December 16: The King of Glory is Coming to You
♫ Music:
Day 20 - Friday, December 16
Title: THE KING OF GLORY IS COMING TO YOU
Scripture #1: Zechariah 9:9
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he.
Scripture #2: 1 Timothy 3:16
By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, was vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
Poetry & Poet:
“Coming to a City Near You”
by Carol Penner
Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you.
Jesus comes to the gate, to the synagogue,
to houses prepared for wedding parties,
to the pools where people wait to be healed,
to the temple where lambs are sold,
to gardens, beautiful in the moonlight.
He comes to the governor’s palace.
Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you,
to new subdivisions and trailer parks,
to penthouses and basement apartments,
to the factory, the hospital and the Cineplex,
to the big box outlet centre and to churches,
with the same old same old message,
unchanged from the beginning of time.
Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you
with his Good News and…
Hope erupts! Joy springs forth!
The very stones cry out,
“Hosanna in the highest,
blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
The crowds jostle and push,
they can’t get close enough!
People running alongside flinging down their coats before him!
Jesus, the parade marshal, waving, smiling.
The paparazzi elbow for room,
looking for that perfect picture for the headline,
“The Man Who Would Be King”.
Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you
and gets the red carpet treatment.
Children waving real palm branches from the florist,
silk palm branches from Wal-mart,
palms made from green construction paper.
Hosannas ringing in churches, chapels, cathedrals,
in monasteries, basilicas and tent-meetings.
King Jesus, honored in a thousand hymns
in Canada, Cameroon, Calcutta and Canberra.
We LOVE this great big powerful capital K King Jesus
coming in glory and splendor and majesty
and awe and power and might.
Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you.
Kingly, he takes a towel and washes feet.
With majesty, he serves bread and wine.
With honour, he prays all night.
With power, he puts on chains.
Jesus, King of all creation, appears in state
in the eyes of the prisoner, the AIDS orphan, the crack addict,
asking for one cup of cold water,
one coat shared with someone who has none,
one heart, yours,
and a second mile.
Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you.
Can you see him?
BUMPING INTO JESUS ON OUR WAY UP THE STAIRS
Maybe it’s the academic in me, but I’ve said (and heard it said), “I don’t want a big house, I just want a house big enough to have a library with a ladder in it.” Of course, my closest point of reference to “a library with a ladder in it” is the castle in Beauty and the Beast—no big house, indeed.
I thought of this as I looked at Anna Freeman Bentley’s eight-panel painting pictured here in Chichester Cathedral in West Sussex, England. The spiral staircase looks straight out of Beast’s modest home.
Of course, when I pause to think it through, my claim is absurd. In all the dwellings the world over, how would any with this spare room not be “big.” When I step outside of my own thought stream, I see this more clearly.
When I first took in the painted staircase, I imagined myself moving up its rungs, spiraling higher and higher, ascending into heaven. Imagine my surprise to learn that the title of the work is “Descent.”
It’s in moments like these that I, that we, are invited into our own small Copernican Revolutions, where we get to remember, as Eugene Peterson reminds, “God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.”
When I view Freeman Bentley’s staircase from my own unquestioned standpoint, I see it as a staircase to heaven. But, Freeman Bentley’s “Descent” calls me outside of my own perspective.
Advent does this. In a moving-on-up world, Advent is a story of God-stooped-low. Penner’s poem suggests:
We LOVE this great big powerful capital K King Jesus
coming in glory and splendor and majesty
and awe and power and might.
And it’s true: we do love “this great big powerful capital K King Jesus” but his descent into Jerusalem, where he received that “red carpet treatment,” was a descent all the same. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!” says Zechariah, “Behold, your king is coming to you.” Penner sings in harmony:
Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you
with his Good News and…
Hope erupts! Joy springs forth!
Is this good news? Well, it doesn’t feel this way if I’m bumping into Jesus, trying to clamor my way up the ladder he’s descending.
If I’m too proud to let the King wash my feet.
If I’m so powerful I want to call down fire on my neighbor.
If I want to keep the children, the blind, the outcast away from their King, then it won’t feel like good news at all.
“If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace,” Jesus weeps (Luke 19:42).
Peter tells Timothy, “Great is the mystery of godliness.” Great indeed, that God-the-Son condescends to the part of our town where you and I dare not go.
“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” (John 1:46a).
Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you.
