I love going to the theater. My girls and I try to attend the annual performances at our local high school. (We even took the little girls this year, they were so cute!!) We have seen "Beauty and The Beast" and "The Little Mermaid" at the Muny. We saw "Hamilton", "The Lion King", and "Wicked" at the Fox. We saw my favorite- "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat-" at both venues. We loved each one.
The atmosphere surrounding live theater is bubbling with nervous energy. The stage crew is bustling to get props arranged for their proper scenes. The orchestra is softly playing the soon-to-be featured show tunes. The actors are going over lines one last time. The audience is seated and ready, pouring over their playbills. They are only partially aware of the activity around them, because everything is happening behind a closed curtain.
One such curtain is called a scrim. A scrim curtain is a "specialized, open-weave gauzy fabric used in theater and film that appears solid/opaque when lit from the front, but becomes transparent when lit from behind. It is used for stage magic, quick release, dreamlike effects, or as a surface for lighting projections." {AI overview from a simple Google search} One of my favorite scrim curtains (and the internet agrees) is from "Wicked".
This is the Ozian map. It highlights all the places where the story will unfold. In the center of the map is the location most important, The Emerald City. There are likely some purists in the audience--those who insist on reading the book first--who know exactly what the map is portraying. However, the average theater-goer might only have a guess how any of this is connected. And that's actually the point.
This kind of curtain is meant to be a foreshadowing. It's meant to draw the audience in with symbols, characters, and ideas to provoke thoughts and questions, to peak interest. It's a foretelling of the show to come. When the curtain opens, the performance itself will answer the questions, flesh out the thoughts, and (hopefully) bring a satisfying conclusion. When the crowd looks back to the opening curtain after watching the show, these projected objects will now be obvious, familiar, revealed.
When I wrote the Heaven's Royal Sacrifice series in April of 2025, I researched a lot about tapestries. They work very similarly to a scrim curtain. There are images woven into a tapestry that are meant to tell a story. (Click the link to read the original series.) In Exodus 26:31-33, God instructed Moses (who then instructed the crafters) to weave a tapestry or a curtain of "blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, and finely spun linen with cherubim worked into it." The curtain was displayed inside the Tabernacle, separating the holy place from the Holy of Holies. It would be seen every day by many people, because the Tabernacle was the hub of activity for the Israelites.
It was a scrim curtain of sorts, meant to draw God's chosen people in with symbols, characters, and ideas. Because colors in the ancient near east carried a meaning, the Israelites were meant to see the blue as heaven, the purple as royalty, the red as sacrifice. Observers might have had an inkling (especially those purists who "read the book" 😉), but they only had a shadow of how this would play out.
The world bubbled with excitement in the meantime. Prophets foretold the coming Messiah. Musicians sang of the One who would come to save. History was written down as a playbill, describing the players and the Star to come.
Then one day, over a thousand years later, the symbols on the curtain came to life. Jesus was born. He lived. He loved. He obeyed His Father. He performed miracles. He was sentenced to die. At dawn, when the sky is the purest blue, King Jesus took the stage for the reason He was born....to die. And according to the gospel of Mark, the Temple's scrim curtain opened from top to bottom.
"Jesus let out a loud cry and breathed His last. Then the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom." Mark 15:37-38
No need any longer for a dividing curtain with projected symbols. No need to wonder what story the tapestry is trying to tell. Jesus answered all of the questions woven into the Tabernacle's tapestry. He is heaven's Royal sacrifice. Obvious now. Familiar. Revealed.
God was so kind to them then, giving them so many clues that the Savior is coming. Those of us who live on this side of the cross might feel a little jealous, missing the excitement the eyewitnesses must have felt. Resurrection Sunday is wistful as we remember back to something we didn't experience. But God is so kind to us now too. He gives us glimpses of the majesty of the original tapestry. The beautiful colors of blue, purple, and scarlet displayed as a reminder that It is Finished. A reminder that this sky will also one day open to reveal the final act, Jesus, King forever--Faithful, True, Just Judge, Word of God--returning. Praise Him now and forever.
photo credit: Cheryl Keith❤
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