A Prison Hallelujah

by Pastor Gina Johnson

I've always really enjoyed Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah”. In this past week between a beautiful opportunity to celebrate the life of a community friend, and also several months ago where we had the men's choir sing that song, and then just different random times, where I'll be going about my day and I'll catch it on the radio, or I'll hear it in a grocery store, I’m like, gosh, that song has always really appealed to me. We've heard it time and time again, but what is it about that song?

Is it the context of King David and, you know, he was the man after God's heart? There's a little bit of Samson in there. It's like, what is this song? Why does it draw me in? Because the first time I heard it, I was like, “Wow, this has got to be a great Christian song.” And then the more I listened to it, I was like, “Oh, no, maybe not.”

Then I went in and studied. It was first written by Leonard Cohen. And he wrestled for years with it. It wasn't like just one day he was inspired and it was done. You know, he was inspired and he wrestled because he was trying to figure out verse after verse. And he wrote over 80 verses. I don't know how many of you all knew that, over 80.

He was searching for a way to bring forth the understanding of brokenness meeting holiness. And that is a hallelujah. You know, we're so quick to associate hallelujahs with praise.

And yes, it is about praise. But it's not just that kind of praise where you wake up every morning and things are perfect. Like, that's a hallelujah too, absolutely.

But what about the person who's on the other end of the diagnosis, the treatments? What about those unexpected tragedies where afterwards you're laughing and you're recognizing that we're going to get through this? What about those times I watched Travis run out into the street because our little Gina was walking and there was a car coming and he snatched her. I was like, “Whew, okay, hallelujah.”

You know, the hallelujah has so much more to it than that. It's not just the clean word that we use in church and in songs, it is more than that. It's a word that comes out at the end of the mess or even in the mess. It's a word that comes in when we have allowed so many external things to cloud our vision, you know, to dirty our windows, our lenses.

It's a word that's there. It's a word that comes in the prison cells. It's the word that comes when we feel like we've been betrayed by maybe our friends, maybe our families, maybe our boss, our coworker, or worst of all, when we've been betrayed by ourselves, where we let ourselves go and we let ourselves down.

And that moment where we look in the mirror and we're like, “Huh, hallelujah,” because we can see what God sees. It's the word that comes in those nights where maybe we lay awake and we're questioning, why is this still going on? When is this going to get better? How soon is this going to happen? And then we remember, be still and know that I am God. And in that moment, we feel the hallelujah.

So, I want to step into two stories. One is from the movie screen, and the other one is from scripture. This is where the hallelujahs were definitely not polished. They were not pretty. They were a little challenging. But as much as they were broken, they were honest, and they were real, and they were ultimately a space where people remembered who they are.

The film that I want to talk about is The Shawshank Redemption. Now, I don't know how many of you all have seen that movie. Every now and then, “I'll say, you really should see that movie,” and this is one of those times. It is of great entertaining value. You will enjoy it in all of the worldly senses. But boy, there is a deeper message in there that just sings hallelujah.

So, the movie itself, for those of you who haven't seen it, I'll try to tell it more in a parable form. But Andy Dufresne, he's a quiet guy. He's really smart. He's a banker. And one day, his whole life gets turned upside down because he's accused of murdering his wife. He did not commit that crime. But the jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to two life sentences in the Shawshank prison.

Now, for those of you who don't like spoilers, you can yell at me later. So, I do apologize for that on the forefront. I don't even watch trailers because I can't stand it.

So Andy went to Shawshank, and he figured, well, this is the place where hope goes to die. It's cold, it's stone walls, it's corrupt guards. There's violence that takes place in dark corners.

And, you know, people who came in holding hope at the beginning, over the years, it slips away. Can you guys see the correlation in life sometimes? Where we started in one place at one point, filled with hope. And even though we weren't in a physical prison, we start to see the walls get colder and grayer. We start to see that there are things going on in the shadows, and maybe it's our own shadows. But when they're in that prison, over the years, hope just continues to slip away.

