-Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen is one of my favorite songwriters. When I
first heard the song "Hallelujah" on the Album "Songs of the
49th Parallel", I had to know who wrote it. When I actually heard
him sing the song, I was surprised by his deep and gravely voice, so different
from K.D. Lang or Jeff Buckley who covered this song, but when you hear the
words
"Love
is not some victory march
It’s a
cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah”
in the voice of the songwriter, you hear the song with new
ears. It's not pretty. It's dark and it's broken. It is not a hymn,
it's a struggle and a lament...kind of like Lent.
"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise." Psalms 51:17
The story of the last days in the life of Christ are not
pretty. As you journey with Jesus to the cross, the road that leads there
is broken, and a struggle. The prayer of Jesus at Gethsemane is a lament, a
plea.
The Lenten journey is a "cold and broken
Hallelujah". It is a journey into darkness; a journey of hard truths
and introspection. It is a call to recognize that within us which Jesus
was called to die for. It is a call to awaken to the lonely sacrifice of Christ
as he hung on the cross with the sins of the ages weighing heavily upon him,
stealing his strength and his last breaths.
But it is not a journey unlit. Although we see the
cracks in our humanity at Lent, it is through our brokenness that the light of
Easter and Christ's victory can shine forth to light our way through the
darkness of sin and death that lie on the path before us.
The road to the cross may be cold and broken, but it is not
empty, not a ritual that we mindlessly observe. It is a journey to deepen our
faith and we do not walk it alone or without direction. We travel with our
fellow companions in Christ and we follow in the footsteps of Jesus. On the
other side of the journey is our "Hallelujah" but to truly experience
it, we must face the darkness of our sin.
This is the Lent. Let's get going.
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