Is this just subversion of a traditional religious word to suit the base function of commerce and style? Or is there something deeper in the delivery, something about the longing it suggests, the hope it hints at which strikes its own secret chord in the human heart ?
The ancient Hallelujah is a word beyond words – but the way Buckley and others interpret the word in the chorus almost sidelines the narrative of the verses. The story of failed love almost ceases to matter. It becomes what is known in religious literature as glossalalia – speaking or singing in tongues.
In a song that is lyrically about the hopelessness of the human condition, musically another atmosphere is created, a different song – about the longing for resolution, for home, for peace.
The song of truth is the song of praise
The singer may not know what the word is about in theological terms, but this doesn’t matter, the meaning of the word Hallelujah is incidental to the emotion being expressed – the song comes from a place in the heart which has its own language which is neither English nor Hebrew, it is the language of lament and longing.
Art, at its best, transcends vocabulary, just like spiritual ecstasy transcends religion.
Some art you understand with the heart not the brain.
Sometimes the combination of elements in a work of art create a resonance which is deeper and stranger than any of the elements themselves – the sum is greater than the parts. Something like this can happen in the theatre of the Eucharist.
Pop music is good at conveying happiness and fun. Rock songs, in contrast, often excel in conveying darker emotions of sadness or even despair. Some people think this reflects an absence of faith, a denial of the divine…and sometimes it does. But sometimes too the song of truth is the song of praise.
Church often does ‘songs of praise’, but in our age of uncertainty, too much certainty can feel false, unreal.
Too much ‘hallelujah’ can make faith jar – sidelining our need to admit the confusion of our times which is what Cohen captures in his luminous phrase the ‘broken hallelujah’. But this is nothing new. The broken hallelujah is all part of the fabric of authentic faith. Listen to the Psalmist, who doesn't buy the idea that there is a divine fix for every problem:
How long, O Lord?
Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
Or witness the suffering of a good man like Job – who has done nothing to deserve his fate. His response, in questioning the mysterious ways of the divine, is not about unbelief but about another way of doing faith, a way which says it is OK to argue with God about the way things are working out...especially when God seems to be hiding. Sometimes the only hallelujah we’ve got is a cracked, bent or broken one. But if we are to be true to ourselves we have to brave enough to argue with God.
To be honest about our doubts.
To admit that our faith is limited by the dark and frosted glass through which we see life.
Our whole life is an argument with God…every confusing day, we are in a wrestling match with a stranger.
'A blaze of light in every word'
If ever there was a Lent Number One, this is a song that would do it justice – the religious period of penitence leading up to Easter is one where traditionally the saying of the word "alleluia" has been suspended. In the middle ages, a custom developed of bidding hallelujah farewell in song. Some congregations physically "bury" the alleluia on the Sunday preceding Ash Wednesday – and then resurrect it on Easter Sunday.
That doesn’t mean we don’t believe, and as Cohen himself put it, in another verse which most artists don’t use when they cover the song.
You say I took the name in vain. I don't even know the name.
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word; it doesn't matter which you heard:
the holy or the broken hallelujah.
Cohen also wrote an alternative ending to the song which Bob Dylan discovered and used. It captures our existential plight but also our Easter hope.
And even though it all went wrong,
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah!