August 4, 2024

Hallelujah

Nearly eight years ago one of the true icons of modern music, the poet, singer, and song writer Leonard Cohen “slipped the surely bonds of earth” . . . and, as he put it, “stood before the Lord of Song.” His song, Hallelujah, has always enchanted me, and I thought today I’d unpack it a bit in the light of scripture.  I wanted to play the song for you but that ran into too many problems, so I’ll recite his words like poetry (which, in fact they are). I’m sure most of you have heard the song. We begin with King David:

These are Cohen’s familiar words:

Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do ya?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Well, King David, so scripture tells us, played the lyre, and as a boy he played it so sweetly that it drove the evil spirits from the heart of King Saul.  But David, the magical musician, grew up to be a baffled king, indeed.  He was not a plaster saint in Israel’s memory as is our own George Washington.  He was remembered as sometimes faithful, sometimes devious, sometimes courageous and sometimes paranoid, occasionally guided by his great wisdom, and frequently led astray by his uncontrolled passions.  He was, it seemed, truly baffled by life and by his place in it.

Isn’t it astounding that the ancient Israelites, so sure of their place as the chosen people, would reflect in sacred writings on the troubled heart and distasteful deeds of the king who, from antiquity, had so powerfully defined them?

A case in point: King David, his head full of the trappings of power, strolled on his rooftop late one afternoon and chanced to see a beautiful woman below bathing.  He inquired about the identity of this beauty and was told she was Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah.  So he sent for her and made love to her in his quarters.  Later, Bathsheba sent word to King David; “Guess what?  I’m pregnant.”  So, the good king did what any upright father of a nation might be expected to do; he devised a way to kill Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah.  He had him put at the front of an advancing military charge, and as might be expected, Uriah was cut down in the battle.  After Bathsheba had time to do her mourning, David sent for her and married her.  O David, “You saw her bathing on the roof, Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya.”

Not exactly the kind of story you’d expect to find in an Israeli student’s history book.  But then, these writers didn’t seem to be interested in glossing over the weaknesses and failings of their leaders.  And Leonard Cohen, a faithful Jew, was also not interested in polishing the image of an historic ruler of Israel.  But it wasn’t always lust and depravity that marked those ancient leaders; sometimes it was pure stupidity, as in the case of Samson who succumbed to the transparent, flagrant greed of his lover, Delilah.

Samson’s enemies, the Philistines, had offered Delilah eleven hundred pieces of silver if she would find out the source of Samson’s great strength and betray him.  So she asked Samson, and he toyed with her; he told her his weakness was fresh bowstrings.  If he were bound with them, he would become weak.  So, inexplicably, he let her tie him up with fresh bowstrings while the Philistines hid in the shadows.  She shouted, “The Philistines are upon you!”  And, of course, he snapped the strings.  She kept asking him what his weakness was, and he kept lying to her, and she kept trying to tie him up for the Philistines, and he kept breaking the ropes.  You’d think, after a few times, he might catch on that this woman may not be entirely worthy of his trust.  Anyway, he got so tired of her nagging, that he finally told her the truth, that if his hair were cut, he would lose his strength.  So she cut off his hair, the Philistines grabbed him, put his eyes out, and carried him off in chains.  And Delilah was financially set for life.  O Samson: “She tied you to a kitchen chair, She broke your throne, and she cut your hair.”

From all this painful past, in all this ugly, tainted history, is there nonetheless a hallelujah to be sung?

Once agin, Cohen’s words:

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Ancient leaders are not alone in their foibles.  How many, many times you and I have been tripped up by our passions, our self-interest, our naivete, our foolishness, our greed.  In spite of our claims to goodness and our aspirations to worthiness, failure and folly seem to be woven into the fabric of existence.  And sometimes souls seem terribly and irreconcilably lost.  Sometimes it feels as though a heavy cloud had moved in to obscure the sunlight of Divine presence, and all that remains is darkness.  We see such a thing in the haunting face of a young Black man cut down in the prime of life by an anxious, trigger-happy police officer.  We see it in the body-count on the nightly news from the hearts of our major cities.  And when the bodies fall, and the odor of gunpowder fades, the rest of us are left to try to make the puzzle pieces fit together in some picture of reality that makes sense.

