I am old enough to remember my early grade school classes beginning with the reading of a psalm. There was one psalm that I remember bothered me a bit, embarrassed me, somehow—one that I didn’t know what to make of. It was Psalm 24, the last part of it, in particular:
“Lift up your heads, O you gates;
be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.
Who is the King of glory?
The LORD strong and mighty,
The LORD mighty in battle…
Who is he, this King of glory?
The LORD Almighty—
he is the King of glory.”
In retrospect, I now think that part of what was bothering my child-heart was the direction of it—which direction the passage said the King was going. I do not recall it being read at my church, where an escapist theology shaped biblical teaching. I had nothing in my not-yet-very-well-formed Christian awareness, no category, for making sense of his coming in. I was sure that we would be the ones to leave, fleeing the earth, no matter how much it was “the LORD’s,” “founded by him upon the seas.” After all, we, if we were alive and remaining, would be “caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” (1 Thes. 4:17)
Most of my adulthood I have been blessed to have been transplanted into a restorational theological tradition which has transformatively reoriented my entire outlook. But it wasn’t till a handful of years ago that I heard somebody suggest that the Thessalonians passage envisioned people running out of the city to greet and celebrate the battle’s victor, and join him and his soldiers to parade back in to the city! The good sense of it caught me by surprise.
I have always been crazy about parades. And to have a daughter marching in the band is more excitement than I can contain and stand still and quietly. Daughter Stephanie, as well as her boyfriend, Garrett, march in the front rank of the Pitt Band (there’s a reason that the trombones “led the big parade”—they stick out so far in front!). University of Pittsburgh’s Varsity Marching Band flings abroad its jubilant fight songs from horns stabbing the air in speeding synchrony, as the metallic gold of instruments and uniforms glitter in the Saturday sun.
On Game Day at and around Heinz Field—which the Pitt Panthers share with our Sixburgh Steelers, one of the pregame band events is the Victory Parade. Two hundred-fifty band members, plus multiple sets of cheerleaders, the Pitt Panther, and often visiting personages (I once recognized Dan Marino in the parade) march several blocks through the tail-gaters and assembling, shouting fans, in to the stadium.
The first time I ever saw it, tears engulfed me as I took to heart the direction of the parade, the victory parade, in all its eye- and ear-dazzling splendor, its joyous collecting of us all, propelling the whole leaping, clapping, shouting, Pitt-gear festooned lot of us…in. As the old priest in Flannery O’Connor’s The Displaced Person gasps reverently as he gazes, mesmerized, at the farm’s peacock—“Jesus will come like that!”
What is the motion of Scripture? my former colleague, theologian Mike Williams, always asks. Is it ascent? Souls forsaking cloying earth to run after a God too pure to associated with it? No. It is descent—and not ours, but His. God always graciously coming to his people—and to his earth.
Granted—Pitt’s Victory Parade is so-named anticipatively, hopefully. Sometimes the band is the best part of Game Day’s show, and that not just because I am a band mom. Christians are those who hope for Christ’s coming, who watch and wait. We don’t wait in doubt of the outcome, but we do wait in the urgency and riskiness of the not-yet. We long for a glimpse of the gleaming gold that signals his coming, the martial signature of his conquest, and the shalom of his eternal cohabitation—“NOW the dwelling of God is with men…!”
But as one sometimes has to inquire, along the parade route, which way will the parade come, so it lends luster to our humble hope to learn that we are well-located to crane our necks to see the King of glory come in. In fact, we are so positioned to summon the very gates: “Lift up your heads!”
The other morning I found myself assigned to read Psalm 24. Hesitant puzzlement no longer attends the proceeding. Reading it afresh, I found that it gave voice to my deepest, most exuberant longing.
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Esther, Great article. As a
Thu, 02/12/2009 - 13:12 — Mike Farley (not verified)Esther,
Great article. As a trombone player who still longs to get on the uniform on crisp autumn nights, I know exactly the feeling you describe.
I wish that our churches could capture something of this dynamic in our worship. On every Lord's Day, we enter into worship for a special audience with the ascended and glorified King Jesus together with the whole church on earth in communion with the whole festal assembly in heaven. Ancient liturgies began with processions that had grand, glorious music, ministers in white albs and colorful stoles, others carrying crosses and lavishly decorated Bibles while the congregation thundered out a processional hymn or psalm. This was a Christian adaptation of the parades/processions of Israelites going up in joyful throngs to the Temple. We are preparing for that final victory parade with Jesus each week in worship. If only we could really have processions and grandeur that would really evoke and embody this reality. It would transform and enlarge our whole perspective on what's really happening when God gathers us for worship.
Mike: I joyfully second what
Thu, 02/12/2009 - 15:47 — Esther Meek (not verified)Mike: I joyfully second what you say here. I was wanting somehow to build all that into my post, but had already hit the word limit! I love the parade in Psalm 68. For years sitting in the choir loft watching families enter worship, I always wanted to recast that with a parade-like jubilance and ceremony that testified to the redeemed of the Lord both being redeemed and returning. Go trombones!
Hello, Esther! I have been
Sun, 03/22/2009 - 20:52 — Lisa Cadora (not verified)Hello, Esther! I have been longing so to catch up with you, and here you are on Common Grounds again. Hurray! "Escapist" theology vs. "Restorational" theology--very helpful designations, I must say. Thank you for that. I remember a Sunday School child crying and saying, "But I don't want to go to Heaven! What will there be to do all day but sit around a worship God?!" Somehow we both send and receive the message early on that our bodies and this earth are to be shed, transcended, cast off for some abstract, uncreaturely experience. Even a child can see that that is wrong.