"Praise"
Why sing Hallelujah? Because there is no better response.
Sermon Preached by
The Reverend Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, February 6, 2005
Text: Revelation 19:1-8
Sometimes, the most simple of all questions is the most profound. I say that because some time ago, right here in this very sanctuary, a visitor came up and asked me the most salient question of all: “Why do you do what you do here when you do it?” I had to think about that for a little while: Why do we do what we do here when we do it? Then I realized what he was getting at.
He went on to ask, “Why do you praise God? Aren't there more important things that you could be doing with your time and with your money? You have this great organ, this great choir, these gorgeous stained-glass windows, this magnificent building. You sing hymns of praise and thanksgiving and you make a lot of noise to God, but why do you do what you do?”
I actually had to think for a moment, because we are so caught up in doing what we do when we do it that sometimes the very meaning of the power behind it all gets lost, or if not lost, then momentarily forgotten.
To answer him, I thought back to Good Friday in 1989. I had been asked to be the guest preacher at a congregation just outside of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. It is an area settled primarily by black slaves and people who had been relocated from parts of Halifax into the country. There is a congregation out there that is very famous, particularly among Nova Scotians, known as North Preston Baptist Church.
It became all the more famous a couple of years ago to those of us familiar with the television program Canadian Idol. One of the finalists in 2003 was a young man named Gary Beales, whose home church, and the place where he learned to sing, was North Preston Baptist Church. I agreed to this gracious invitation, thrilled to be asked to preach on Good Friday.
On the day, I drove up to the church and went in, equipped with a very solemn and deep message. It was, after all, Good Friday! After the choir sang some magnificent songs (we'd earlier sung some rousing hymns, which I thought rather strange on Good Friday), we came to my actual moment of preaching.
I got up and made a few introductory comments, then all of a sudden, from the congregation there came a cry, “Hallelujah, amen! Praise the Lord! Tell it again, brother!”
I waited, and I said a few other things and, thinking I was getting more profound as I went along, I heard, “Amen! Hallelujah, brother, tell it again, tell it again!” So, I told it again, and I just kept going. Well, I had never enjoyed myself so much in my whole life! I must have preached for 40 minutes! But finally it was all over and I was ready to sit down (“Hallelujah! Amen!”), and no one said “tell it again!” (By that time, I think they had got a bit tired.) I thought, “My goodness, this is the weirdest Good Friday experience I have ever had! We are all supposed to be draped in black and miserable.”
After the service ended, I went to one of the deacons, a delightful man, and I said, “This was amazing! This was such an uplifting service! But why do you do this on Good Friday? Isn't this the day to be solemn?”
He answered, “How else are you supposed to react when you are in the presence of God, but with praise?”
That got me thinking, because the young man who had asked me why we do what we do when we do it was asking me that very question. The answer was very straightforward. How else can we react when you are in the presence of God? Whether it is Good Friday or Easter Sunday, whether it is a foggy day in February or a beautiful, sunny day in August, it makes no difference. Praise has to be part of our reaction to God.
Now, do not misunderstand me. I agree with the American preacher, Terry Fuller, who said we must remember that God is not like a character out of Snow White. God does not look in a mirror every morning and say, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?” God is not, to use Fuller's language, a metaphysical Narcissus. God is not in Heaven demanding that we praise him, requiring our praise to keep him happy or to placate his own particular views. No, praise is our response to what God has already done, what God is currently doing, and our hope for what God will do in the future. Praise is faith, and faith is praise. They are indivisible. You cannot expect people who do not believe to praise, but people who do believe should praise, because that is the way we respond to God.
I say all of this because in our text today from the Book of Revelation we have one of the most profound statements of praise in all of Christian literature. It might seem like a rather strange passage when you first hear it. I know our reader this morning must have wondered what's all this about harlots and this kind of stuff. What is this text really about?
What it really is about is the praise that the world and the church give to God. I say so because there is a word that appears four times in the Book of Revelation, and nowhere else in the New Testament: “Hallelujah.” It is found 34 times in the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament, but only four times in the whole of the New Testament. “Hallelujah” is a powerful word. When you break it up into Hebrew, it literally means “halle” praise and “jah” God. “Praise God” was the response in the Book of Revelation, not to what the Church had done, but what God had done for the Church.
