"Hallelujah, Anyhow" (Audio)
- David Potter
- Mar 24, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 22, 2024
Sermon for Palm Sunday
Saint Peter's | Arlington, VA
Mark 11:11 Isaiah 50:4-9a Philippians 2:5-11 Mark 15:1-39
Almighty God, move with our hearts this morning, that we might come to see
your “wondrous love” more clearly, through both suffering and salvation. Amen.
“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!” Happy Palm Sunday, Saint Peter’s!
...remember mere moments ago, when we began our service gleefully waving palm branches in the air, back when we were filled with the comforting warmth of these words? Didn’t it feel good to lift them up together?
But now, after all we’ve heard since, well, now they have a different ring to them. Chanting hosanna after hearing Jesus’ passion is jarring—and feels more than a little uncomfortable. From the triumphal heights of hosanna to the harrowing cries of “crucify him:” there sure is a lot going on this morning.
It’s disorienting to say the least, and perhaps we might wonder whether it is at all appropriate.
Before her death in 2020, Bishop Barbara Harris, completed a memoir titled, ‘Hallelujah, Anyhow.’ Its title draws from the words of an old gospel hymn:
Never later your troubles get you down Whenever troubles come your way Hold your hands up high and say Hallelujah anyhow!
Barbara Harris knew about troubles. As the first woman elected bishop in the Anglican Communion, she was all too familiar with facing challenging situations.
The suggestion offered from her life experiences is quite simple: it is precisely within the difficult moments of when that it is most important to proclaim “Hallelujah anyhow”—in the times when it may seem most inappropriate to do so.
Simple, sure, but far from a seamless practice.
Rather, it is a process that looks like proclaiming hope in the midst of despair. It looks like what Holy Week demands of us: to stare suffering head-on and not look away. It looks like creating space for both great joys and profound sorrows to intermingle.
This just so happens to also be the theme of the animated Disney Pixar film, Inside Out—a “children’s” story about a young girl learning to de-compartmentalize her emotional life; to integrate together things she has since believed should remain separate.
Both Harris and Inside Out tell us something about the foundation and substance of vibrant faith—and truthfully there’s really nothing “simple” about it. Now, the at-once hopeful and sobering news is that we do have some preparation for this. Complexity, after all, is the reality of our daily lives.
And week in and week out our liturgy lends us support for this practice of inhabiting the tensions more fully. As Dr. James Farwell has reiterated on Wednesday evenings through our Lenten program: both suffering and salvation are present in our liturgy as a unitive whole.
Within every service of the Eucharist is both the remembrance of Good Friday and the celebration of Easter Sunday.
Through the various Lenten practices we’ve engaged individually and as a community (perhaps through confession, self-denial, or even self-affirmation), we have been practicing dying to ourselves—for the purpose of fully rising to new life with Christ.
It is a profound mystery we participate in: one that is more than merely symbolic.
Now, as Palm Sunday gathers up the scope of Holy Week in one single morning, we are extended the opportunity to sit with the full scope of being human.
As we enter Holy Week, I wonder what might it look like to use this time to gather up all the various pieces of ourselves? As we participate in the mystery of the Paschal Triduum, how might it feel to embrace both the parts of ourselves we feel proud of and tenderness towards, as well as those we wish to keep hidden away—and to offer all of it up as an oblation to God?
In doing so, we can be assured all of it will be received by the God who knows us and loves our entire being.
Beloveds, I invite you raise your palm branches in the air as we embark on Holy Week together:
May we bear witness to the fullness of our fragments, and proclaim an “hallelujah anyhow.” And in dying to disintegration, may we know healing wherever healing is needed and rise to a new wholeness in Christ.
Amen