Fling wide the door,
Unbar the gate;
The King of Glory
Comes in state.
Have you ever flung a door wide open?
I accidentally did this a few days ago. My hands were full of groceries. I gripped. I pulled. And the spring tensioning rod ripped off the door, and thrown off balance, I and my groceries almost sprawled across the front steps. (To be fair, it wasn’t a wild flinging that I did! I’d noticed the day before that one of the tension rod’s screws was missing and the other was loose and floppy. Nevertheless, it was almost me who flopped.)
Loose screws aside, flinging a door is a sign of great passion!
Probably more of us have flung more doors in anger than excitement (Oops); nevertheless, this hymn sings powerfully of the excited brand of door flinging. Something good – momentous – is happening.
The closest equivalence I can think of is a soldier coming home. Imagine a World War II scene. Mom is baking a pie, and she looks out the window as a car pulls up at the end of a long country driveway. A tall lean figure in uniform tugs a duffel bag out of the backseat he’d been hitchhiking in. Mom squints. Her breath catches. Then she screams, “Bobby’s home!”
And a door gets flung off the hinges and mom, with dad behind her, rush out to meet their long-lost son.
That’s probably what the Father of the prodigal did? “My boy! He’s home!” And while they probably didn’t have joyfully creaking screen doors on long front porches in an ancient Israel, I’ll bet that there was nevertheless some front door flinging going on as the father proclaimed, “My son who was lost has been found.”
The question is: Why does this hymn talk about front-door-flinging? It’s because the King of Glory is coming. When Jesus first came, angels rejoiced. Shepherds hurried to Bethlehem. And wisemen traversed wide deserts to see where the star led. When Jesus first came, he was greeted as young man in Jerusalem with crowds of “Hosanna!”
Christ’s coming brought a promise of peace and hope. That’s why there was such door-flinging joy.
And yet, it was only a promise. A first hint. As long as sinful humans live on a sinful planet, the majestic overtures will only be hints to the greater glory to come.
Wait … Read that last phrase again. “The greater glory to come.” This is a future tense statement. Christmas and Palm Sunday and any door-flinging greeting of Jesus on earth was past-tense. It happened two thousand years ago.
But … this song doesn’t say, “Flung wide the door.” It’s not past tense. It’s anticipatory! It’s future-focused. And what’s the forward focused event worthy of flinging doors? It’s Christ’s coming again.
Is that your focus when you contemplate the second coming of Christ? This hymn invites us to “raise a shout of holy mirth.” Are you looking forward to the Savior’s victory with holy hilarity? Are you celebrating the “Son of bliss who fills our lives and makes us his”?
That’s what Advent is all about! It reminds us that this world is joyfully temporary. And why do I just “joyful” and “temporary” in the same sentence? Because something better’s coming!
In Christ’s Love,
a guy who doesn’t
like door flinging.
(When I flung my door recently,
I had to spend thirty minutes
tracking down new screws for
the stripped holes in my door)
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