The Advent theme for this Sunday is about proclaiming readiness for a return from exile. Here at the bottom is the symbol for Earth, or ground. Hope is found outward and upward. The industrial-mechanical view of nature has removed God from the picture. The exploitation of the globe becomes the end of the human's physical activity.
Nature is handed over to the forces of secularism.
The roles of king and priest were only a few thousand years old in Jesus' day because empires had only been begun a few thousand years ago and most of those empires had to make do without much writing. Empire was still very much an idea that was under development from the concept of tribe. The writing of Hebrew scripture, which tells us so much about ancient empires, was only about 700 years old in the time of Jesus, developed only after the Hebrew people could settle down in one place. For the first thirty years of my life, the God I knew was a God of the mountains and the night sky, a God of nature in her vast, unpredictable mystery. In my early 30's, I was opened to the God of the church and to issues of call and faithfulness.