Hosanna to God and the Lamb

The shout, and the psalm inside it

At the climax of every temple dedication in this church, after the dedicatory prayer and the anthem, the congregation rises and does something we do nowhere else: the Hosanna Shout — every member, one voice, white handkerchiefs raised, three times three: Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna, to God and the Lamb. It is the most formally choreographed moment of collective worship we have — an entire district of the church, performing unison aloud — and most of us have never been told what the word we're shouting means, or which psalm we're quoting when we shout it.

Hosanna is Hebrew — hoshia-na: "save now" — and it comes from one specific verse: "Save now, I beseech thee, O LORD... Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the LORD" (Psalm 118:25–26). Hosanna is not, at its root, a cheer. It is a petition — the cry of a people asking, together, right now, to be saved — which the crowds of the triumphal entry raised with palm branches in their hands, and which we raise with white handkerchiefs (the palms' descendants) at the door of every new house of the Lord. And now look at which psalm the shout lives in, because Psalm 118 turns out to contain this entire site's theology in one song: it is the psalm of the rejected cornerstone — "the stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner" (118:22) — sung at the dedication of buildings squared to that very Stone; it is the psalm of the opened gate — "open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them" (118:19); and, astonishingly, it is the psalm of the bound offering: "God is the LORD, which hath shewed us light: bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar" (118:27). The cornerstone, the gate, the light, the altar-bound sacrifice, and the corporate cry of save now — one psalm, and the church shouts its refrain, three times three, at every dedication. The Hosanna Shout is a whole congregation binding itself to the altar and petitioning, as one voice, for the salvation that only comes to the gathered.

Which raises the only question that matters for a people with a dedication on the calendar: how does a congregation become capable of that shout — not the choreography, which takes a minute to learn, but the one voice, which the choreography assumes? The saints of Kirtland answered that question across the winter of 1835–36, in the best-documented spiritual preparation campaign in our history — and their answer is a playbook any ward and stake can still run.

First, they reconciled

Begin with the practice that made everything else possible, because the Kirtland saints did not approach their dedication as a harmonious people. The months before March 1836 were full of real friction: the Twelve carried grievances from Zion's Camp and its aftermath; feelings between Joseph and several of the brethren were strained; and in December 1835, Joseph and his own brother William had come to actual blows — a fistfight in the family, weeks before the dedication of the house of the Lord.

And here is what they did about it: they held formal reconciliation meetings. In January 1836, grievances were aired face to face — confessions made, forgiveness asked and granted — with Joseph himself seeking the forgiveness of the Twelve, and receiving William's broken-hearted confession, and embracing him. The presiding quorums of the church refused to approach the altar carrying accusations against one another; the Lord's own pre-altar instruction — "first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift" (Matthew 5:23–24) — was run as institutional policy, and leaders went first: it was the presidency confessing, not the membership being scolded. The single most important sentence in the whole Kirtland preparation is this one: before the house was dedicated, the people were — grudge by named grudge, brother by embraced brother. The fire of April fell on a congregation that had spent January forgiving.

Then, they purified

Through the late winter, pursuant to the Olive Leaf's own commandments — "sanctify yourselves... cleanse your hands and your feet before me" (D&C 88:74, 139–141) — the quorums received the preparatory ordinances of that era: washings, anointings, blessings, the washing of feet; the body of the priesthood, systematically made clean before the petition was offered.

And mark what happened during the purifying, because it corrects our whole expectation of how these seasons work: on January 21, 1836 — two months before the dedication — in an anointing meeting in the unfinished temple, "the heavens were opened upon us," and Joseph beheld the celestial kingdom, and his brother Alvin in it, and received the revelation of God's mercy for all who die without the gospel (D&C 137) — one of the most doctrinally important visions of the Restoration, given not at the dedication but in the preparation for it. The tarrying was already burning. The saints did not wait for the appointed day to receive; the appointed day was the summit of a season that had been pouring for weeks — which is the standing promise to every preparing congregation since: sanctify yourselves for the petition, and do not be surprised when the answer starts arriving early.

The sacrifice in the walls

The house itself was the district's altar, and everyone's offering was visibly in it. For three years a poor, gathered people had built beyond their means — Joseph laboring in the stone quarry; men raising walls with rifles stacked within reach against the mobs; the whole community subscribing labor and substance it could not spare. And the detail Kirtland is remembered by belongs to the sisters: the women of the church brought their china and glassware — household treasures, wedding dishes — to be crushed and worked into the exterior plaster, so that the temple's walls would glitter in the sun. Their best things, ground fine, shining in the building. When the congregation assembled in March, they assembled inside their own sacrifice — every wall holding somebody's crockery, every timber somebody's donated week — and the fire, when it came, came down on an altar the whole people had built with their own surrendered goods. Cooperative fire falls on cooperative offerings; it always has; and the Kirtland walls preached it in broken porcelain.

