The Lord is King, He is Robed with Majesty
Archpriest Geoffrey Ready
At every Saturday Vespers, we sing in the prokeimenon: “The Lord is king, he is robed with majesty” (Psalm 92/93:1). We thus proclaim the kingship of the Lord of Israel and connect that with the resurrection in glory of the messianic king, Jesus.
The service of Vespers takes us into the heart of what it means to live in a world where people do what is right in their own eyes. Vespers is sometimes described as a dramatic retelling of the global story of salvation from beginning to end, from creation, through fall and redemption. But it is not really that at all, because what it captures is that ongoing experience of God’s faithful—people who still experience a descent to the depths in their individual sufferings and struggles, people who know that the line between good and evil runs through and divides every human heart.
In Vespers, having been brought back into community and into the presence of God, and looking to the light of Christ as we do in the singing of “O Gladsome Light,” when the church is illuminated and God’s glory fills the temple, we are restored by the kingship of God. What kind of kingship is this? As the prokeimenon celebrates, it is the fulfilment of promises. “He has established the world; it shall never be moved. [His] throne is established from of old, and [he is] from everlasting.” (Psalm 92/93:1–2). It is a kingship to the end of the ages. This is the kingship that has come to rescue and heal us.
In the verses of that same psalm that we don’t use in the prokeimenon, but we pray during the preparation of the gifts before the Divine Liturgy, there is reference to the floods that have lifted up, to those chaotic waters that have opposed this true kingship. Yet God rules and triumphs over these waters. He is “more majestic than the thunders of mighty waters, more majestic than the waves of the sea, majestic on high is the Lord” (Psalm 92/93:4). His “decrees are very sure” and “holiness befits [his] house” unto the ages of ages (Psalm 92/93:5).
This psalm and the prokeimenon drawn from it beautifully depict the king who comes, who brings healing, who puts down and resettles those chaotic waters. What is that image but the story of the Exodus? The waters that have risen and been pushed back so that the people of Israel could be delivered from bondage. This ordering of the waters of chaos is also an image of the first creation when God divided the waters and set his image in a secure place. And when these same waters of chaos erupt from people who do what is right in their own eyes, the God who becomes king is the one who settles the chaos and brings healing and peace to the world. That remains our sure hope. It may be, as we go out, that we are still experiencing that chaos, but we know the Lord has established the world, it shall never be moved, and that is who our king is. Everything that was expected and hoped for in the prophets, in the history of Israel, has been fulfilled in Jesus, and is being fulfilled as his kingship goes forward to the ends of the world. Is is truly a high point in Vespers, and a liturgical experience that should bring peace and confidence to our lives, knowing that the Lord is truly king and robed in majesty.
The V. Rev. Geoffrey Ready directs the Orthodox School of Theology at the University of Toronto, where he teaches liturgy, Biblical studies, and pastoral theology. He studied in Ottawa and at Holy Cross Orthodox School of Theology in Boston and holds a doctorate from the University of Toronto. He served as a priest in Northern Ireland and then in France before returning to Toronto as priest-in-charge of Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission, an OCA parish that meets on the University of Toronto campus.