But his only ascent that weekend was up Mount Calvary.
With power, he puts on chains.
Jesus, King of all creation, appears in state
in the eyes of the prisoner, the AIDS orphan, the crack addict,
asking for one cup of cold water,
one coat shared with someone who has none,
one heart, yours
Will you notice him? “Can you see him?”
Prayer:
Oh God, Creator of the universe, thank you for stooping close to me.
Son of Man, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage,” help me see when I seek my own advantage over others.
Holy Spirit, empower me to move in the direction of Christ, so I’m not bumping into Jesus on his way down the ladder, so that the Good News of Christ’s arrival always sounds like good news to me.
In Jesus’ name, the name to which “every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Amen.
Chase Andre, M.A.
Instructor in Communication Core and Digital Learning
Department of Communication Studies
Biola University
About the Artwork:
Descent
Anna Freeman Bentley
2011
Oil on eight panels
1100 cm x 182 cm (base) tapering to 91.5 cm (top)
Installed in the North Transept of the
Chichester Cathedral
Chichester, England
In the painting Descent by artist Anna Freeman Bentley, the viewer is confronted with a towering staircase that produces its own visual rhythm as it curls upon itself. Observed up close, the panels reveal expressive brush marks of thinly applied paint, suggesting an immediacy and exuberance of process. The sides of the panels reveal vertical drips, signaling a horizontally executed painting process, and the back exposes a scaffold support, shifting the painting more towards the sculptural. The scale of the work (about thirty-six feet high), and its site-specific engagement with church surroundings, contextualizes Descent with the biblical story of Jacob’s ladder, despite there being no depiction of Jacob asleep or any rendering of ascending and/or descending angels. The painting tapers to a narrow top, where we glimpse an opening above. From one perspective, the painting reaches up to touch the untouchable—stretching from earth to heaven. The artist explains that “Descent questions whether the central image of Genesis 28:10–22 (Jacob’s Dream) is best conceived as a ‘stairway to heaven.’ The ‘ladder’ is let down into Jacob’s physical and moral wilderness. Rather than depending on the shaky foundations of Jacob's past actions and current circumstances, affirmation and encouragement are anchored in ‘the Lord [who] stood above it’ (Genesis 28:13). This is a stairway from Heaven.”
https://thevcs.org/jacobs-ladder/stairway-heaven?first=1401
About the Artist:
Anna Freeman Bentley (b. 1982) is an artist based in London. Her painting practice explores the built environment, architecture and interiors, inviting emotive, psychological, and semiotic readings of space. With an intense, regularly dark palette and energetic yet often intricate brushwork, her paintings depict all manner of places—derelict factories and warehouses, baroque buildings, shops, cafes, and modern industrial architecture. With a particular focus on the relationships between the design of architecture, its function and use, how these uses change over time, and how streets, areas, communities, and cities decline, regenerate, and gentrify, Freeman Bentley’s practice documents the changing vocabulary of architecture and captures some of the complex dynamics, atmospheres, politics, and states of mind that these places engender. From the needs and desires of individuals to those of the different communities that make up urban life in cities and towns today, her paintings open up questions about displacement and replacement, decay and rebirth, change and transformation, public and private space, social and economic mobility, aspiration and desire, buildings and people. Seeking to go beyond the visible and tangible and to explore ideas of faith and the sacred within space, Freeman Bentley’s work looks through the fabric of our physical environment to ask about what lies behind, into the dialogue between matter and spirit. Freeman Bentley studied painting at Chelsea College of Art and Design before graduating with an M.A. from the Royal College of Art in 2010. She has had solo exhibitions in London, Berlin, Venice, and Los Angeles; residencies with the Florence Trust and Pied à Terre Michelin-starred restaurant in London and in Italy at Palazzo Monti, Brescia; and participated in group exhibitions including Bloomberg New Contemporaries, 2009, and the Prague Biennale 5, 2011.
https://www.frestoniangallery.com/artists/80-anna-freeman-bentley/overview/
About the Music:
“Rejoice, The Lord is King” from the album Magnificat
About the Performers:
Southwestern Seminary Oratorio Choir conducted by Dr. C. David Keith featuring The Festival Brass, Dr. Albert Travis (organ), and Lynn Eustis (soprano)
Southwestern Seminary Oratorio Choir is part of the School of Church Music and Worship located on the campus of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, located in Fort Worth, Texas. It was established in 1908 and is one of the largest seminaries in the world.
