Ps. 102.15-16 (rebuilding and uniting)

Then the nations / will revere Yhwh’s name
all the kings on earth your glory
when Yhwh / has rebuilt Zion
revealing himself / in his glory. 

What I want to focus on in this reflection is the fact that Zion’s rebuilding coincides with the “the nations” and “kings of the earth” revering Yhwh’s name; later, it will be described as their “meeting together to worship Yhwh.” The image of Zion as ‘ground zero’ for the nation’s worship is not uncommon; what I find fascinating here is the coincidence of its rebuilding and the nation’s worship of Yhwh. This psalm has been centered on the image of healing. For the psalmist, it is from his disease and social isolation; for Zion, it is its rebuilding. In both, the healing that takes place is not purely related to ‘the thing itself’. Rather, when Yhwh heals it he imbues the thing healed with manifest glory, which is a social image of authority and beauty. It ‘shines’. It is, in other words, public. For the psalmist, his healing will reintroduce him into community. For Zion, its rebuilding will be the event through which Yhwh will reveal to the nations his own glory. It will become not merely the city of Yhwh’s servants but of all nations, including the usually described haters-of-Zion—the ‘kings of the earth’. And it is this ‘revelation of Yhwh’s glory’ that will not merely unite the nations, but unite them in praise to Yhwh’s name. Glory and liturgy are wed here. Man responds to divine glory in praise and liturgical worship. The nations, perhaps at its deepest level, can only be united in this moment of divine revelation of glory. We might say—Zion’s healing creates a total or absolute moment, a moment that reaches to the utmost stretches of creation and humanity. Humanity’s ability to worship Yhwh is utterly wed to Zion. This is captured in another psalm, although it does not contemplate Zion’s rebuilding, when it refers to Zion as the “mother of all the nations”. Zion is the ‘woman’ in whom and through whom all the nations will be united in worship of Yhwh. She is, in New Testament imagery, Mary, the ‘mother of all the faithful’. 

And this connection reveals to us a deeper significance: in John, Jesus, on looking at the Temple, claims that if “you tear it down” then ‘in three days I will rebuild it.’ What is clear in John is that the ‘tearing down of the Temple’ and its ‘rebuilding’ refers to the ‘hour’ that he will be lifted up at which time “all people will be gathered to him”. It is, then, of incredible significance that, at the foot of the cross (at his ‘lifting up’) that he transfers the ‘beloved disciple’ into his position as a son of Mary. This is the ‘first step’ of his unifying all people, as it is also the beginning of the ‘rebuilding of the Temple (of his body)’. All ‘beloved disciples’ are made into ‘sons of Mary’ by and through the raising up of Jesus on the cross. And this, as in John and as in this psalm, is the ‘hour of glory’. In John, both the ‘rubble’ of the Temple being torn down and its rebuilding, are coincidental at that ‘hour’. The Cross is, in a sense, the first movement of the son “back to the Father” and, as such, is the first movement of resurrection/rebuilding