What it is talking about is the deliverance of God. If you look back, for example, in the history of art, you can see the influence of the Book of Revelation. In 1498, for example, Albrecht Dürer created the famous engraving, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and in the Angers Tapestry in France, there is the very wonderful section of Le Sommeil des juste. Again, the Book of Revelation inspired this magnificent 14th-century tapestry. The most famous of all is William Blake's depiction of The Last Judgement: again, a magnificent painting that reflects the Book of Revelation, and the ultimate glory of God. However, nowhere in the arts does this passage come more alive than in Handel's great Messiah. It is, in fact, this very chapter, Chapter 19 of the Book of Revelation that is the inspiration for part of the famous “Hallelujah Chorus.” So powerful is this passage, my friends, that it is the ultimate statement of praise.
What was John, the author of the Book of Revelation, getting at? Why did he believe that this was the ultimate victory of God, and the ultimate sign that we should sing “Hallelujah?” John, an early Christian, was being persecuted for his faith. He was forced to flee from the city of Ephesus to the island of Patmos, where he had this revelation and wrote this book. He was writing from Patmos as an exile to seven churches in Asia Minor. He understood that the church of Jesus Christ was coming under great threat because of the emerging persecution within the Roman Empire.
Because of this, he wrote to the seven churches in coded language to send them an important message. The message was that there would be trouble; the Christians would suffer for their faith. However, they would be vindicated. If they maintained their faith, God would see them through this difficult time. In other words, no matter what they were going to face, God would be with them. John used the language and the imagery of the Old Testament, which to us seems rather harsh. He wrote, for example, of how “the whore of Babylon,” which is hardly nice language, is going to be destroyed. The language was borrowed from the time of the Exile, when the people of Israel were dispersed by the Babylonians, to imply that Rome and the Roman persecution were the equivalent of Old Testament Babylon, and so, like a whore that has prostituted itself before power, Rome would be destroyed, just as Babylon ultimately fell to the power of God. Thus, he sent them a powerful message about the deliverance that God would bring.
Having spent half my life within the context of the black church, either in Bermuda or in South Africa, one of the things that has always amazed me is how black churches, particularly those that were born of slavery and oppression, use the language of the Book of Revelation to give them hope. There is a sense of praise within the black church that comes from a sense that God has and will liberate them from whatever oppression may come their way.
This week marks the 15th anniversary of the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. On February 2nd, 1990, F.W. de Klerk, who was President of South Africa at the time, told the South African legislature he was going to release Nelson Mandela, and eight days later, he did so. On February 11th, 15 years ago this week, Mandela eventually emerged from that prison. In preparation, he conveyed an interesting message to the crowds. He said, “When I come out of prison, I do not want you to greet me with guns, or to be angry, or to be full of animosity towards your oppressor. When I come out, I want you to praise. I want you to celebrate and rejoice, for the day that I am set free, is a day of celebration and vindication. That is what I want you to do.”
If you look at the video of the news report that day, you can see the crowds waving their hands and singing “Rejoice!” and even “Hallelujah” as Nelson Mandela walked through the crowd. There was a sense that God had vindicated and supported the people when they faced difficulty and darkness.
It is a wonderful message. Hence, there is this sense in churches that suffer persecution and among people who face difficulty that you have to stare down political problems; that God will vindicate; that God will be just; that God will be right; that God can be trusted. That is why in Psalm 116 there is the glorious verse that says: “The Lord has loosed the bonds that have held us. Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!” Whatever had held people in bondage had now disappeared, because God was the just and the wise and the true.
It is a message that John wanted to send to those seven churches, and it is a message he has sent to every single generation since. No matter what oppression might come, no matter what problems might befall us, no matter what difficulties we have to face, as individuals or as a society, God ultimately will be the victor. That is why so many black spirituals are filled with the language of this liberation, such as this example (number 708 in your hymnbook): “My Lord what a morning! My Lord what a morning! My Lord what a morning when the stars begin to fall. You'll hear the trumpet sound to wake the nation underground, looking to my God's right hand when the stars begin to fall.”
