On the first Sunday of Lent this year, Zack handed out rubber “Alleluia” bracelets to the assembled children at Children’s time … and then he took them back. He wasn’t being mean, but rather illustrating the practice of “putting away the hallelujahs” until Easter, which helps followers of Christ to embrace the spiritual sacrifice that is embedded in Lent. The kids took it rather well, and Zack explained that he would pass out the bracelets on Easter, at which point we would all say many alleluias to celebrate the risen Christ. As I watched the packing away of the alleluia bracelets that morning, I couldn’t help but smile to myself, remembering again one of my favorite moments in the entire liturgical year, which — not surprisingly — takes place in the choir room each year at the same moment, without fail.

Each year during Holy Week, the congregation and choir together lift up their speaking and singing voices during service on Maundy Thursday. Plaintive and haunting minor melodies mix with the now-familiar words that Jesus spoke to his disciples at the Last Supper. The pastor offers something to nourish both head and heart, and we gather at the table together. The postlude is quiet and austere. Congregants walk silently out of service, offering their fellow worshippers a quiet nod. The choir, too, files out, tiptoeing down the back hall as our black robes whoosh side to side just above our feet, which sometimes have been ritually washed. We tread noiselessly into the choir room, whereupon we begin a rehearsal first for Good Friday’s service, and then spend the remainder of the rehearsal putting the final touches on the Easter music we will sing just three days later … when the stone is rolled away.

You might be wondering — what is that favorite moment of my year?

It is this: after almost forty days of refraining from singing any hallelujah refrain, we come to music that Absolutely Has Hallelujah in it. And not just a little hallelujah, but an acclamation punctuated by melodies that pop out of mouths, explode in mid-air, and land several feet away. The tempo — which just a while ago in the reverence of the Maundy Thursday liturgy was so … well, LENTo, is now vivace — filled with Life. And one piece for me which is emblematic of that proclamation of Christ’s birth is the Hallelujah Chorus. I have sung this same Handel creation since high school, when I squinted at the music and listened carefully to my adult alto section mentors, as I tried to follow the wild ups and downs on the page. Years later, as I turned into a soprano, I attempted the precipitous climb up the scale, higher and higher still — the notes leaving the staff, hopefully not leaving me behind. My favorite moment of the year is that moment during that rehearsal during which we crack open the score for Handel’s masterful choral work, as Kevin begins the familiar introduction, and then as we sing the first word: Hallelujah!

When I was a high school member of the sanctuary choir, the moment in that rehearsal when the choir let loose with that hallelujah felt for me both holy, and also secretly somehow illegal; after all, we were singing the word which is not to be spoken during Lent, let alone sung fortissimo … and we were were singing it at one of the most somber moments during Lent.

As I have aged, however, my perspective has shifted from a feeling of secret glee with somehow getting away with an early delight, to the idea that I am getting a glimpse of early Hope. Of course I know rationally that Easter will come in just a few days and we will sing our Alleluias again. But singing them with abandon within those four walls at that moment feels like we who are present are sharing a prescient moment together. It is a moment of hope — the hope that Christ will indeed come again. That He is Risen Indeed.

So by the time we sing the Hallelujah Chorus together on Easter Sunday along with some in the congregation, all of us spilling off of the altar, onto the steps, standing shoulder to shoulder with the elementary schooler who is excited to join this mass of people to do something that seems important on one side … and the first-time visitor on the other … I feel as if I have to proclaim what I have already known to be true — that He shall reign forever and ever…

-Kristin Murphy