But Andy, Andy was different. Although he was a quiet person, he still had dignity in everything he did. He still had this presence about him. And as other people were giving up, which we can't blame them, they're in prison, he builds a library for the prisoners. He helps other men get education, and he starts to give people reason to believe.

He starts to say things, he does things that have people having hope again. But he also had a secret. His secret was every night, he was chipping away at the wall with a tiny rock hammer, and inch by inch, year after year, two whole decades pass, and then one stormy night, Andy slips through the hole that he carved out.

He crawled through 500 yards of sewage and filth, and he came out on the other side. And it's there in the rain that he lifts his arms to heaven, with water pouring down on his face, and he has freedom. You know, Andy couldn't have found that freedom if he hadn't already found it while he was in prison. I would even be so bold to say before he even went to prison.

Andy has a friend in the movie named Red, and Red narrates the story. He says, Andy crawled to freedom through 500 yards of filth, I can't even imagine.

How many people have had their days where they feel like they're crawling through maybe it's not filth, maybe it's not sewage, but you're in the trenches. You're crawling through something.

Maybe it's a physical disability. Maybe it's a strained relationship. Maybe it's that pile of bills that you can't seem to get through. Maybe it's just that question of what's next for me? How come we're doing all these things and we see little bits of movement, but when are we going to see that needle really move? When are we going to see things really shape and change?

It's interesting when we think about how Andy kept that spirit throughout the whole time. And the way he kept that spirit is he had hope. And I don't mean half-hearted hope like, “Well, yeah, I hope this gets better.” You know?

If you're going to have hope, well, you need to mean it. Andy says, “Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.”

So, there's Andy's story. He was a man that was wrongly accused, wrongly convicted, but he held on to his hope. He held on to the truth of who he is. He held on and he created and he brought presence. And eventually he stepped into a freedom that he had all along.

Now let's go to the scripture story. So, we have Joseph. You all remember Joseph in Genesis? He lived his own Shawshank Redemption.

He was the favorite son of his father Jacob. And his brothers, they betrayed him. You know, not only did they mock him and pick on him, but they sold him into slavery. And then they told their father that he was dead. So not only was he sent to a prison by his own brothers, his father then went into a mental prison of thinking he lost his beloved son.

But in Egypt, Joseph, having that same kind of hope and determination, but most of all, that relationship with God, he persevered. He rose in Potiphar's house and was doing wonderful. And then Potiphar's wife accuses him of assaulting her because he would not give in to her advances. Well, just like Andy, Joseph was thrown into prison, wrongly accused, wrongly convicted.

In Genesis 39:20, it says Joseph's master took him and put him in prison. But while Joseph was there in prison, the Lord was with him.

That is the hope. That is the song when the noise is really loud and distracting and even deafening. That is the warmth when things feel cold, when things feel isolated. Knowing that the spirit of God, knowing that the very beingness of God is with you in everything you're facing.

You know, Joseph waited in that prison, not for days, not for weeks, but for years. And sometimes certain times of our life, certain circumstances, certain levels of understanding can imprison us for years as well. But you know, Joseph, he started interpreting dreams.

He started using a gift that God gave him to better his situation. Joseph wasn't doing this in the, “Well, hey, if I interpret these dreams, then God's gonna owe me.” He just says, “Remember me.”

He didn't even have to say the words because he had such a personality, such a presence that he did kindness and he did goodness and he carried himself with this integrity that you would remember Joseph.

I have to ask myself, you know, I'm not in a prison. So, there's no reason I can't carry myself like Joseph. I'm not shackled in chains. I'm not dressed in a specific uniform every day. So, there's no reason I can't carry that same hope like Andy had. But here is the part that I really want you all to listen to because as he interpreted dreams and one of them promised that they would remember him, he wasn't sitting counting days. He wasn't waking up each day saying, when's God coming through for me? When's it going to work out? But when one of the other prisoners was released, then it did work out.

