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Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah
In some church traditions today is the funeral of the Alleluia because it is the last time we sing it before the long Lent of 50 days Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, interpreted by Jeff Buckley a singer who made his fame playing in bars in Lower Manhattan is a haunting dialogue of the composer with David, the quasi-mythical rudder shepherd, king, psalmist and wife cheater, traitorous murderer, man of faith and the dialogue includes himself the now deceased singer and composer but more importantly all of us
David, a country singer himself, whose rise from Shepherd to King, our Tiffany window celebrates, also fell for the beauty of Bathsheba,
Sings Jeff
Well your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
And she tied you to her kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and afterward of David, who seduced her while watching her bathing from the roof and in order to become her husband. He sent her husband Uriah to a certain death in battle. In II Samuel 12 you have the whole story
Speaking for David, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah then voices the painful result of sin, estrangement of God
Well there was a time when you let me know What's really going on below
He continues speaking of the longing for a time of yonder when God was David’s only inspiration to his grace filled notes
But now you never show that to me do ya
But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
Lamenting the absence of God inspirer and Spirit - and the holy dove was moving too-
concludes that now the only thing he can sing is
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
I do not know you
but when I fall away from God
when in my stubbornness and misuse of my free will
I have chosen to walk apart from God
when my doubt is greater than my trust in Him
I could sing Buckley’s verse well with mixed fondness and regret
because the best I can do away from God It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
The other day I got a call from the stock broker who oversees the church investment fund
and for the first time, I sensed panic in his voice, he has looked after our money
for over twenty years now and for the first time, not even after September 11th
I have heard him so worried, he tells me that the last market crisis
is not a simple market correction lasting a few years
but a pattern shattering event of permanent consequences
Layoffs have began in earnest
and here in our parish
a couple of Hispanic immigrants that just bought recently their dream home
have to rapidly re-sell it and get out before foreclosure
before their American dream turn into American nightmare
In a time of so much uncertainty like these
we desperately hope to know for sure,
we long to be in the eternal presence, or in a greater power than ours
or hold onto an idea that seems to work
work, that magic industrial revolution word
work out relationships, idea that work, is not working out
we want like Peter in the passage
want to shellac, nail down, turn it into mortar and stone
the fleeting passing of the Living God
In times like these we long for security
we want it to work
Sometimes we want the Living God to enfold us into a protective shield
of luminous light, where He speak with a voice louder that
the media, our boss, our parents, our lover, our president, the market,
stronger than our own greed, selfishness, apathy, our own sin
we long to be enfolded by a thick fog, outside time and space
where the ordinary is seen as wonder-filled
a time where all our lives make sense
where we find our place in the great chain of things, persons and events in the Universe
where we are finally at peace, with ourselves and with each other
where we could feel safe of the unbearable pressures of the adventure of living
the constant threat to our meaning
the ever pending cyclical economic debacle
the never failing process of aging and redundance
welfare check, hospital bed, tight coffin, loneliness, bitterness of unaccomplished dreams,
darkness and meaninglessness
Can we blame Peter?
We want more than just security
Deep down we want contentment for all
the wide and complete and integral shalom
doors with no locks,
a world without borders,
peoples with no any other need that more love
even when we know that often or perhaps always,
we act in a way that is opposite
to what we want or even to what is good for us
but deep down, one second, before falling sleep
our soul gets control and wishes that which he or she knew just too well
contentment, the contentment, the full and complete shalom
our souls knew when the Creator brought them to life
and for a second they dwell in the boundless brilliance of the Holy One
That is what Peter, James and John felt when in The Presence
no more worries about who will support our families?
where are we going with this Jesus?
will this movement ever succeed?
Is this of God?
They got the answer, and all of the sudden everything make sense
perhaps for the first time
it was shalom, shalom, shalom
peace, peace, peace
"This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!"
God, as God that He is,
a step ahead of our needs
pure freedom, in need of nothing, including worshipers
went away,
and Jesus instead of the company of the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah)
the heavenly Torah
in dialogue with the Word Incarnate
found themselves together
with Peter, James and John
the fishermen, uneducated, ignorant disciples he has himself chosen and called
but fishermen, uneducated and ignorant
they were of God as God was in them
as the songs says: We moved in God
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
Mary June Nestler, a fellow clerical deputy to General Convention,
from the Diocese of Utah
three years ago when she was serving as a priest at St. James Church, Los Angeles.
During the customary foot washing on Maundy Thursday
was kneeling in front of the line of chairs set up for the ceremony
person after person came, she tells us, and they washed them all
Her station was on the center aisle
she was about to get up
when another parishioner decided in the last minute
to come forward
He was a man in this twenties, blond, handsome and burly,
who had no legs since birth.
He walked on the stumps of his thighs,
which were protected by leather covers.
There he was, walking forward to to the footwashing--he who had never had any feet.
She felt suspended in the air for a moment. To whom would he go? What should I do?
He went to her station. Instead of getting on the chair,
he stood before Mary June, and he was exactly her height as she knelt.
Their eyes met, and she knew that he saw her tears welling up.
With utmost reverence and care he put his two hands out over the basin.
She leaned over the basin to get the pitcher of water
and bathed his hands and dried them as she tried to keep herself together.
When his hands were dry, he turned and went back to his seat down the long aisle.
Everyone could hear the padding of his thighs on the tile floor.
She said that she often thought of his extraordinary courage.
Just coming to a footwashing service must have taken commitment,
for the reiteration of what he was lacking
but to come forward, last and slowly,
must have taken such strength that few know.
She finishes saying that God accepts what height we offer him,
what hands, what eyes, what parts of ourselves we have to offer.
I think that Leonard Cohen, author of Hallelujah
got it half wrong
when he says that after sin,
after falling from grace
David
the quasi-mythical rudder shepherd, king, psalmist and wife cheater,
traitorous murderer, man of faith, repenting ancestor of the Lord Jesus
after affirming self, as in my own self gratification
as affirming having, as in possessing Bathsheeba
instead of
affirming the other, as in Uriah
affirming being, as in self-control
undoubtedly is going to be a only to compose a cold and a broken Hallelujah
Even then, God will take it as it is
as it took Peter, the three times denier
as it took John and James plotting to be the more important of the apostles
the trio on the mountain
was far from perfection
God will take you, and me, into his ever blessed presence
God will take a cold and a broken Hallelujah
a half hearted “praise to Jah” “Praise to the Lord”
into his heart of hearts and will turned into the most melodic piece
as the wholehearted version of Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah proves it
I want to finish with the lyrics of another song
this one by philosopher Peter Abelard,
French scholastic philosopher, theologian who lived in XII century
in his time his students were counted in the thousands
in the precincts of Notre Dame of Paris
a proto-university of the time
Abelard was handsome, enriched by the offerings of his pupils,
and entertained with universal admiration,
he came, as he says, to think himself the only undefeated philosopher in the world.
and then he fell in love with the erudite Heloise one of his disciple
when the affair was discovered, Heloise’s family
one night assaulted him in his apartment and castrated him
making him unfit for Church ordination according to canon law
and effectively ending his prospect of teaching advancement
Heloise went to a convent for which he composed
a hymn book of which only these few lines survive
which we have in our hymn book
Anima mea. Mane! Quanta Qualia Conventus gaudia Erunt.
My soul,Wait!. How great and how wonderful the joys of the meeting will be.
those endless Sabbaths the blessèd ones see;
crown for the valiant, to weary ones rest:God shall be all, and in all ever blest.
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