Hallelujah!
Call to worship, to liturgy, to praise
Four times: Let us praise YHWH, the LORD!
Praise is all there’s left to do
When the Lord has done it all.
Salvation’s song crescendos from the heavens
And tumbles down to earth where
It meets a mixed review of
FAITH and UNBELIEF.
“Salvation, glory, and power belong to God”
(The verbs are His, but also the nouns.)
“True and just His judgment.”
Babylon is fallen, justly judged
City of Man, built on shifting sands of unbelief
With bricks of shameless arrogance
And the mortar of man’s desire
To be gods in place of God.
Babylon, the anti-Bride, devil’s prostitute
Her bed defiled with adultery,
Her chalice filled with unquenched lust,
Her children offered up as “holy innocents”
Upon her altars of convenience.
Babylon, vile seductress, Folly
Her idols promised immortality
But now her Lie is shamefully exposed.
Hallelujah!
A second time.
The once proud citadel lies in rubble ruin
Her shopping malls and stadiums, boardrooms and bedrooms
All are desolate, ablaze;
The smoke of her destruction rises up forever as
Incense from the depths of Hell;
Eternal witness to the utter foolishness of
UNBELIEF.
Hallelujah!
A third time, louder.
Sounded by the congregation
Elders twelve plus twelve – God’s Israel, old and new
And four mysterious living one whose faces
Reflect their constituency –
Man and Bird and Beast both tame and wild;
The Church and all creation cry aloud as one:
Hallelujah!
And with it, faith antiphonal Amen!
God has spoken –
It is sure and certain.
Hallelujah!
Fourth and final.
Deafening, like living waterfalls and spring thunderclaps,
The news so good it almost hurts to hear it.
“The Lord our God Almighty reigns!”
The wedding of the Lamb has come!
The Groom – Y’shua, Jesus, Word Incarnate
YHWH in the Flesh come to save you.
Passover and Sacrifice
The Lamb once slain who lives to
Take away your sin and
Bury it in the darkness of His baptismal tomb.
The Bride – God’s City, Holy Church
Zion lifted up, redeemed;
Second Eve from sleeping second Adam
Drawn from His spear-pierced side.
She is radiant, virgin pure,
Washed with water and the Word
Readied for her nuptial day;
Her wedding gown is linen, pure and fine
A gift from her Beloved,
Woven out of all the priestly labors of her citizens
Washed to brilliant perfection in
Her Bridegroom’s Blood.
The invitations are engraved, addressed, delivered:
“Blessed are those invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”
Blessed are you, dear baptized, believing one,
A place is set for you in the King’s reception hall
A feast of fatted meats and finest vintage wines
Poured out in Cana’s lavish opulence.
And even now, for you,
A foretase of that coming Feast:
Bread that is His Body,
Wine that is His Blood;
His gift to you –
Receive it!
Believe it!
Until that Day when earth’s last night
Gives way to new creation’s morning
And Bride and Groom embrace at last to
Endless
Hallelujahs.
