January 1, 2005 - 12:00am - John McLarty I still remember the first Friday night service I attended as a freshman at Southern Adventist University about 35 years ago. Nearly 2,000 voices and a bold pipe organ created a breathtakingly rich experience of worship through music. The song service climaxed with “For All the Saints.” Before we opened our mouths to sing, the building already thrummed with the organ intro.

Then we sang. And I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

When I was still young enough to sing alto, my mother recruited me for the choir at Memphis First Seventh-day Adventist Church, where I sang the Messiah several times and learned to be at home with the works of Mendelssohn, Bach and Sibelius. My singing never progressed beyond barely carrying my part, but those years in choir helped prepare me for the sweet ecstasy of that glorious Friday night.

As we came to the end of the final alleluia of the last chorus, I was engulfed with a wave of sharp, almost painful longing. I wished we could sing it over and over again.

Revelation portrays heaven as a place of sustained ecstatic joy.

And the four living beings never cease to sing,
“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,
Who was and who is and who is to come.”

And the 24 elders fall down and worship, singing,
“How worthy you are, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things
and by your will they were created
and have their being” (Rev 4:8-11).

The music of heaven is the natural, spontaneous response of celestial beings to the beauty, goodness, faithfulness, honesty, compassion, justice, mercy, creativity, benevolence, nobility, dignity, patience, self-restraint, generosity and gracious tenacity of God. The word they use to voice their awareness of this divine goodness is “holy.”

Holy means far more than the absence of evil or corruption. It is the presence of all the best attributes of life. (Note, a rock does not lie, cheat, steal, fornicate, bully or gossip. Still, it is not holy.) God’s holiness is known through his actions, and more specifically, his actions toward humanity. The final verse of the song declares, “For you created all things… .” The parallel song in chapter 5 cites Jesus’ work in saving and elevating humanity.

One of the distinctive elements of biblical theology is the picture it paints of the essential similarity between the nature of God and his ideal for humans. As Israel journeyed toward the promised land, God told them repeatedly, “You must be holy, because I am holy” (Lev 11; 19; 20; 21). This theme is picked up in the New Testament: “It is God’s will that you should be holy” (1 Thess 4:3). “Just as he who called you is holy, so you be holy in all you do” (1 Pet 1:14).

One reason holiness is important is that it prepares us for the ecstasy of heaven. Metaphorically speaking, we prepare for the music of heaven by singing in the church choir. We deepen our appreciation for God’s holiness by practicing our own clumsy versions of it. It’s like the enhanced appreciation we get of John Williams that comes from our trying to play Bach on the guitar. We are humbled by our failures. Our meager successes deepen our admiration for the master.

Holiness is not a negation of life and vitality, it is focusing our energy on what is best and admirable. It means forcefully asserting our will in faithfulness, compassion and truth-telling. Holiness means acting like God would even when avoiding such acts would be more convenient for us.

The practice of holiness enlarges our capacity for wonder, awe and worship. It prepares us to sing “holy, holy, holy” in a soul-lifting ecstasy that will never end.

So be holy in all you do.