That prisoner remembered Joseph and his ability to interpret these dreams. Joseph was never forgotten by that man, nor was he forgotten by God. So, here's where this should come home for us. Most of us, thank goodness, will not be in a prison. Most of us will not be in some kind of Egyptian dungeon, but that doesn't mean that we don't know imprisonment. That doesn't mean that we don't know what it's like to be captive. And a lot of times it's because we imprison ourselves and don't worry, we have help.

We let the world wrongly accuse us of not being enough or maybe being too much, of being a failure or being unworthy. We let the world accuse us with things even better. Like here's some politics and this is what you should believe and this is what you should think and these are the people that you should associate with. That becomes a prison too.

Or hey, this is what it means to be successful. So, if you're not functioning at this economic status or you don't have this level of education, or you're not hanging with this particular group of people, then there's a prison as well. But what is the worst one? Because the world can bring us a lot of noise, labels can bring us a lot of noise, and moments where we mis-stepped or fall down can bring us a lot of noise. But the worst one is when we imprison ourselves.

When we allow our outside circumstances to then cause us shame or fear. You know, I love when the spirit really ties things together. So, my elder, Sandi, sent me a text last week and she asked me, “What’s your scripture topic and what's your message?” And I will tell all of you elders, that makes me a little nervous at times because when I was an associate minister, I would always tie my communion thought initially to the pastor's message. And many a time the pastor would call me in, he'd say, “Gina, we don't need two sermons.” And I was like, okay, okay, okay.

But I knew what he meant because then sometimes I had those encounters very much like when I do a funeral where I hear someone speak and I'm like, “Oh no, do I need to change this now?” So, it's funny when Sandi asked me that, I think I told her the theme and I said, “I'm giving the communion meditation so you have the offering meditation. You just go the direction you want.”

And sure enough, the Spirit showed up because as Sandi was talking about the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she said they have fears, they have shame, they have poverty. There is not enough to go around and I bet from the outside standpoint, they don't look like enough. But they don't let any of that imprison them. They come dancing down the aisle. Because it's that time where they could make a choice.

Those people in the Democratic Republic of Congo could choose to hang their heads down. They could choose to say, you know, this is what life has dealt me, this is the hand I have, this is all I'm ever gonna get. And they could come into church with their heads hung down and they could walk in as if, “Oh my gosh, can we really part with this? What will we do next?” Or they can come in singing their hallelujah, dancing with the love and the light that comes from Christ.

Sometimes our shame and our fear or just our lack of willingness to see that there's more out there keeps us in our prison. Sometimes it's our lack of willingness, we don't wanna do the work, we don't wanna make the movement, we don't wanna chip away at the little hole in the prison cell to make our way out. We just rather throw up our hands and say, “Well, here's where we are, we're gonna fight as long as we can, but you know, those doors are probably gonna close, guys, so just keep standing alongside of me as long as you can handle it.”

Yuck, that's so gross. Because what happens is that we live in that world where we carry shame and fear more than we carry light and love. And we fall asleep in it and we wake up in it.

Or wait, do we wake up in it? Because maybe once we fall asleep, trapped at that level of awareness that we're at, thinking that our external circumstances define everything that we are, our age defines us, our education defines us, our job defines us, the minute we get trapped in that, then I don't know if we wake up, I think we just live in an imprisoning dream. It's called, “Hey, this is what you've earned, this is what you've done, so now just do your best to take care of yourself and buy time as you wait for that day where you get to die and go to heaven.”

I don't know where people read that in the Bible. I don't know where we read that in theological texts or some of the sacred scriptures that are out there. Because that's not what it's about. We're supposed to be here realizing, reclaiming and remembering the truth of who we are.

Because if we are not careful to look at ourselves and to look at others the same way that God sees us, to look at our friends, our families, to look at our church and our community the same way God sees us, then we will give up on the promises that he's placed inside of us. And the funny thing about those promises is they are with us. It's not like he ever takes them away. Our abundance, our prosperity, our wholeness, the unity that we have as brothers and sisters, those are never taken from us.

