Advent, Day 7: Lift Up Your Heads

LOOK: Ps:24//7 by Marco Cazzulini

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Based on a text that’s traditionally read during Advent and on Palm Sunday, this digital artwork by Marco Cazzulini is part of a larger series on the Psalms, which he has compiled in a limited-edition book. Cazzulini writes,

‘Lift up your heads, O you gates; and be lifted up, you age-abiding doors, that the King of glory may come in’ (AMPC). The language of the Psalms is deeply rooted in time and place, experience and tradition. It is likely to be so here. Nevertheless, these words are not hidebound to their history. This verse gives wings to the imagination and can be transposed onto other things.

This triumphal and celebratory cry ‘Lift up your heads, O you gates’ seems to herald the entry of Christ into the vaunted place of His dominion. That which is closed, opens, and that which is worn, patinated by age, is commanded to lift up its head and acknowledge the arrival of the King of Glory. He who stands, and waits, at the doors of our own closed hearts, worn out by bad experience, shut through unbelief, locked by fear, ruined by sin, is the same King of Glory. He comes, knocks, but never forces entry, and on His ‘coming in’ we are lifted up by His own virtuous majesty. His entry transforms and illumines. Jesus comes in divine eminence and meek humanity. He wears His crown with humility and His presence welcomed is like opening a door to a fresh scented breeze.

Great lofty cathedral interiors soaring into the void inform this artwork. Caught in the half light, their ceilings dissolve into a penumbral space as if no roof or limit existed. Their naves running into infinity, their transepts stretching into the unknown.

Bearing equal creative weight is the image of a path running through a grove of tall trees with light filtering through the canopy, camouflaging shapes and creating deep shadows. 

Follow the artist on Instagram @marcocazzuliniart.

For more on Psalm 24 as a whole, used in ancient times as an entrance liturgy for processions into the Jerusalem temple, see this commentary by Old Testament scholar Rolf Jacobson. “The poem,” Jacobson writes, “describes the contrasting natures of the God who enters into human space and those humans who are able to meet the advent of this God. Psalm 24 is about the advent of human beings into the presence of God, and the mutual advent of the King of glory into the presence of ‘those who seek the face of God.’”

Think of this world as a temple or your heart as a temple—that dark doorway of Cazzulini’s image the entrance—and meditate on Christ’s coming into it. Do you need to fling open the gates to let him in?

LISTEN: “Lift Up Your Heads” (original title: “Machet die Tore Weit”) | Text: Psalm 24:7–9 | Music by Andreas Hammerschmidt, 17th century, arr. Robert Field | Performed by Oasis Chorale, dir. Wendell Nisly, on Favorites, 2017

Lift up your heads, ye gates!
O eternal doors,
Lift up high!
And the king of great glory shall come in.
Who is this king of great glory?
He is the Lord, strong and mighty in battle.
Sing Hosanna in the highest!

The German Baroque composer Andreas Hammerschmidt (1612–1675) served as organist and choir director at the Protestant Johanniskirche (Church of St. John) in Zittau from 1639 until his death. He wrote the Advent motet “Machet die Tore Weit” for his community there, setting Martin Luther’s German translation of Psalm 24:7–9. Oasis Chorale sings the piece in English. To hear the original German, click here.