simply means, “Praise the Lord.” So in all those repetitious alleluia hymns of Easter, we are offering our highest praise to God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. We sing the praise of Christ who died and rose on high. We praise God for all his mighty acts to save us. We praise him for our forgiveness. We praise him in thanksgiving for his grace, mercy, and love. We praise him for the promise of resurrection and eternal life. Alleluia, alleluia, amen.