Daily Lesson for November 19, 2019

Today’s Daily Lesson is Psalm 99:

1 The Lord is King;

let the people tremble; *

he is enthroned upon the cherubim;

let the earth shake.

2 The Lord is great in Zion; *

he is high above all peoples.

3 Let them confess his Name, which is great and awesome; *

he is the Holy One.

4 "O mighty King, lover of justice,

you have established equity; *

you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob."

5 Proclaim the greatness of the Lord our God

and fall down before his footstool; *

he is the Holy One.

6 Moses and Aaron among his priests,

and Samuel among those who call upon his Name, *

they called upon the Lord, and he answered them.

7 He spoke to them out of the pillar of cloud; *

they kept his testimonies and the decree that he gave them.

8 "O Lord our God, you answered them indeed; *

you were a God who forgave them,

yet punished them for their evil deeds."

9 Proclaim the greatness of the Lord our God

and worship him upon his holy hill; *

for the Lord our God is the Holy One.

We are coming to the end of the liturgical calendar and Sunday is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the year before the beginning of Advent. So the psalms for this week echo as a refrain leading up to Christ the King Day: “This is the King, strong and mighty to save, an arbiter of justice and equity in the world.”

I used to look skeptically at Christ the King. The monarchical language seemed both patriarchal and passé. In fact, I’m still uncomfortable with the gendered language of “king”.

But a day set aside to remember Christ’s righteous rule of the cosmos now speaks to me. Christ the King, set at the very end of the calendar, is a reminder of God’s justice and righteousness and the end of history. Jesus has set down on the throne, at the right hand of God, and to him belong the eternal judgments of this world, its nations, their leaders, and their misleaders. This is, indeed, good and hopeful news to the faint of heart. 

Desmond Tutu used to say, “This is a moral universe!”  It is!  Or, as Dr. King used to say, “The moral arc of the universe is long; but it bends towards justice.” It does. The moral arc of the universe bends towards Christ the King. 

Thanks be to God!