This blog provides a meditation on the Episcopal daily readngs along with  headline from world news:

15 Israelis killed in border attack

PSALM 80

Restore us, O God of hosts;    let your face shine, that we may be saved.
⁸ You brought a vine out of Egypt;    you drove out the nations and planted it.
⁹ You cleared the ground for it;    it took deep root and filled the land.
¹⁰ The mountains were covered with its shade,    the mighty cedars with its branches;
¹¹ it sent out its branches to the sea,    and its shoots to the River.
¹² Why then have you broken down its walls,    so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?
¹³ The boar from the forest ravages it,    and all that move in the field feed on it.
¹⁴ Turn again, O God of hosts;    look down from heaven, and see;
have regard for this vine,
¹⁵   the stock that your right hand planted.^*
16 They have burned it with fire, they have cut it down;^*    may they perish at the rebuke of your countenance.
¹⁷ But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand,    the one whom you made strong for yourself.
¹⁸ Then we will never turn back from you;    give us life, and we will call on your name.
¹⁹Restore us, O Lord God of hosts;    let your face shine, that we may be saved.

Face of Christ fromTurin Shroud

The psalmist reflects on the history of Israel, planted by God in the land yet frequently uprooted, exiled, and enslaved. He prays for God to turn his face towards his people and to rescue them. At the same time, prophets urged the people to turn their faces and their lives towards God. Both poets and prophets believed that the people’s obedience/disobedience towards God had a direct effect on the fortunes of the nation: God would either bless or curse depending on how the people, and in particular, their king, kept or broke the holy covenant.

Those who follow Jesus have sometimes believed this kind of thing. Those who favoured the National Covenenant in 17th century Scotland, for example, and some Russian Orthodox nutters along with some USA Christains, believe it today. It usually leads to the persecution of those citizens who are thought to be breaking the covenant and to demonisation of the nation’s enemies.

The story of Jesus cursing the fruitless fig tree is intended to put an end to this kind of theology. God provides no national salvation, ever or anywhere. Those who follow the crucified messiah have given up hope for that kind of thing in favour membership of a new community whose multinational fellowship and earthly vulnerability are both images of “God’s kingdom.” Only those who are part of that community can transform the meaning of this Psalm by interpreting the “vine brought out of Egypt” as the new community separated from the competing kngdoms of the world to represent the peace of God’s rule. Only they can justly pray, “Let your face shine, that we may be saved.”