Celebrating the lordship of God in the liturgy
Psalm 47:2-3, 6-7, 8-9. January 21, 2023 - Saturday, 2nd Week
Psalm 47 celebrates the lordship of God of Israel through liturgy in the temple in Jerusalem. Liturgy is a prescribed form of worship. In our Church, we worship the Lord together in the liturgical celebrations of the Eucharist. Many priests, religious, and even some laity worship the Lord on daily bases using the liturgy of the hours, also known as Divine Office.
During the liturgy, both words and actions matter. The psalmist declares that the Lord “is the great king over all the earth” and invites the participants of the liturgy to clap hands, shout, blast trumpet, and sing. These actions performed by their bodies are a response to the message they heard. The proclamation of God’s reign performed in liturgy brings incredible joy to the people.
In the contemporary world, where most of us live as if God did not exist, psalm 47 may sound strange. We usually celebrate the enthronement of our kings - individual politicians, political parties, and different sorts of celebrities which we support and idolise. Not only that. In an age when religion is often portrayed as something detrimental to human development and freedom, why would anyone celebrate God’s kingship with joy?
The history of Israel was marked by centuries of oppression. At the beginning of their nationhood, they were oppressed by Egyptian Empire. Then, after a relatively short time of independence, other empires came to plunder, destroy, and control - the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and finally, the Romans. And so, if the human empires are acting like wild beasts, one dreams about a kingdom that is run directly by the Lord whose steadfast love is everlasting.
This dream is at the heart of Jesus’ message about the reign of God. The Gospel narrates what happens when the Lord comes to reign. “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor” (Luke 7:22). Those incredible tokens of God’s reign in the lives of individual people make us long for more. We hope and pray that God’s lordship takes over all the spheres of human lives, namely we look forward to the new heaven and new earth described for us in the Book of Revelation (see Rev 21-22).
We celebrate the enthronement of Jesus, as Pantocrator, the Ruler of all, on the solemnity of Christ’s ascension at the right hand of the Father and on the feast of Christ’s the King that ends our liturgical year. During both feasts, the Church enacts in liturgy what one day will become evident to all, that Christ has ascended far above all heavens (Eph 4:10) and his kingship is universal kingship of peace, justice, and love. This truth of our faith fills us with exuberant joy.