The Things that Make for Peace   Luke 13:34ff.

A sermon preached by J. Stuart Taylor III

St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church

June 8, 2008

For centuries upon centuries, the Holy city of Jerusalem has been the desire of every pilgrim’s heart. Jews, Christians and Muslims have made pilgrimage to Jerusalem to stand in awe before this gleaming jewel, considered to be the most beautiful city of the Middle East. Last Sunday I shared with you that my time in Jerusalem was one of the most powerful experiences that I had on our pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  My heart rejoiced at the first sight of the golden dome of the rock on the temple mount.  As I walked the streets, all my senses were awash in the sights and sounds and smells of the city. One evening I had the opportunity to climb up on the wall that surrounds Jerusalem and to walk around almost the entire old city looking down from above into her vibrant quarters and diverse neighborhoods. As the Psalmist said, “I was glad when they said unto me; Let us go to the house of the Lord. Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem”  Of course you cannot be in Jerusalem without remembering the one pilgrim who came to the city two thousand years ago, an itinerant Rabbi from the hinterlands of Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth.  For Jesus as for every faithful Jew, Jerusalem was the place of the Holy Temple, the sacred habitation of the Most High God.  The temple was the mediator of access to God, the center of devotion, a destination of pilgrimage.  But the temple had also become a system of domination. The temple had become a system of political oppression and economic exploitation that was cloaked and legitimated by religious authority.  And Jesus knew that he must offer a prophetic challenge to the city, and to the temple state. Jesus knew his message would provoke severe conflict with the authorities and he accurately predicted that this conflict would cost him his life.

Much of our time in Jerusalem would be devoted to retracing the way of Christ’s passion. We stood on the Mount of Olives where Jesus would offer his lamentation over the city: “Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! If only you knew the ways that make for peace.  And as pilgrims we knew what Jesus knew, that Jerusalem was and is the city of God and it is also the faithless city. Jerusalem is the city of hope and the city of oppression, the city of joy and the city of pain. Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, if only you knew the ways that make for peace! We would visit the garden of Gethsemane still inhabited by olive trees that at least theoretically were old enough to have witnessed Christ’s agony of spirit. We stood in the courtyard where it is said that Pontius Pilate washed his hands of this troublemaker.  We walked the most important pathway for Christian pilgrims, the Via Dolorosa, known as the Stations of the Cross. We visited a place that many believe was Golgotha where tradition suggests that Christ was crucified. Following the way of the cross in a surprisingly compressed area of the city eventually leads us to the church of the Holy Sepulcher where tradition has it that Christ was buried.  If Christians are ever tempted to wonder if the Muslims and Jews would ever stop fighting over Jerusalem we have only to consider the church of the Holy Sepulcher and the endless squabbling that goes on between Christian churches over who controls what part of this Holy Site. The fighting has been so chronic and so intense that for several centuries, at the end of each day, the keys to the church are handed over to a Muslim family for safe keeping. At this point some of us were struggling to create a narrative, a story line of our trip into which we could begin to place our experiences. It was troubling to begin our pilgrimage with Christ’s suffering and death. We found ourselves not quite ready for that. But we had to remind ourselves that Christ’s tomb is empty and that the Crucified One is risen.  The Crucified One is Risen and still stands before the Holy City, saying Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if only you knew the ways that make for Peace.  

By the time that the Gospels were written, Jesus prophetic words about the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple had been tragically fulfilled.  In 73 ad, the temple was utterly destroyed by the Roman Empire with only the western foundational wall left intact. It was a very a very moving experience for me to approach the western wall of the temple, known within Judaism as the Wailing Wall. Here faithful Jews gather to pour at their grief that the temple was destroyed and their hope that it will one day be rebuilt. As I leaned my hands and forehead against the wall the massive stones felt cool to the touch. All around me in the crevices of the stones were pieces of paper with prayers written on them stuck there by the faithful.  After a few minutes of prayer, I turned my head slowly from side to side to see my Jewish brothers rocking rhythmically as they recited their prayers in Hebrew.  I felt a strange connection to these Jewish pilgrims who entreated the Compassionate God of Israel to hear their cries of lamentation. But I could not bring myself to join my Jewish brothers in praying for that day when the temple will be rebuilt. Near the Wailing Wall is a very large, beautifully made menorah, the candle stand which is the symbol of the enduring light of Jewish faith. Coming close enough to read the inscription under it I was taken back. There it said this menorah will one day be the center piece of a new Jewish temple rebuilt on the temple mount. I had to wonder what Muslims might think about that. Here was one more sign that no matter how long it takes, Israel intends to displace Islam from the temple mount and replace Muslim holy mosques with a Jewish temple.  O Jerusalem if only you knew the ways that make for peace.