https://swbts.edu/school/school-of-church-music-and-worship/
Dr. C. David Keith is a conductor of choral and orchestral music, a professor, and an adjudicator for choirs. Keith served as dean of the Townsend School of Music at Mercer University until his retirement in 2022. Dr. Keith was a member of the faculty at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for twenty-seven years, where he served as chair of the department of conducting and ensemble activities and the Robert L. Burton Chair of Conducting at Southwestern’s School of Church Music in Fort Worth, Texas. In addition, he served as chorus master for the Fort Worth Symphony Chorus and conductor of the Fort Worth Baroque Ensemble, a professional ensemble dedicated to the performance of Baroque choral/orchestral works. Keith received his B.S. from William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, and his master of music and doctor of musical arts degree from Southwestern Seminary. Dr. Keith has served as conductor and adjudicator of choirs in the United States, Europe, Asia, Russia, and Australia. Under his leadership, the chorus and orchestra in Fort Worth, Texas, have recorded fourteen critically acclaimed compact discs.
https://music.mercer.edu/faculty/c-david-keith.cfm
https://www.mercercluster.com/article/2021/12/david-keith-to-retire-as-school-of-music-dean-search-committee-formed-to-find-replacement
Dr. Albert L. Travis is the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Organ at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He served on the faculty of the School of Church Music from 1977 to 2008. Dr. Travis has been the organist of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth since 1978. He has degrees from Oklahoma Baptist University, Syracuse University, and the University of Michigan. Dr. Travis can be heard on a compact-disc recording playing the Jongen Symphonie Concertante and the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony with the Fort Worth Symphony. Dr. Travis maintains an active schedule as hymn festival leader, improvisation workshop clinician, arranger, and composer.
https://www.ecspublishing.com/composers/t/albert-l-travis.html
Soprano Lynn Eustis is currently associate professor of voice at Boston University. From 1999 to 2012, she was associate professor of voice and director of graduate studies in music at the University of North Texas. She holds degrees from Florida State University (D.M.), the Curtis Institute of Music (M.M.), and Bucknell University (B.M.). She has sung over thirty operatic roles and appears regularly as a concert soloist with numerous professional organizations. Dr. Eustis has published several books including The Singer's Ego: Finding Balance Between Music and Life and The Teacher’s Ego: When Singers Become Voice Teachers.
http://www.lynneustis.com/
About the Composer:
Jonathan Willcocks (b. 1953) is an English composer and conductor. Willcocks is currently musical director of the Guildford Choral Society, the Chichester Singers, the Leith Hill Musical Festival, and the professional chamber orchestra Southern Pro Musica. His freelance conducting and workshop engagements in recent seasons have taken him to many parts of the world, including the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Singapore, China, and most of the European countries. Although his career now focuses principally on his conducting and composition work, in the past he has held major posts in general and specialist music education.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Willcocks
http://www.jonathanwillcocks.com/London
About the Poetry & Poet:
Carol Penner is a professor, pastor, worship leader, and poet who works in the Mennonite tradition. She currently teaches theology at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. In addition to writing music and poetry, she also develops resources and material for other worship leaders.
https://leadinginworship.com/
https://carolpenner.typepad.com/leadinginworship/poems/.
About the Devotion Author:
Chase Andre, M.A.
Instructor in Communication Core and Digital Learning
Department of Communication Studies
Biola University
Chase Andre is an Instructor in Communication Core and Digital Learning for Biola’s Department of Communication Studies and holds a master's degree from Fuller Theological Seminary in intercultural studies with an emphasis in just peacemaking, and graduated with a bachelor's degree from Biola. Teaching in Biola’s Department of Communication Studies since 2014, Chase's integrative approach to education helps students practically follow Jesus's teachings in how they live, speak, work, and act — particularly as peacemakers and reconcilers at the sites of intercultural conflict. He has researched and engaged in fair housing advocacy, communication in the global, networked society, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s communicative action. Outside the classroom, Chase serves business and nonprofit leaders as a communication consultant. He speaks at national conferences, and leads workshops and retreats. Chase, his wife Alicia Miller Andre, and their two kids—Silas and Nariah—live in Los Angeles, where overpriced coffee and underpriced tacos are a regular part of their diet.