Saying Alleluia in Coronavirus Time

When I was a kid, I came across a phrase in a novel that rather haunted me: “even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” It was only after I became an Episcopalian that I realized the source of this—it comes from one of the burial rites in the Book of Common Prayer. “For so thou didst ordain when thou createdst me, saying, ‘Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’ All we go own to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

I have been thinking a lot about alleluia’s lately, specifically about unsaid alleluia’s. We’re still in the season of Lent, and during Lent, all the alleluia’s disappear from the liturgy. At my parish, they literally process a banner reading “Alleluia” out of the church on the last Sunday before Lent, as we bid a temporary farewell to the word. Six weeks later, about halfway through an Easter Vigil service which begins with the congregation processing into a dark church holding candles, the church will be completely lit up and the words “Christ is risen! Alleluia!” will ring out with joy. I love the rhythm of removing the alleluia’s for a sober six weeks of reflection, and then exuberantly proclaiming them.

But that is in normal years. And this, of course, is not a normal year. When I think back to the beginning of Lent, at the end of February, it feels like a lifetime ago. We started Lent, as we always do, by meeting together in a church, where clergy traced ash on our foreheads. We did not worry about being together. We did not worry about all that touching. We were different people, in a different world.

Whenever I can these days, I tune in to virtual Morning and Evening Prayer, which my diocese streams daily on FB live at 8:00 am and 8:00 pm. I am finding that these 15-20 minutes are often the most comforting, grounding part of the day, as I participate in the familiar liturgy, and feel the reassurance of still being part of a faith community, even if we are all participating from our individual islands of isolation. For a number of the things we say during these services, the prayer book has a note that says to add an alleluia during Easter, or at all times other than Lent. Since we’re still in Lent, we have not yet said any alleluia’s during these virtual worship gatherings. But as Easter gets closer, I’ve been thinking a lot about how all the alleluia’s are about to come back. Not saying them has felt somewhat appropriate; we are in a sober time, undeniably. We are mourning together. We are reminding each other to keep breathing as we grapple with a gnawing and sometimes crushing level of uncertainty, and as we try to process a lot of hard losses.

As I write this, we are in the middle of Holy Week. Today is Maundy Thursday. That we are not observing this in any kind of traditional way this year is a small tragedy among many much larger tragedies, but is nonetheless a loss that I find wrenching. Holy Week is my favorite week of the year, as we go through a number of dark and somber and reflective services, departing the church in silence each time, until we finally arrive at the drama that is Easter Vigil, a night like no other. When I leave Easter Vigil, I feel as if I am walking on air. I can’t stop smiling. I want to call out “Alleluia!” to strangers on the street. The liturgy of this week is a sort of foundation for me for the entire year. In this current strange situation, I am deeply mourning that loss.

But Easter Sunday is coming despite everything. And I keep wondering—what will it feel like to start saying alleluia again? Our liturgical calendar will call us to enter into a time of celebration before this crisis is over. It feels like a rather jarring disconnect, in a similar way to how all the trees starting to blossom, despite everything, sometimes feels odd and almost out of place. Not even coronavirus can put Easter on hold. Which is why I keep asking myself about the audacity of saying alleluia in a time of deep hardship and even despair. I do not want to fall into a sort of glib alleluia that does not acknowledge the reality of suffering, or that dismisses any kind of human pain as not worth taking seriously and honoring. That is not the story of Christianity. God does not wave a magic wand from a distance that makes everything better. God comes to earth to experience all that is human, to very literally suffer with us. That, to me, is the power of the story of the Incarnation. Our alleluia’s have to have an awareness of the Cross in them, or they are empty.

When I posted on Facebook about  wrestling with this question, a friend reminded me of the movie Shadowlands, in which C.S. Lewis is watching his wife die of cancer, and processing both the sorrow of knowing what is coming and the joy of still being together. She reminds him that “the pain then is part of the happiness now.” That speaks to me. The pain and the happiness are not different states, separate from each other. They are intertwined. And that informs, I suspect, what it means to say alleluia in this time. It is not an alleluia that is all sweetness and light; it is one that has been through the very darkest of nights. It is an alleluia that encompasses profound mourning. It is Jesus, the Word of God, weeping at the death of Lazarus. It is something that holds betrayal and broken connections and shattered promises and finally even death.

But it is still an alleluia. Another friend told me he was actually excited to say the word again when Easter comes, to proclaim it boldly in a sort of defiance of the darkness, and I love the sense of resilience I hear in that. Both despite everything that is going on, and in solidarity with everything that is going on, on Easter morning we will say alleluia. We will not let destruction and devastation have the last word. I am heartened by that, and by the message I see as being at the very heart of Easter: no experience of brokenness and darkness is beyond God’s reach, and no power—not even a plague and a world in disarray—can separate us from God’s unfailing love.