You might overhear our youngest daughter calling out “Ooh Ah!” from time to time. She is not anticipating fireworks; these are her words for “Alleluia,” and she is specifically asking for a song, All Creatures Worship God Most High (#835 in the hymnal), a hymn I began singing to her at home a month or so ago. She gets even more intense the longer I wait to begin singing: “Ooh Ah! OOH Ah! OOH AH!” And so of course I give in, joyfully, and sing the song she knows best as “Alleluia!”
As I write this, it is still Lent and, in the practice of the Western Church, we keep the “Alleluias” often hidden in worship until the great celebration of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. This is a practice that has never sat quite right with me, for the bodily Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead is the central and most important reality of our faith. Our whole faith hinges on this event, this reality.
St. Paul’s writes about this in 1 Corinthians 15:12-28. He does a remarkable job of linking our resurrection with Jesus’ resurrection. He doesn’t mince words: If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins… those who have died in Christ have perished…. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ we are of all people most to be pitied. Everything, everything hangs on the Resurrection of Christ. If Christ has not been raised, then the shape of our entire life does not make sense. If Christ has not been raised, then we have wasted a good deal of our lives in worship and praise. If Christ has not been raised, we are lost in our sins and death is the final answer.
But, St.Paul says, in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. And because Christ is risen from the dead, we are given forgiveness of sins, life and salvation, not just in the world to come, but also right here, right now. Because Christ is risen from the dead, all of creation has been transformed. God’s final word is not one of death but of new life!
This, my brothers and sisters in Christ, is what we celebrate on Easter—and every Sunday, even in Lent. For every Sunday, the first day of the week, the first day of creation, the glorious eighth day of the new creation, is the Lord’s Day, a Day of Resurrection, a celebration of the Lord’s triumphal victory over sin, death and the devil. It is not so much that every Sunday is a little Easter but that every Easter is a HUGE Sunday! (Thanks to Laurence Hull Stookey for this insight in his book Calendar.)
So as Lent leads us into Holy Week and Holy Week into the glorious Season of Easter, perhaps the littlest ones among us understand it best of all. Ooh Ah! Indeed, little Lucy, “Ooh Ah!” “Ooh Ah!” indeed!