Turn Us

The juxtaposition of the Old Testament, the New Testament (up to this point the Gospels) and the Psalms I find is often cool, not because of any particular foresight as in lectionary devisers, but just the trajectory of the story. Today, Joshua leads the company of Israel finally into the land God had promised to Abraham, and God opens their way once again spectacularly through a river. Much later, in Psalm 80, the psalmist celebrates this action as that of a master Gardener who brings a vine out of Egypt, clears land for it, and then plants it, and becomes a spectacular plant that fills the whole land. At the writing of the hymn however, the vine is languishing, and the refrain of the hymn goes:

Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.

I thought at first there must be an omitted "to", but it was consistent all three times the refrain comes in. The only thing that changes is the name of God is intensified: Turn us again, O God of hosts (v. 7) and Turn us again, O LORD God of hosts. (v. 19) Verse 14 is rendered in a similar kind of refrain "Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold and visit this vine." And verse 18 includes the petition "...quicken us, and we will call upon thy name."
Clearly the request is for God's help, and only he can save us. We have turned away, and as a result he has turned away. The vine he planted is dead. It made me ponder the image as a whole. The gardner has to train a vine so it doesn't become a tangled mess of inward growth, but actually spreads out, open to the glory which makes it thrive. It must be turned.

Turn us. Again.
Return.