Boxed Alleluias

I once came across the expression, "Boxed Alleluias" during a worship service on the first Sunday in Lent when the children gathered up from the pews paper butterflies bearing the word "Alleluia" and deposited them into a box held by the minister on the altar steps. He then put the lid on the brightly decorated shoe box and placed it underneath the Communion Table. This act accompanied the traditional ban on the word Alleluia or Hallelujah during the Lenten Season in the more liturgical churches. Only on Easter Sunday will the word ring throughout the church in song and recitation.

I had first thought this custom as kitschy object lesson for the children, until I came across a more serious version of the same thing on a video of a church where during Mass on the First Sunday in Lent, four altar servers carried a formidable wooden chest out of the sanctuary on two poles like the Levites of ancient Israel carrying the Ark of the Covenant. I never found out anything about the actual contents of the chest, except that they contained the Alleluias to be reserved until the Great Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday evening. The ceremony struck me as a liturgical oddity, perhaps another way of trying to make the purpose of Lenten season more understandable.

But whether boxed or simply silent, the withholding of this refrain meaning "Praise the Lord" communicates the tone of Lent. I compare it to a mute on a horn. Jazz musicians will mute trumpets and trombones to create a subdued sound, a softer tone accompanying a somber mood such as the sound of the blues. Worship during Lent omits the louder tones represented by Hallelujah/Alleluia in favor of the muted praises of a season reflecting sin and repentance and the cost of Christ's sacrifice and death to procure our forgiveness. It is not that God isn't praised during Lent--He's praised in a softer, muted way with the weight of our mortality and on our tongues. Not until the Sunday of the Resurrection does that weight lift.

Now the truth is: Christ has been raised and our sins have been forgiven. The praises of God on one level continually rise from our hearts. But as a teaching tool, the muted Alleluias become for us an instructive exercise in the seriousness of sin and its effect on us. We remind ourselves that God calls on us first to deal with our lives as we approach him in worship. Muting the praises forces us to think about what needs to be done before our praises become loud, clanging cymbals and our actions an empty ritual.