“So
you also must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ
Jesus.”
Romans
6:11
“Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!” We have been waiting six weeks to hear those
words, and only just now we proclaimed them, and the lights went on, and we
sang a hymn of praise, and read the Easter Gospel. Alleluia, for Christ is risen! “Praise to the Lord,” that’s what it means,
“Praise to the Lord.” It’s the same in
both English and Spanish, because it comes from Hebrew, the language of God’s
ancient people. It’s the shout of
victory, the joyful song of the redeemed.
“Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!”
Adrienn, our new musician here, has
so graciously stepped in to play for us tonight. And besides her excellent work on the piano
and with the choirs, she is an instrumentalist, a teacher of strings. Because she’s a violinist, she knows a great
deal about fugues. Fugues are musical
selections in which a given theme, stated at the beginning, is repeated in a
seemingly endless series of variations.
Bach wrote some of the finest ones, and occasionally we hear one as a
postlude on Sunday morning. As we
repeat the theme in a fugue, we gradually become aware of dimensions and
possibilities within the original melody that we hadn’t noticed before. The melody comes to take on a new kind of
life, with increasing complexity and power.
And as the fugue unfolds, the pace speeds up and grows louder, until it
settles on a great resounding chord, all the stops pulled, a sound as big as
glory. That’s what tonight is all
about. It’s all one grand fugue, this
Easter Vigil, and here’s the melody: “Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.”
