Psalm 99 Commentary

The Lectionary gives us two choices for a psalm lection on Transfiguration Sunday in Year A.  Both Psalm 2 and Psalm 99 work the same side of the street in terms of celebrating God as the ultimate King and then also the kings of Israel in Jerusalem who are God’s chosen representatives, who serve as proxies for Yahweh, Israel’s and the world’s truest King.  In this commentary we will focus on Psalm 99.

Probably the primary link the Lectionary sees between Psalm 99 and Jesus’s Transfiguration is that Jesus was revealed in that event as God, as the ultimate King of kings even before his death, resurrection, ascension, and reign at God’s right hand.  Jesus is the ultimate One whom we worship as directed by Psalm 99.

But, of course, Psalm 99 was written long before the incarnation of God’s Son in Jesus of Nazareth.  Therefore, originally all of the lofty rhetoric of this song was meant to apply to Jerusalem, to Mount Zion, to whoever was serving as Israel’s king at any given moment.  And if you think about it that way, you can see fairly easily why something like Psalm 99 might have caused some real eye-rolling in the Ancient Near East.

After all, Israel was not just obviously an important player in the geopolitical world of the time.  Compared to the splendors of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and the like, Israel could have been viewed as rather middling.  And “Mount” Zion was little more than a modest hill.  Look at any map of the Ancient Near East and note the size of nations like Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Mesopotamia.  And then see if you can pick out Israel on the map.  You can see it, of course, but it’s about the size of the state of Vermont.  It is dwarfed by the surrounding nations.  Ancient Israel was not the center of anyone’s attention.  Israel was not clearly the most important spot on Earth.

But Psalm 99 claims it is the center of everything, it is the most important place.  The Temple on Mount Zion and the king of Israel representing the King of the universe who sat atop the Mercy Seat on the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies was the theological center to everything you could name.  But surely this was a claim that struck some people as laughable.  And when it stopped seeming to be really funny, it was seen as ridiculously audacious.  These are arrogant claims.  Surely the bold imperative commands issued by something like Psalm 99 for all other rulers and people to drop everything and worship the only true and holy God on Mount Zion were met not just with skepticism but outright scorn.  At least some would receive it that way.

Since Israel did not have a YouTube channel or a Facebook page to broadcast Psalm 99’s claims, probably most people who would take offense at these claims or who would find them to be ludicrous never heard them being made in the first place.  Israel would have been easy to overlook and doubtless many if not most people in the Ancient Near East did just that.

Yet the claims persist.  They are laid out clearly and without nuance in Psalm 99 and other similar songs in the Hebrew Psalter.  Yahweh and his designated king on Mount Zion brooked no rivals.  Were we to look at also Psalm 2 we’d see claims that if you did not get on board in worshiping Israel’s holy God, your way would lead to destruction.  Indeed, Psalm 2 claims that when God sees the busy goings on of other rulers, God laughs at them!  God knows they are nothing compared to him and to his Anointed One.  Again, bold claims.

From our Christian perspective, if we transfer all these claims to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to the One who was gloriously transfigured before the eyes of Peter, James, and John, then we see how this makes sense.  But are we aware that even today the claims we make about Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords still strike people as odd and audacious?  Does the world see the church as the center of everything?  The story is told that near the end of World War II Winston Churchill once remarked to Josef Stalin that he hoped perhaps the Pope in Rome could be helpful in rebuilding a shattered Europe.  Stalin is said to have replied, “Oh yes?  Tell me, how many divisions does the Pope have?”  Many people see and know only one kind of power that can make a difference in this world and it is definitely not the power of the humble and crucified carpenter’s son named Jesus.

Yet on Transfiguration Sunday and at all times we too are bold enough to proclaim that there is only one true God and Savior of all people and it is Jesus.  We too invite people to worship our God in Christ and this God only.  This is met with skepticism today too if not with outright disagreement.  And that may tempt us to scale back our rhetoric a little.  We start looking for nuance, a little wiggle room so as not to put people off.  It has been said that especially in the United States if there is a proverb or a slogan that best captures how a lot of people think, it is the well-known aphorism, “Different strokes for different folks.”  Live and let live.  You have your truth and I have mine and maybe we’re both correct in some ultimate sense.

But thinking and talking that way is something to resist.  If we know Jesus to be our loving and gracious King and Lord, then we need the pluck and the boldness of Psalm 99 to proclaim this to the world.  We do not do so arrogantly but lovingly.  We believe what we do by grace alone and absent that grace in others, we need to be compassionate and understanding toward those who just cannot see what our eyes of faith can see.  But we do invite people to worship this Jesus and the Triune God of which the Son of God is a part.

Our God is holy.  We worship this holy and gracious God.  And we invite others to join us.

[Note: For the Year A Season of Lent and leading up to Easter, CEP has, in addition to these weekly sermon commentaries, a special Lent and Easter Resource Page with links to whole sermons, commentary on Lenten texts, and more.]

Illustration Idea

In the 1960s John Lennon of The Beatles got himself into a whole lot of hot water when he observed to a reporter one day that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.  The backlash from Christians around the world was swift and brutal.  In the United States in particular large gatherings of Christian young people were shown on the nightly news as they threw Beatles record albums onto blazing bonfires even as they brandished signs saying “Jesus Christ Died For You, John Lennon.”

Lennon eventually offered somewhat of an apology, noting that he was not saying The Beatles were better than Jesus but just that it was a fact that in England at least, more young people were into The Beatles than they were into the organized church.  Lennon thought he was just stating a fact.  “If I’d said The Beatles were bigger than television, I might have gotten away with it” Lennon said in frustration.

But Lennon was in touch with something we Christians know to be true.  The world pays attention to celebrities, to political power players, to the rich and influential, to the centers of might and strength in Washington D.C or Ottawa or Moscow or London.  Those people and those places are more obviously important than the Christian church or the Jesus at the center of the Gospel.  At least that’s what a lot of people think if they look only on the glitzy surface of life in this world.  But we followers of Christ Jesus the Lord believe we are in touch with the truest source of cosmic might and majesty and we proclaim it every time we gather to worship at the feet of our King of kings and Lord of lords.