You see it’s not just Judaism and Christianity that look upon Jerusalem as a holy city, but also Islam. In the 7^th century, the prophet Mohammed ignited a dynamic spiritual movement across Arabia, with his vision of the one God, and a strong ethic of social justice. He believed that his revelation of God built on the revelations already given to Jews and Christians. In the famous story of the prophet’s night vision, it is told that Mohammed with the angel Gabriel flew through the sky from Mecca to Jerusalem. In this night journey, Mohammed was said to have ascended to heaven in a perfect act of surrender to the one god which would become the paradigm of Islam’s spiritual journey.  This night journey linked forever in the Islamic heart the holy city of Mecca to the other great holy city, Jerusalem. And on the temple mount, the Muslims commemorated their prophet’s night journey by building the most beautiful temple in all the Middle East, the Dome of the Rock. It is this temple mount that remains a source of great conflict between Jews and Muslims. I learned that the second intifada, the second more violent Palestinian uprising was ignited in 2000, when Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon unilaterally came to the Muslim mosque without notice or permission. Every Israeli archeological excavation, every structural repair done is met with suspicion and hyper-vigilance by the Muslim community because of their well founded belief that Israel will eventually reclaim the temple mount. It is a right and good thing that Jews everywhere would be able to live in peace in Israel and in Jerusalem. But how will Israeli Jews treat their Muslim neighbors who also have an ancient claim on the Holy City? Jerusalem, O Jerusalem if only you knew the ways that make for peace.

On everyone’s short list for a peace between Israel and Palestine is the question of the final status of Jerusalem. Let me share with you a story I read that appeared one day in the daily newspaper, the Jerusalem Post. This easily overlooked story I think frames the whole challenge of Jerusalem.  It was about a new 10 million dollar police station for Jerusalem that was 99 % inhabited and functioning. Well, good news for the citizens of Jerusalem, yes? No, not for the Muslim citizens of Jerusalem. Here is the context. First, East Jerusalem which is intended to be the capital of a future Palestinian state has been totally encircled by Jewish settlements. These settlements have functioned to almost completely cut off E. Jerusalem from the rest of Palestine, except for one last stretch. This new police station now occupies that last empty stretch completing the encirclement of Palestine’s capital city and its complete separation from the future Palestinian nation. Israel pursued this police station against the vehement protests of the international community and the US state department which all insisted that the police station would completely undermine the possibility of a two state solution. But here is the final insult to injury. The Israeli’s also deeded over the old police station in east Jerusalem to a right wing settler group that militantly believes that God intends all of Jerusalem for Israel. I will talk more about this next week but the time in which a two state solution could even be possible is quickly running out. But while Israel and the US continue to pay lip service to a two state solution, Israel continues to create “facts on the ground” that make a two state solution impossible. The Palestinian territories are now so divided up by military security zones and by the wall, by Israeli settlements and  by highways that only Israeli’s can travel on, that it resembles a big piece of Swiss Cheese that has no prospect of functioning as a viable state.  What has been lacking over the decades of this conflict is the will of the US to finally send a clear message to Israel that it must stop creating “facts on the ground” that will ultimately make a two state solution, impossibility. And this clear message must be accompanied by a commitment to follow through on consequences. We saw a Palestinian cartoon that perfectly captured their perception of the relationship between the US and Israel. It was a picture of President Bush in the oval office on the phone with Israel, saying: “I am telling you for the last time, pull back when you feel like it, got it?”

As I speak the prospects for peace between Israeli’s and Palestinians seems admittedly bleak.  But I am not feeling hopeless because of the opportunity we had to meet so many Israeli’s and Palestinians, so many Muslims, Jews and Christians who long for peace and who are prepared to make the sacrifices that peace requires. You have to wonder, what keeps them going?  IT would be so easy to give up on Jerusalem and to consign it to oblivion. But we cannot give up on Jerusalem We cannot consign it to hopelessness. I am convinced that the salvation of the world depends upon the salvation of Jerusalem. Somehow the three great faiths of Abraham must move beyond a desire to possess Jerusalem exclusively toward a vision of Jerusalem as a truly shared and open city. The vision of Jerusalem as an open city shared by the three great faiths will be involve more than just unrestricted access to our holy places. It must become a city whose sovereignty is shared by both Palestinians and Jews. A city dominated by the Israeli’s as it is now can never be an open city shared by all.  If Jerusalem is indeed to become the capital of peace instead of the capital of violence and hatred we must learn from its history. Throughout its history, Jerusalem has been the focus of the hopes of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. It has been the battlefield between the apocalyptic visions of the three great Abrahamic faiths and the scene of great violence. The crucial moral, spiritual question posed by Jerusalem is how do we treat the other? Here and there on both sides of the conflict you hear voices that recognize this great moral challenge of the other, the great challenge of peaceful co-existence. Reading Karen Armstrong’s book on Jerusalem, I came across one such voice. In 1995 the PL0 representative in Jerusalem Feisal Husseini made a speech saying, “I dream of the day when a Palestinian will say “our Jerusalem” and will mean Palestinians and Israeli’s. I dream of the day when an Israeli will say ‘our Jerusalem and will mean Israeli’s and Palestinians. In response to this prophetic dream, seven hundred prominent Israeli’s, including writers, artists and government leaders signed a joint statement, which said. Our Jerusalem is the home of Muslims, Christians and Jews. Our Jerusalem is a mosaic of all the cultures, religions and historical periods that enriched the city from the earliest antiquities to this very day.  They and all the others who made their contribution to the city have a place in the spiritual and physical landscape of the city. Our Jerusalem must be united, open to all and belonging to all its inhabitants, without borders and barbed wire. Our Jerusalem must be the capital of two nations that will live side by side in this country. West Jerusalem the capital of the state of Israel and East Jerusalem the capital of the state of Palestine. Our Jerusalem must be the capital of peace.” Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, if only you knew the ways that make for peace. No human society, no human city can thrive without respect for the other, which is the foundation of peaceful co-existence. We must never give up hope that Jerusalem can become again a city of acceptance of the other; a city where justice is done. A city of peace. May it be so.