My Dear Shepherds,

In his delightful novel, This Is Happiness, Niall Williams describes the congregation crowding into the Catholic Easter service in the tiny Irish town of Faha:

All the pews were filled but they sucked in their breath, concertina-ed closer, and the church became one living sea of the washed, the ironed, and the shampooed. In the time before Easter Mass the congregation participated in one of the characteristic joys of all mankind, looking at itself.

I always thought there was something unique about the Easter service crowd. Visitors from near and far mixed with the familiar faces, lilies crowding the platform, feasts waiting in homes, the sense of anticipation that not even Christmas with all its lights and carols could match. I loved stepping up to say, three times, “Christ is risen!” Then hearing them shout it back to me louder each time, “Christ is risen indeed!”

Every Easter Sunday we’re getting ready! We’re rehearsing for another world.

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. (Rev. 7:9)

Each of those groups have their own story to tell of missionaries, churches, schools, and revivals. Every face in that vast crowd beams with a unique testimony of salvation, a story of being lost and found, of new birth, sanctification, and ministry. Everyone, in all their myriad languages and congregations, have affirmed “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Everyone has been reshaped by Bible truth. We’ve all sung the new song of salvation. We’ve all waited and persevered until we were seized up to meet the Lord in the air.

On that day the believers who now stand before us on Sunday clad in earth tones will wear their bright testimonies:

“These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (Rev. 7:14)

There we gather like triumphant veterans of a foreign war. Jesus has clothed us in blood-bleached robes in keeping with our new soul-deep Christlikeness, not a sin-stain or shame-scar to be found.

The palm branches that we wave fulfill the Palm Sunday prophecy, but our King no longer appears “humble and riding on a donkey.” Instead, he is exalted to the highest place, seated on the throne at the right hand of the Father. Hosanna—“Save us now!”—is replaced:

And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” (Rev. 7:10)

Recently, I’ve been rehearsing with a choir which will join a full orchestra in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The theme is familiar from our hymn, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.” That theme runs in and out of the hour-long symphony, from instruments to voices, loud and soft, delicate then thundering, always returning, finally building to the grand finale.

Perhaps our anthem of salvation will be like that in heaven. Christ’s triumph will surge through all our vast and varied service across the ages. The fact that Jesus Christ saved us will never become commonplace or mundane. It will continually set us singing.

And our theme will be endlessly affirmed by the angels and high agents of the King, drawing on every nuance of worship.

“Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!”

Be ye glad!