Notre Dame and A Cold, Broken Hallelujah

This picture of me and Scott was taken 5 years ago when we visited France just prior to the D-Day 70th anniversary commemorations.  Unfortunately, because we were in Paris for less than one day, we were unable to go inside Notre Dame, but even so, I feel a great sense of loss and sadness at the news of the horrific fire that engulfed the building and caused so much damage to this aged yet ageless sacred space. Thankfully, it seems the destruction may not have been as severe as it was first feared, but naturally, the shock and heartache remain.

Like me, you have likely seen pictures of the crimson flames and billowing clouds of smoke filling the sky along with pictures of people mourning, praying, hoping, weeping.  They are heartbroken and despondent, they feel as if something vital to their existence has been irreparably destroyed or at least fatally marred.  The irony of such a tragedy during Holy Week is lost on no one who lives by the liturgical calendar, and this was mentioned more than once by reporters and commentators.

The pain and grief being experienced and expressed by millions of people around the globe is intense and deep.  It calls up thoughts of other fires that ravaged other holy places:  the three African-American churches recently destroyed in Louisiana by an angry arsonist, the fire at the mosque on the Temple mount in Jerusalem accidentally started by children, the unintentional blaze at an Episcopal church here in Fayetteville, and the fiery destruction of the church of my childhood resulting from faulty wiring.  These are spaces and places that are not only sites of worship and prayer but are also repositories of memories and emotions.  More than this, they are reminders of the presence of the Sacred in our very midst, silently prompting us to pause and recall that the very ground upon which we stand is holy.

Notre Dame was unfamiliar to John Wesley, but he was quite familiar with other cathedrals (Lincoln and St. Paul's come to mind), and he was no stranger to loss or grief or suffering.  Yet even when his own heart was broken and his physical strength waned, he was upheld by hope and the promise of resurrection joy.  In his sermon "On Mourning for the Dead," he offers these words of comfort and defiance in the face of death itself --

If we are, at any time, in danger of being overcome by dwelling too long on the gloomy side of this prospect,...; let us immediately recur to the bright side, and reflect, with gratitude as well as humility, that our time passeth away like a shadow; and that, when we awake from this momentary dream, we shall then have a clearer view of that latter day in which our Redeemer shall stand upon the earth; when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall be clothed with immortality; and when we shall sing, with the united choirs of men and angels, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

Chichester Cathedral, High Altar (photo taken by me May 2014)

Let us not be too swift to put away our mourning -- the sorrow we bear after a death or the tragic loss of something sacred and dear to us is very real, and it must be faced and brought into the open if we are to heal from it.  Good Friday is a stark reminder of the cruelty of death and its power to wound, and Holy Saturday in its stillness and quiet mimics the utter quiet of the grave and its seeming finality. But this is Holy Week, and Easter is coming, and so even though we will experience tragedy and fear and loss in this lifetime, we proclaim, along with the burial rites of the Book of Common Prayer:

"All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!" And even if sometimes it's at first what Leonard Cohen called a "cold and broken hallelujah," still we will sing, trusting even where we have not seen, that God is there. Still we will hold onto the promise that in Christ, even at the grave, our song shall ever be "Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!"