There are too many guns in America.  There are too many assault weapons, and way too many super clips of ammunition.  There is too much despair in America.  There are too many lost souls, and way too few resources for the mentally ill.  There are too few ears listening for the “cry you can hear at night”.  There is too little hope in the despairing streets of our cities, and way too few opportunities for broken people to find the light in the darkness of those cold streets.

But even with the echoes of gunfire bouncing off the walls of our cities, is there nonetheless a tear-filled, “cold and broken hallelujah” to be sung?

From Leonard Cohen:

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew ya
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not somebody who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

So many of our hallelujahs are broken and cold.  They are anguished cries that rise up from parched mouths and frozen tongues.

But some words of praise are even broken and cold.  Is there a more broken hallelujah from a more broken human being than the cry of “Allahu Akbar” shouted before the bomb goes off?  Such a cry is regarded as holy by those who shout it.  But when it’s the final exclamation of a suicide bomber the words sound more like profanity to us.

It’s not only Muslims, you know.  Our own Christian tradition is replete with fanatics who thought they were doing “God’s will” by slaughtering people.  And this disease goes back even further.  In the book of Revelation we read this morning that angels in heaven would be singing “hallelujah!” when “the great whore . . . Babylon” (which was code language for Rome) would be burned to the ground.  “Hallelujah, Amen!” they would sing.

What are we to say about such brokenness – the broken lives, the broken souls, the broken hearts, screaming words of praise and words of hatred?  Here’s the thing that gets stuck in my head about all this: whether people are praising one another, praising the Lord, or shouting at their enemies, whether they are assiduously watching their language, dropping a profane word into their vocabulary, or swearing like a drunken sailor, whether they are throwing around the latest rehearsed political put-down, mangling the king’s English beyond recognition, or offering resplendent words of inspired leadership, isn’t it a deeply compelling and even awe-inspiring thing that we human beings are able to convey to one another the depths of our hearts – love, joy, peace, hope, hatred, fear, confusion, the very essence of being human?  Every word of language is blazing with the astonishing light of the laws of physics, the very power of creation.  The ability to do what I’m doing right now, to pass the inner workings of my soul on to another being, is a miracle!  It’s a wonder!  It’s a profound reflection of the divine gift that, in spite of all our failings and foibles, resides at the core of our existence.

Amid all our words, profane words, holy words, or broken words, is there a hallelujah to be sung?

Here’s how Cohen put it:

You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to ya?
There’s a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

You and I want to fill our Sunday mornings with holy hallelujahs, but we find ourselves from Monday through Saturday living with broken words, broken dreams, broken promises.  It’s not that we’re terrible people; we’re basically good people.  But we’re people.  Like David, like Samson, like the bad cops, the religious extremists, and street rioters, our humanity keeps getting in the way of our aspirations.  I reach the point where I feel that if I do the right thing instead of bollixing everything up half the time, it’s a pretty good percentage.  But we keep trying; and that’s also what makes us human.

And here’s what I believe down to the very soles of my feet: you can get enthralled by a woman you see bathing from your rooftop; you can be foolish enough to let another person cut your hair and dis-empower you; you can say the wrong thing, embarrass yourself by your vocabulary, but you can’t screw up badly enough to cut yourself off from the Heart of Being.  Your life is like a song, but you’re not singing it – you’re being sung!  The words, the words of your character, your essence, your soul, at times profane, at times holy, are being sung through the years, at times off key or off tempo, but the melody underlying it is harmonious and brilliantly performed by the composer of the work, who is the very Heart of Existence.

This is the essence of faith.  Faith isn’t the commitment to be a good boy or girl; faith isn’t mouthing a bunch of religious doctrines; faith isn’t the determination to believe a lot of things that seem unbelievable; faith isn’t the will power to use clean language or speak nicely about people.  Faith is an attitude of being.  It is a “hallelujah” sung in the face of the hooded messenger of fate.  It is an awareness of the timeless and elegant beauty of being connected to the Center of Existence, and knowing, in a way that transcends language and reason, that through all the failures and missed opportunities there is nonetheless a hallelujah to be sung!  Through all the abusive moments and times of inadequacy there is nonetheless a hallelujah to be sung!  Through all the denials, days of skepticism and nights of despair, no matter what, in the end, we all stand together before the Lord of song with nothing on our tongues but Hallelujah!

Here’s his last stanza:

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool ya
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah,