Before the Passion, the Hallel

 A Sermon Preached on Zoom Live Broadcast

The Sunday of Passion: Palm Sunday 

March 28, 2021

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Georgetown, DE

“When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.” Matthew 26:30

I don’t know why this line from Mark’s passion caught my eye this year. Actually, I don’t know how I’ve missed it all these years. 

Wait! What? Jesus sang? 

We know that Jesus wept when he heard that Lazarus had died. We know he got angry with the moneychangers in the Temple. We also know that he got annoyed when his mother asked him to get some more wine for the wedding guests. 

But, Jesus sang? A hymn?

Which hymn? We know that Jesus lived thousands of years before Martin Luther wrote, “A Mighty Fortress” sometime between 1527-1529. John Newton wrote “Amazing Grace in 1772 and “The Old Rugged Cross” was written by George Bennard in 1912. Guess he didn’t sing any of those.

Then I remembered that in 1972, Fred Pratt Green had written a beautiful hymn that made it into the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal. It’s called "When in Our Music God Is Glorified" which includes the stanza:     

And did not Jesus sing a psalm that night

when utmost evil strove against the Light? 

Then let us sing, for whom he won the fight, 

Alleluia!

There’s a reason it is said that the hymnal is the theology book for those in the pew. Clearly, Mr. Green knows his bible better than I. 

I checked with a friend in New York who is a Rabbi and I asked him what hymn, what psalm, might a Rabbi sing before he walked into a situation which he knew meant his death. 

Stephen said, “Well, since your Rabbi Jesus was a good and faithful and learned Rabbi, I have no doubt that he would have been singing the same thing that all Jews around the world will be singing this weekend.”

Stephen heard my confusion in my silence. “For us,” he continued, Passover starts at sundown on Saturday, March 27th.” 

“Oh, my goodness!” I said, more than embarrassed. “That’s right! I’m so sorry. Chag Pesach Samech!”

Stephen chuckled a little and then said, “Thank you. Yes, and Passover ends on April 4th, the day you Christians will be celebrating Easter Day. It’s a wonderful confluence on the religious calendar,” he said. 

“So,” he continued, “I suspect that after the Passover Seder supper, Jesus and his disciples, being good Jews, sang the Hallel.” 

“The Hallel,” he said, “is a Jewish song of praise. It is the source of the word ‘Halleluiah’ which Christians also say ‘Alleluia’. It means “Thank God.”

The Hallel is best sung in a group, so I’m certain he and the disciples sang a rousing version of it as a collective way to express a profound gratitude to God.”

“The first Hallel in recorded history happened spontaneously after Moses led the people through the Red Sea on dry land. When the waters closed over the Egyptians, the Israelites knew that they were finally, actually free, and they sang the first, ‘Hallel’.”

“Now, Jews sing the Hallel on Passover and every holiday of communal salvation like Chanukah, Sukkot and Shavuot.”

“So, what is the Hallel hymn?” I asked. 

“Well,” Stephen said, “It’s actually Psalms 113-118 and all of them evoke images of transition, evolution and growth. So, for all these reasons and from what I understand happened in that Upper Room, I am pretty sure the hymn Jesus sang was the Hallel.”

Just consider that with me for a minute.

Jesus and his disciples sang Alleluia and praises in deep gratitude to God. The disciples had no idea, none whatsoever, that they were about to set out on a journey that would be every bit as perilous as the one the ancient Israelites took when Moses lead them across the Red Sea to their liberation. 

But, Jesus knew. And, yet, he kept the simple, sacred ceremonies of his faith and sang praises and gratitude to God. 

Then, Jesus walked in the footsteps of Moses, taking his disciples even further on their journey, leading them and every one who was ever to come after them, into the liberation from the bonds of death and hell and into the freedom of life eternal. 

But first, they sang. 

After the palms and before the passion, the Hallel.

Before the agony in the Garden, the hymns of praise to the God of creation (Ps 113) and the story of the Exodus and the memory of God’s power to transform the world (Ps 114).  

Before the abandonment by the disciples, a focus on the debt we owe God for our salvation (Ps 115) and our deliverance from death and tears and stumbling (Ps 116). 

And, before the betrayal and the arrest, psalms 117 and 118 would have been sung in a call and response (or, in The Episcopal church, antiphonally), with Jesus calling out a verse and the disciples responding in words that expressed gratitude, memory and the plea, “Please God, save us.”

Imagine that for a second or two. Jesus singing, “Please, God, save us.” Imagine Jesus singing that with his disciples. Close your eyes and imagine them singing together in harmony. 

"Please, God, save us."

It just simply breaks my heart and brings tears to my eyes, that the one who was pleading with God to save us would soon become the vehicle of our salvation. 

“When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.” Matthew 26:30

I find myself deeply moved that we, too, will go out into this week, this Holy Week, this holiest of all the holy weeks in our lives as Christians, knowing that we, too, go with a song to sustain us. 

The BCP says, “even at the grave we make our song, “Alleluia”! We, too, have a Hallel – an Alleluia – buried deep in our souls that will be awakened and burst forth from its empty tomb on Easter Day.

But first the passion and the power; then the betrayal in the Garden and the Trial before Pilate; then the bloody steps on the Via Dolorosa on our way to the cross at Calvary.

It would be unbearable were it not for the Hallel which we know will carry us through in the same way it carried Jesus. 

And did not Jesus sing a psalm that night 

when utmost evil strove against the Light?

Then let us sing, for whom he won the fight, 

Alleluia (Hallel)!   

Amen.