COLLEGE CHAPLAIN
Hallelujah!
Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is probably the most over-covered song of the last 30 years. Every singer of note (or otherwise) has given it a whirl and made their own haunting version of Cohen’s original hit. Hallelujah a sad song, a lament, which of course is part of its enduring ironic power, because hallelujah is anything but a sad word. Hallelujah is a mashup of three Hebrew words hallu, which means ‘praise’, elu, which means ‘ye’ and jah, which is an abbreviated form of ‘the LORD’. So hallelujah means ‘praise ye the Lord’, it is a shout of joyful praise to the Lord, but we use it today in pretty much any way other than that. We use it in sarcastic exasperation: ‘Hallelujah, you remembered to charge your laptop before coming to school’. We use it in relief, ‘Hallelujah that I made the bus just in time’. Or, as Cohen sings, ‘It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah’.
There are so many ways to use hallelujah and so many cover versions of the song and yet none of them seem to match the meaning ‘Praise ye the Lord’. It seems we have a lot to learn about hallelujah and Psalm 148 turns first not to us, but to heaven, to space and the natural world to teach us about praise:
Praise the LORD from the heavens;
praise him in the heights.
Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his heavenly armies.
Praise him, sun and moon;
praise him, all you shining stars.
Ps 148:1-3
First, praise comes from the heavens, from the heights. To the highest of heights, to the uttermost reaches of the heavenly realms even there, especially there, God is to be praised. Angels, all the heavenly beings praise God. As the psalmist casts his gaze down he hits space, with the sun, moon and stars singing God’s praises. You often hear about people saying their future has been written in the stars, but here the psalmist says the only word emerging from the stars is ‘Hallelujah’. Star signs, horoscopes etc all remain popular today, even in our sceptical scientific world, but they are not celestial bodies to be followed, rather their paths, their glow, their brilliance is all a sign of the praiseworthiness of God.
Praise him, highest heavens,
and you waters above the heavens.
Ps 148:4
We’ve been thinking about this idea of waters above the heavens in Year 9 Christian Studies, but essentially this is a reference to the ebbs and flows of our natural world. The falling of rain, the coming and going of the seasons—none of these are to be praised in and of themselves as many ancient and even modern people do today. Rather, the churning of our weather, the aroma of rain, the electric blue of the sky on a summer’s day, all of these bring praise to God.
Let them praise the name of the LORD,
for he commanded, and they were created.
He set them in position forever and ever;
he gave an order that will never pass away.
Ps 148:5-6
The natural phenomena of our world speak God’s praises because he spoke them into existence. God’s word is like that; he speaks and stuff happens. We like to think our words are powerful. We can yell and people will turn to us in attention, a politician can declare a new road open, a minister can declare a couple husband and wife and they become so on the spot. But God’s word doesn’t merely alter our states of being, no he brings things into being from nothing. All at a word, and he has established them forever by his word. The sun’s rising and setting, the blowing of the wind all rides on and is sustained by the word of God.
Our words aren’t like this. When I hang the sheets on the line and the wind blows and I get swamped in wet linen I might cry out ‘Silence! Be still!’ and nothing happens. The only thing that might happen is my neighbours continue to think I’m mad. However, there is someone who came into this world, who on a stormy night told the wind and the waves to be quiet and just like that it was still, the sea flat like glass spread out before him. Those around this figure didn’t think he was mad, instead they asked ‘who even is this, that the wind and the waves would obey him?’
Praise the LORD from the earth,
all sea monsters and ocean depths,
lightning and hail, snow and cloud,
stormy wind that executes his command,
mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars,
wild animals and all cattle,
creatures that crawl and flying birds,
Ps 148:7-10
But more about this figure in a moment because Psalm 148 draws our ears to the sounds of more praise. Verses 7-10 speak of wild animals, tiny critters, birds, geographical features like mountains, cedar forests, all of them joining in the chorus of hallelujahs. Even storms, lightning, hail, the winds, these all do his bidding.
kings of the earth and all peoples,
princes and all judges of the earth,
young men as well as young women,
old and young together.
Ps 148:11-12
Now we join in the Hallelujah chorus and we know it’s all of us, because all walks of life are mentioned—kings, princes, judges, young and old, men and women. This psalm has started with hallelujah harking in the heights of heaven, unfolding through the universe, ringing in the rain, whistling on the wind, melodies from the mountains and now right down to us. You and I are called to sing hallelujah, because as v13 says
Let them praise the name of the LORD,
for his name alone is exalted.
His majesty covers heaven and earth.
Ps 148:13
God’s majesty covers the earth. That’s the highpoint of this psalm, but is it the highpoint of our experience of the earth? Does it sing God’s praises or is it coughing and spluttering, buckling under the strain of our selfish consumption? If the psalm lands the call to sing hallelujah along with our planet squarely at our feet, then perhaps we have trampled our planet underfoot and bent the hallelujah melody line out of shape?
When we consider that God’s purpose for his beautiful creation was to sing his praises then all of a sudden the hallelujah we hear from our rising sea levels or our denuded forests is a cold and broken hallelujah. That’s how Paul the apostle speaks of our planet groaning under the strain of our sinful consumption and abuse of God’s good natural order. Groans now compete with the hallelujahs.
Our planet still bears the blessing of God’s creativity, beauty and majesty. It is still a source of praise to the God who at his word waltzed the order and magnificence of that little garden in Eden effortlessly across the globe, gliding across the dance floor of Earth leaving us breathless in his wondrous wake. But hot on the heels of this dance has been the riot of our sin, trudging greedily across the planet, leaving an unmistakable smear everywhere, like that kid who steps in dog poo and walks all the way down the aisle of the bus and everyone knows there’s just something a little off on that bus trip.
God’s creation is still very good, but it has been left wreaking of our sin. God has still left us in the position as rulers and subduers of his planet, but now we are doing it with the dog poo of sin under our heels. That means that no matter how much we try to bring this planet into submission, we actually trample our sinfulness into the ecosystem.
This is why the last verse of Psalm 148 gives me hope:
He has raised up a horn for his people,
resulting in praise to all his faithful ones,
to the Israelites, the people close to him.
Hallelujah!
Ps 148:14
To raise a horn is a sign of deliverance, of rescue. We praise God not just because we and this universe are a mark of his wondrous creativity, but because he will rescue us and this universe from the cold brokenness we have inflicted on each other and our planet. The Lord will rescue Israel, which means his people close to him, and he does this by coming close to us in Jesus.
Christmas is coming near to us and it is at Christmas that we remember that Jesus came into the very natural world that should praise him. The heart of God that is close to us could be felt beating in Mary’s arms as she cradled him on that holy night. The source of all praise both in and beyond our universe was downloaded into that swaddled baby in Bethlehem. The word of God, the word that at a command brought all things into being was being one of us in that moment. That moment brought Mary, Joseph, the wise rulers, shepherds, sheep, even the angels to sing hallelujah. They did what they were made to do—to praise the Lord, because here in this baby was the one who would retune our hallelujahs. No more do they need to be cold and broken. Yes, our planet still groans, but as Paul goes onto say in Romans 8, our planet groans ‘in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children’ (v21). The God who alone is worthy of glory calls us to be children of his glory through his Son, Jesus, the word made flesh that we might meet our maker. For he will bring all things in every place under his feet, and then every created thing will be recreated in freedom and glory to do what everything was always made to do; to sing praises to God. Hallelujah for that.
Gareth Tyndall | College Chaplain