They studied, and they sang, in advance

The winter was also a school. The School of the Elders ran through the cold months — the body learning together, doctrine and languages and the things of the kingdom, one accord built in the classroom before it was asked for in the assembly. And the dedication's music was prepared the same way: W. W. Phelps wrote "The Spirit of God" for the occasion, and the saints learned it beforehand — so that when it rang out at the dedication (where it has closed every dedicatory service since), it was not a hymn sight-read from a page but a song a people already carried, sung as owners. They walked into the house knowing what would be prayed and ready to sing what would be sung — prepared voices, prepared minds, one accord rehearsed into the body by the three-strand method itself: taught, repeated, and ripened all winter.

They left no one outside

On March 27, 1836, somewhere near a thousand saints packed the house — every seat, the aisles, the stands — and people were still turned away at the doors. And the leaders of the church did something that tells you what they believed about assemblies: they repeated the entire dedication — the full service, prayer and all — on March 31, for those who could not fit the first time. The whole body would participate, or the participation was not complete; no saint's exclusion was acceptable to the God being petitioned, whose fire was being asked to fall on the house — all of it. Every modern dedication broadcast, every rebroadcast, every stake center opened as an extension of a distant temple, is March 31's direct descendant: the same conviction, scaled by technology — the assembly is not whole until everyone who would come, can.

The day, and the season

The dedication day itself was kept as a fast. The sacrament was administered — the loaf and the cup, the many made one at the table, hours before the shout. The dedicatory prayer — given to Joseph by revelation, our Section 109 — petitioned in so many words for what this whole series has called the third baptism: "let thy house be filled, as with a rushing mighty wind, with thy glory... let the anointing of thy ministers be sealed upon them with power from on high... let thy glory rest down upon thy people" (109:15, 35–37). And then the shout — the first Hosanna Shout of this dispensation, three times three, sealing the prayer.

And the fire did not treat the afternoon as the finish line. That evening, at the priesthood meeting in the temple, the sound came — "like the sound of a rushing mighty wind, which filled the temple"; the congregation rose as one; many spoke in tongues, prophesied, saw visions; and the neighbors came running because the temple appeared to be glowing — people in the streets reported a pillar of light resting on the house. The pentecostal season ran for days: angels in the assemblies, the gifts poured out through the week — and its summit came seven days later, on Sunday, April 3rd, behind the veils of the pulpit, when the Lord himself stood on the breastwork and the keys of the dispensation came down. The dedication was never a session. It was the opening of a season — the door of a house that, once opened, stayed open for everything heaven had been waiting to deliver.

The playbook

So there it is — the whole Kirtland method, runnable by any household, ward, and stake with a dedication approaching, in one line: reconcile first, purify together, sacrifice visibly, study and sing in advance, leave no one outside, fast, shout — and expect a season, not a session.

Reconcile first: a congregation's most Kirtland act in the weeks before a dedication is a reconciliation season — every grudge named and released, every strained ministering relationship visited, leaders modeling the confessing, Matthew 5:23–24 preached with a date attached — because the one voice of the shout is manufactured in advance, apology by apology. Purify: repentance sought as a body, worthiness pursued as an invitation and not an audit, and the tarrying entered with expectation — Kirtland's heavens opened in January. Sacrifice: find the china for the plaster — the shared fast, the joint offering, the service rendered together — so the assembled people sit inside something they built. Study and sing: read the dedicatory prayers as families and quorums until everyone knows what will be asked; learn the anthem's story so the singing is owned. Leave no one outside: the drifted family, the widow without a ride, the member nobody has seen since the temple closed — a month is enough to gather every sheep to the broadcast, and the Kirtland principle is that the amplitude depends on the wholeness of the house. Fast on the day; come to the table; and when the moment arrives, shout the old petition knowing what you are saying — hoshia-na, save now — a whole district, bound to the altar with cords, crying as one voice for the salvation that has only ever been poured on the gathered.

And then keep the season. The saints of 1836 were poorer than your ward, rawer than your stake, weeks removed from fistfights and lawsuits — and they forgave and washed and sang their way into the brightest outpouring of this dispensation, with its summit not at the dedication but a week after it, when the house had proven it would stay filled. The pattern has never been revoked; the prayer is still Section 109's; the shout still quotes the cornerstone's own psalm. Prepare the fold. Bind the sacrifice. Gather everyone.

Save now, we beseech thee — hosanna, hosanna, hosanna, to God and the Lamb.

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Let thy house be filled, as with a rushing mighty wind, with thy glory.