Why do Lutherans not use Alleluia or Hallelujah during the season of Lent?

This is an updated version of a post from 2010. It is imperfect, but usable. Feel free to use/modify at your church! Peace!

Why do Lutherans not use Alleluia or Hallelujah during the season of Lent?

Both of these words (Alleluia and Hallelujah) are transliterations of the Hebrew word הַלְּלוּיָהּ, which means, simply, Praise GOD! or Praise ye the Lord! in some older English translations. In the Hebrew Bible (1) as well as in the book of Revelation (2), it is Alleluia that the angels sing as they are gathered around the throne of God—the highest angelic praise, the song of unending, eternal joy.

When we join with the choirs of angels and the hosts of heaven, we proclaim that God's Reign exists not just in a distant eternity, but here and now, within and among us, (3) as we gather around the presence of God, in bread and wine and in the holy gift of one another.(4)

During the season of Lent, which begins Ash Wednesday and ends at Easter, we don't deny God's presence in and among us, but we shift our focus. If Christmas is the celebration of Immanuel—God with us—then Lent is the season of "Where are you God?" or perhaps, "Where is your love not manifest through me or through us? Where is the flow of your love, through me, getting stopped up? Where am I, as you’re your conduit, clogged? Where and how do we (and I) cause your presence to not be fully known in this community?" Perhaps we even ask, in the absence of Alleluia, with Jesus: "My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?"(5) These are all questions of a Lenten faith.

As a communal fast and discipline, refraining from use of the Alleluia is a way for us to practice solidarity, togetherness and being-one-body. As in many fasts, when we feel hunger for (in this case) an Alleluia, rather than that very good impulse of praise, perhaps we take a minute to reflect or to pray, instead—or to write a letter to someone in power, to make an amend, or to feed somebody. Perhaps we think of how we might change ourselves or even change the world, or how we might act in such a way that the Alleluia becomes more-freed to be not just our impulse, but the impulse of even more people, those hurting, those oppressed, our neighbors.

Perhaps Alleluia becomes freed when we alleviate some suffering. Perhaps it becomes freed because we bring some joy into some place that’s weighed down by paralyzing despair.

Perhaps we are called to create spaces, sites of recovery, communities where healing and joy and praise might come more freely, where any Alleluia becomes quite hard to suppress, spaces where we and others are freed to be and to become together.

Despite our best efforts, even churches sometimes become spaces of pain instead of sites of healing and becoming. Likewise, we ourselves can be more hurtful than liberative in our everyday relationships.

Lent can be a good time to think about our desire for more resurrection in our lives and God’s desire for the resurrection of the whole world. Lent can be a time to commit to God’s desire once again.

Sometimes when we bury the Alleluia, it makes us want it even more.

Footnotes:

1 Psalm 111-117, etc.
2 Revelation 19:1-7
3 Luke 17:20:21
4 Matthew 18:19-20
5 Mark 15:34