Here He Comes
His friend leaned over and whispered, "Watch this" — and I've never heard Easter the same way since.
Resurrection Day, 2026
A few years ago, my wife and I were returning to California at the end of a long road trip. About three hours before arriving home, we began to listen to Beethoven’s 9th symphony.
I have limited musical ability. My wife never likes it when I talk about her musical pedigree, so I will simply say that she has much less limited musical ability. Her mezzo soprano voice moves me deeply. But that is not the story I’m telling you.
That day in the car, we had reached the fourth movement. The “Ode to Joy.” If you’ve heard the 9th, you know there’s a moment just before the chorus breaks open for the triumphal ending, a pause that’s almost unbearable in its fullness. Like the music is gathering itself, like it’s holding its breath.
I’ve listened to that symphony enough times that I knew what was coming. I was waiting, but not really waiting. I’d heard it before.
But not my wife. Even thought she has listened to the 9th symphony countless tines, she was caught up in the moment. In the midst of the pause, she turned to me, and with her voice full of emotion, said to me, “Here it comes.” And as you probably know, Beethoven did not disappoint!
I have never forgotten that moment. My wife hearing the symphony for the umpteenth time, knowing exactly what was coming, her body filled with anticipation.
It reminds me of a moment when I was in Nigeria years ago. The church I pastored had paid to have the Jesus Film translated into a local dialect so it could be shown out in the bush, in villages where there had never been a church, never been a Christian community. I had gone to see the results and begin meeting the local pastors we’d be training.
In one village, people were packed around the screen. I was standing beside a young man who had never once heard the gospel. A friend who had recently come to faith had brought him. As the crucifixion scenes played, the young man began to weep. Then to wail. He had no category for what he was seeing. Nobody had ever told him this story.
His friend leaned over and whispered, “Watch this.”
And Jesus walked out of the grave alive.
The young man shouted. Loudly. He leapt into the air. He began clapping his hands.
I have never forgotten that moment. A man hearing the story for the very first time, with no idea what was coming, and when it came, his whole body knew what to do.
Two people. One trembling with anticipation even though she knew what was coming. One who had never heard a word of the story shouting with amazement. Both of them leaning into the moment. Both of them right.
And me, not wanting to be the one who knew what came next and was unmoved by it.
I was a pastor for forty years. Forty Easter mornings. I know the story pretty well. I know what happens next.
But every year, somewhere in the days before Easter, something stirs. Not a new idea. Not a theological argument. Something more like that pause in the 9th symphony. Something that makes me want to lean over and whisper to whoever is nearby, “Here he comes.”
That’s worth sitting with for a minute, because it isn’t just sentiment. The reason the anticipation is real is because what happened on the third day was real. Not a metaphor. Not a warm feeling the disciples worked themselves into. A man who had been dead was not dead anymore. Early in the morning, in a real garden, outside a real city, some very frightened women found a very empty tomb.
That’s the ground underneath the joy. And it holds.
Paul didn’t leave room for ambiguity: if Christ has not been raised, we are still in our sins and there is nothing here worth singing about. But Paul believed he had been raised. He had met him on a road. He had staked his life on it, and eventually his death.
So when the music pauses, when the story seems to end at the worst possible place, when the stone is still in place and the disciples are behind locked doors and the whole world is holding its breath, I think of my wife filled with anticipation and the young Nigerian man who wept and wailed, and then leapt with joy.
Here he comes.
If you find yourself drawn to the kind of interior formation that takes the resurrection seriously as both history and lived practice, the Certificate Program in Spiritual Direction at The Compass Institute opens its third cohort on May 15. It’s a nine-month journey into ancient practices, community, and learning to read both scripture and human hearts. You can find more here:
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