Lift Up Your Heads

A procession winds up a hill towards the gates of a city. Singers lead the way. Someone at the front cups his hands and shouts up at the closed gates. Lift up your heads! And from the wall, a voice shouts back. Who is this King of glory?

This is Psalm twenty-four. Its title calls it a psalm of David, the shepherd king of Jerusalem. Many readers, Jewish and Christian, have connected it with the day David brought the ark of the covenant up into Jerusalem, with trumpets, shouting and dancing. The ark was the sacred chest that stood for God's presence among his people. The psalm sounds like it was written to be sung on the way up the hill: one group asking questions, another answering, and at the end a call at the gates. It was sung in the temple for centuries afterward.

The song begins with the whole world. “The earth is the Lord's, with its fullness; the world, and those who dwell in it. For he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the floods.” Everything belongs to God. The mountains, the oceans, the cities, the fields. The people in them. You and me. And then the singers ask a question as they climb. “Who may ascend to the Lord's mountain? Who may stand in his holy place?” If God made everything, and he is that great and that holy, who could possibly walk up and stand before him?

The answer comes back. “He who has clean hands and a pure heart; who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood, and has not sworn deceitfully.” Clean hands: what you do. A pure heart: what you want and love. Not worshipping fake gods, not lying. That is a high bar. Who has hands that clean, a heart that pure, all the time? The psalm says such a person will receive a blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. And it adds, this is the generation of those who seek him. The ones who keep looking for God's face.

And now the procession reaches the top. The great old gates are shut. The leader calls out. “Lift up your heads, you gates! Be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the King of glory will come in.” It's as if the gates are too low for a King this great, and must stretch themselves taller. A voice from the gate asks, “Who is the King of glory?” And the crowd roars back, “The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.” Again: Lift up your heads, you gates! Again: Who is this King of glory? And the final answer: “The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.” Christians have sung this psalm at Advent for centuries, as a song for getting ready. The King of glory is coming. Open the gates. Open your heart.

In Jerusalem's temple, the Levites sang a special psalm each day of the week. An ancient Jewish book called the Mishnah, written down around two hundred years after Christ, lists them. On the first day of the week, Sunday, the psalm was this one: The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof. So the temple's week began by declaring that the whole earth belongs to God.

Lift up your heads. That's Psalm twenty-four. The whole earth belongs to God, and the King of glory is coming in. So here is a question to carry with you. If Jesus is the King of glory, what gate in your life might need to open wider to let him in?