A Verse A Day (Day 7)

 I continue to hold, and to struggle with, the 77^th Psalm. 

 

Yesterday, I wondered how the psalmist could find hope in remembering God’s great deeds of the past when he was experiencing God’s absence or unresponsiveness in the present. It reminds me that my American-trained notion of the past, present, and future is not necessarily what every other time or culture assumes. A friend told me recently that in Japan, when they refer to the past, they often gesture in front of them, not behind them. For the future they gesture behind them – which is the opposite of what we do in America, where aspiring politicians always declare, “The future is right in front of us!” The Japanese gesture suggests that the past is where we can see it, know it, learn from it, and honor it. The American gesture suggests that the past is behind us and we’re moving on. 

 

The same kind of different perspective is at work in the story when Jesus questions why the scribes refer to the Messiah as “Son of David.” Jesus argues that David himself, in Psalm 110, refers to the Messiah as “My Lord.” Jesus’ argument – which is not fleshed out because his audience took this for granted – makes sense because for David (and the scribes, I presume), the elder is always greater than the younger, the parent greater than the child, the ancestor greater than the descendent, the former greater than the latter, the past greater than the present or future. (Jesus will defy that assumption on occasion, but his argument here relies on this notion of the past being greater than what follows as what his audience believes.) 

 

As one who is trained differently from both the Japanese gestures and Jewish assumptions, I have to recognize and then bracket some of my own assumptions in order to appreciate how the psalmist is able to start this psalm with his present misery and find hope in God’s past deeds. What I initially want to dismiss as nonsensical may be the place where I need to learn anew.