You see these spirituals captured somehow what John had in mind - namely, that even the cosmos, even the world, even the heavens and the angels ultimately will praise God. Even in the midst of the trials and the travails of life and the world, God will ultimately be the victor. That hope has sustained people facing problems, imprisonment, difficulties, illnesses, persecutions and sorrows for 2,000 years. “Hallelujah” is the response to the belief that God sets his people free.
It is also a profound word to the Church. Sometimes, I think the language of praise in the church is kind of facile. It doesn't really mean much. It is like the preacher who one day preached a wonderful sermon, and after the service he went to the door and was greeted by a parishioner who said, “Reverend, that was an absolutely amazing sermon. It was incredibly good.”
The minister said, “Thank you very much, but don't thank me, thank the Lord, he is the one who should get the credit.”
The parishioner replied, “I thought about that, but it really wasn't that good!” Be careful when you pass on to God the compliments you receive, because they might not be compliments after all! On this particular Super Bowl afternoon, you will find certain people will also want, with a very sincere heart, to give God credit for the touchdown or block or whatever they might have done, but sometimes I think that God's touchdowns are better than our touchdowns, and sometimes our language is just a little loose, and a little facile, and a little shallow.
The language that John used is none of those. If you are praising God, it is serious business. No matter what you have faced, it is just like this: that the Church is the bride and Christ is the groom; the two become one. When the two become of one flesh, no matter what the church goes through, no matter what you struggle with, somehow Christ is always the one who is there with you to make you complete, to finish, to surround, to nurture you.
What John was saying to the people who were suffering in Asia Minor was that no matter what they were to face, God was going to be with them. Christ, the Lord, was going to accompany them. They didn't just say “Hallelujah! Amen! Praise the Lord!” without understanding the meaning, that this was the sign and symbol of Christ's presence. Whatever challenges you might face, whatever difficulties you might encounter, whatever struggles you might have, the message of the Book of Revelation is clear: Christ is with you. Christ is with the Church. Christ is one with us. Therefore, there is no need to be afraid.
You all know that I love sports. There is a moment in a wonderful movie called The Legend of Bagger Vance, that I think it is like a Christian story. The movie is about two famous real-life golfers, Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen, who are met by a young, fictional character called Rannulph Junuh. Junuh was heading for golf greatness in the 1920s and 30s, but because of the struggles that he remembers from having fought in World War One, and the emotional scars that are on his heart, he was never able to play the game of golf properly again.
Now, he gets this opportunity to play with these two greats of golf history. As he starts to play, he does very well, and then he drops behind, but then he picks up his game. Now he on the 17th hole, and just might beat these two great golfers, but he hits the ball off the fairway and into the woods. When he goes into the woods he sees a stream rising from the ground, and it brings back memories of the trenches of WWI. He remembers the pain and the agony and the emotional scars, and then he remembers why he had stopped playing golf. Every time he played golf it reminded him of his problems.
Then, his caddy, Bagger Vance comes up to him, and in one of the most beautiful moments in the history of movies, I think, he says, “Ain't a soul in this entire earth ain't got a burden to carry that he can't understand. You ain't alone in that, but you have been carrying this one long enough. It's time to lay it down.”
Junuh admits, “I don't know how.” Bagger Vance replies, “You've got a choice: You can stop, or you can start walking right back to where you have been and just stand there. It is time for you to come out of the shadows. Junuh, it is time for you to choose.”
“I can't!” Junuh protests.
“Oh, yes you can,” Vance replies, “You are not alone. I am right here with you. I have been all along. Now, play the game, your game: The one that you were meant to play; the one that was given to you when you came into the world; now is the time. I will be with you.”
Writing to the persecuted churches in Asia Minor, John was recounting a very similar sentiment. They could either think back to the persecutions, to the difficult days and be frozen by them and stop playing the game, or they could go into the future knowing that the Lord would go with them. And if they went into the future knowing that the Lord was with them, there is only one word that they could say to respond to that God, and it is “Hallelujah!” Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.