psalm 97: the lord reigns - easy to understand, hard to believe - 18th sunday A

"The Lord is king, let the earth rejoice."  In other translations, it is translated as, the Lord reigns.  And God's reign is not just in Israel, God's kingship is not just with his chosen people.  It reaches as far as the many islands, reaching as far as the farthest corner of the world.

Psalm 97 is easy to understand – the Lord reigns.  The problem is it is hard to believe.

Does the Lord indeed reign over all the earth; does he rule at all; is God in control; does he direct the course of world events; does he govern the world as the psalm says sitting on a throne whose foundation is justice and righteousness?  Is there really a God who reigns?  Can anyone here feel that God's reign has any impact at all?  Or is it stifled and overwhelmed by the evil that surrounds us from disasters to diseases, from war to hunger, from normalized corruptions then, to normalized killings now, from our struggles with our weakness with our own personal faults and hidden sins.  Does God reign?

Psalm 97 is a psalm that follows immediately the psalms written in Exile, psalms which expressed the sentiments of a people living in exile.  These psalms are full of the pain.  Israel had lost their land, their homes and families, they had lost their king, their temple, their pride and dignity as a people.  And now it seems they have also lost their God.  In this context, it was therefore a struggle to pray psalm 97.  It is a prayer too difficult to mean.

Those of us who pray the breviary may have also come across a similar feeling – when our situation, our context and especially our emotions do not match the words we utter in prayer – praying the joyful mysteries of the rosary when the internal disposition is sorrowful; singing the gloria in a life and in a world burdened by so many cares, burdened by so many difficulties; praising God for his reign on all when we could hardly muster holding at bay our pride or curbing our temper; proclaiming God is king when everywhere God is belittled and God is set aside.

And yet we force ourselves to pray, we force ourselves to sing, we force ourselves to proclaim.  Our prayer becomes a statement of faith, our singing becomes an act of defiance to the world and its values, and our proclamation becomes our hope. 

Today we celebrate the feast of the transfiguration of our Lord, to recall the event when the Lord showed the glory of his divinity to disciples burdened by the thought of his suffering and death.  It was more than just a statement of faith, it was more than just an act of defiance to what the world values and it was more than just a proclamation of hope - for it was what it really is – the Lord reigns. It was just a short glimpse but it was meant to encourage them and us to never give up saying, and believing and acting . . . the Lord reigns, the Lord is king.