We like to give them away. We like to succumb to the noise of the world. We like to succumb to some of the things that scare us, some of the things that shame us, some of the things that anger us, and we give away those promises. But the truth is you can't give them away. You can't lose them and God will never take them from you. You just gotta keep working at it and make it through the filth and sewage. Make it through the days of praying in the prison and having that hopeful spirit. You know, Joseph could have given up. Andy could have given up, but they didn't. And neither can we give up.

I talk to people sometimes and I say, “Wow, you're still working?” And they'll say something to the effect of, “Well, you know, once you stop working, you might as well be dead.” Or I'll say, “Oh, you're doing this?” “Well, yeah, because once you stop moving, you're not alive anymore.”

It's beautiful because some of these people are retired. They don't even mean working like a nine to five. They're just getting out and doing things. How beautiful is that? And a lot of you, my favorite word, my seasoned people, you know how beautiful that you are still working, that you are still moving, that you are still carrying that hope with you.

Years later, Joseph stood in front of his brothers, the very ones that betrayed him, those that were jealous, those that put all of this suffering into motion. And you know what he said to them?

He said in Genesis 50, he said, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” That was Joseph's hallelujah. He didn't carry all of the pain and the suffering and start saying, “Which one of you pushed me in that hole? Which one of you took my coat? Which one of you went up and sold me to that guy in slavery?” And I wanna believe that Andy didn't go back either and say, “You were the prosecuting attorney. Oh, you were the guy that arrested me,” because it didn't do them any good to look back and point fingers at what they did wrong or what might've been done wrong to them.

Instead, they took it all as this is where I am. This is my situation. Now, what can I do to change it?

When our friend Nancy stopped by last Sunday before worship, she was saying that she just wanted to wake up and hear something good and see something good, see that light. And when she went to leave, I told her as I was walking away, I said, “Hey, you are that good. You are that light.”

You all are the Andys and the Josephs. You all are the hope. You can say, I have hope and I have belief and I have faith, but you can also be that. Because for people who maybe don't know Jesus, like you know Jesus, for people who don't know how to weather the storms, like this crew knows how to weather the storms, they may not be able to associate to flowery words. Let me quote you a scripture and let me say a prayer for you and this is gonna change everything. Not so much, but just your presence, your personality, your smiles, you're taking the extra moment to maybe tell a story of how you got out of your Shawshank, to maybe tell a story of what you kept looking towards as you were counting the days.

I remember thinking to myself when I was working on this message, what is it that is imprisoning me? What are the shackles that are still on me that keep me from really stepping into the fullness of who I'm called to be in Christ Jesus?

That's the same question I have for you. Because if you remember Joseph's words saying, God turned this around for the good, and Andy's words of hope, and if you remember Cohen’s song, it says, it's not a cry that you hear at night, it's not someone who's seen the light, it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah. So, what are those things that perhaps at one point in time have broken you down? What are those things that have brought you to tears? What are those things that you keep letting tell you stories and imprison you and find them and release them?

If you could take some truths from both Joseph's story and Andy's story and the story that Christ Jesus tells us is the prison is not the end, it's a passage. For our Savior, it was a passage to show us the transcendence of death, to demonstrate for us that eternal life is what we have, that death is not a thing. The tunnels that you crawl through are shaping you to have the freedom that you already have within. And the hallelujah that you sing in the dark is going to be that same hallelujah that brings you into the light.

If you remember in one of the Psalms, it talks about where can I go to flee from you? Because if I go into the darkness, you are there. Your hallelujah doesn't have to be perfect; it just has to be honest. If you remember that God always intends everything going on in our life for the good, and if you remember that hope may be the best thing, then you can truly let your hallelujah rise even if it's a broken hallelujah.

Please pray with me. Our most gracious and most loving God, we say hallelujah, hallelujah for the times that feel like challenge, the times that feel like suffering, the times that feel hopeless. And those times we say hallelujah because you are an infinite God, you are a loving God, you are a generous God, and I can't even describe you with human words.

So, we just say thank you. We humble ourselves and we say thank you for creating us in your image, thank you for putting that everlasting light within us, thank you for giving us the hope that brings us to our hallelujah. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.