@ the crossroads

On Saturday night I attended my daughter’s piano recital.  The musical selections were all of the Christmas variety and I noticed a common trend among the songs in terms of their structure: they started in a home key, then wandered into tension (minor chording), and then came back around to home again.  This structure is comforting to the listener because it represents a journey that begins and ends in a familiar place.  The tension encountered between the origin and the destination is eventually resolved. 

This musical structure encountered at the piano recital is similar to the structure of the biblical story: we are at home in the garden (Genesis 2), we wander from home due to sin and this creates an incredible amount of tension in our lives (Genesis 3 & following), we eventually return back to home, although the home at the end is a recreated version of the original home (Revelation).  The tension is finally resolved forever.

As followers of Christ, we have the opporunity to experience true hope in our lives by knowing how the biblical story ends, even though we have not yet experienced the consummation of the Kingdom.  The future has, in a very powerful and transforming way, invaded the present through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Living with hope seems to be a commodity in short supply these days (economic downturn, rising unemployment rate , wars, world hunger, etc.).  How can hope be recaptured and sustained?  The answer to this question may be found in Psalm 118, a psalm of home, away from home, and home.

The first home of Psalm 118 is found in verse 1, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.”  This is the grounding verse for the Psalm and it provides home base for all the thoughts that follow.  Martin Luther, the great reformer of the 1500’s who regularly struggled with depression, held Psalm 118 as his personal favorite.  Luther wrote, “This is my psalm which I love–for truly it has deserved well of me many a time and has delivered me from many a sore affliction when neither the Emperor nor kings nor the wise nor the cunning nor the saints were able or willing to help me.”  In other words, for Luther, this psalm was a source of hope; it provided a framework to help make sense of his struggles. 

I’m sure Luther identified closely with the away from home section of Psalm 118, especially the following phrases: “In my anguish I cried to the Lord” (v.5); “All the nations surrounded me” (v.10); “I was pushed back and about to fall…” (v.13).  We all have seasons of life that are marked by the tension and adversity of living away from home.  In fact, a common and sometimes prevailing emotion in these seasons is depression, the loss of hopeful outlook.  It’s during these dark times that we need to be reoriented.  Psalm 118 inserts a short yet powerful reorientation verse in the middle section: “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone” (v. 22).  This particular verse is picked up in the New Testament to describe Jesus Christ, a man despised and rejected by the political establishment and the religious leadership of the day.  However, this rejected stone was the One who became the cornerstone, the glue stone without which all else would fall apart.  Christ gives life, meaning, and hope, even when life is playing a minor key.  Minor will eventually turn to major; the tension will not last forever.  Christ the Rock, the One who came out of the rocky hill to proclaim the defeat of sin and death, this cornerstone is our assurance of hope!  Jesus’ resurrection tells us that there is more resurrection to come.  A final home is coming.

Psalm 118 ends with the same words as it began: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever” (v. 29).  The psalm comes back home.  The tension has been resolved.  Darkness is finally overwhelmed with light.  We can take hope in the truth that while we may be experiencing the time away from home, we have received hope to continue pressing toward that day when the song will return to a major key for the final time.