The stone the builders rejected

“Why have you broken down the walls,

so that all who pass may pluck its fruit?”  --Psalm 80: 13

One of my favorite psalms is Psalm 80 with that great image of the vine brought out of Egypt. As the psalmist tells it, the vine grows and thrives and begins to tower over the trees and spread to the sea, even casting its shadow over the mountains.  Under God’s care, that vine is doing pretty darned well.  Then there is that abrupt change, as the psalmist cries out:  Why then have you broken down its walls? Now, everyone who passes by can pluck its fruit! By golly, even the beasts of the fields and the boars of the forest eat its fruit and ravage the vine, Oh Lord!  Why would you do this, God?  Why would you build something up and then just pull away Your protection and let it be ravaged and torn down and even despised and rejected?  Why?

And with this past Sunday’s reading from Matthew we hear a possible answer.

“Have you never read in the scriptures: the stone that

the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was

the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.” (Mt. 21:42)

Yes. It is amazing in our eyes. We who long for success and smooth sailing and promotion after promotion as confirmation of our actual value –we who lick the earth (to paraphrase another psalm), we who cannot imagine success without some kind of pleasure –at least as our reward.  It is amazing to us that the one rejected could possibly become anything, let alone the cornerstone. Truly amazing. Yet, it is the Lord’s doing. And perhaps we should remember –often it seems to be a singular mark of how He works.  The one who is rejected, who is denied, who is ridiculed –that one becomes the cornerstone.

And so we look again at the vine from the psalm.  It is ravaged and plucked by any and all who pass.  Why would God let such a thing happen?  Is it possible that the answer is to make cornerstones?  Think of Christ on the cross: He is dying a failure and a ridiculous fool to those with any power.  They laugh and taunt Him. Even one of those dying with Him cannot resist the desire to pluck at what remains of His early dignity:

If you really are the Messiah, save yourself and us! (cf LK 23:39)

But that isn’t how God works.  God makes His cornerstones out of the stones the builders reject, and to prove that –Jesus must feel the utter rejection of feeling abandoned even by God.

“Why have you broken down the walls?”

“So that all those who pass by may pluck and ravage My vine…”

It seems to me that Jesus is teaching us something about recognizing God’s amazing hand in what looks to us (and the world) like failure.  When we feel plucked and ravaged and rejected, perhaps we should take heart and trust that God is working on us. He is forming us and shaping us and turning us into cornerstones. That may not make the rejection feel any less painful, but it may be some consolation to know that perhaps this is how He builds His kingdom.

But now I wonder –does that mean any time I fail, I am being formed into a cornerstone?  Possibly… but when I lean over to kiss my wife and she says, “Honey, please! Not right now…”  What kind of cornerstone does that make me? One with garlic breath?