Jerusalem, O Jerusalem Luke 13:34ff.

A sermon preached by J. Stuart Taylor III

St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church

March 11, 2007

During the season of Lent we are invited to follow Jesus along the way of the cross. Following Jesus means following him on the way that leads to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the place of confrontation and conflict with the authorities. Jerusalem will be the place of his death and resurrection. And so we follow Jesus into Jerusalem; we stand in awe before this gleaming jewel, considered to be the most beautiful city of the Middle East. And there in the midst of the Holy City is the Temple. 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, of political oppression and economic exploitation cloaked and legitimated by religious authority. Jerusalem was and is the city of God and the faithless city, the city of hope and the city of oppression, the city of joy and the city of pain. Following Jesus into Jerusalem, we are shocked and bewildered by Jesus lamentation over the city: "Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! Jerusalem, O Jerusalem if only you knew the ways that make for peace. What did Jerusalem mean to Jesus and what should it mean to us?

As Jesus entered the holy city, the people greeted him with joyous cries, welcome Son of David. Jerusalem, the City of David. What was King David’s city like a thousand years before Christ’s coming? At that time Jerusalem was nothing more than a small town, of no more than 15 acres. There was a fortress, a palace, a few small buildings for the military and for civil government and the dwelling places for about 2000 people. After David moved the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem the city over time began to be seen as the spiritual center of the nation. David, the classic biblical hero, with virtues the flip side of his flaws, was nevertheless, remembered as a ruler who did justice in the city. David forever defined the ideal of the king as the minister of justice for the people, the defender of the most vulnerable in society. Not so with David’s son Solomon. Under Solomon’s rule, Israel would indeed become a regional power, a small empire in itself with strong armies, and vast building projects all over the country. In Jerusalem Solomon began work on a magnificent temple exceeded in grandeur only by his own palace. But for all this, Solomon was ultimately a disappointment, remembered by his people for his conspicuous consumption. Solomon became a new pharaoh enslaving his own people.

When Jesus looked upon Jerusalem he remembered stories about the destruction of the city and temple by the empire of Babylon and how many of his people were carried into exile, and how decades later the exiles were allowed to return to rebuild the city. And Jesus knew that the latest conqueror, the Roman Empire had also been carrying out vast building projects. As a carpenter in Nazareth, Jesus had undoubtedly worked with his father on any number of these grand Roman building projects. And Jesus knew that Herod had rebuilt the temple surpassing the grandeur of Solomon. And now he looked upon it and he laments. Jerusalem O Jerusalem. Predicting its destruction because it does not know the ways that make for peace. By the time this Gospel was written, the temple was utterly destroyed by the Roman Empire with only the western foundational wall left intact. Rome would devastate the city and crucify thousands of Jews around its perimeter. In Rome next to the coliseum a great arch would be constructed still there to this day, showing Roman soldiers carrying off the spoils of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem in the centuries after Jesus death and resurrection would come to know many more conquering armies of various empires. And none would be more brutal than the Christians. It all started when a rock tomb was unearthed beneath the temple mount. And was immediately declared to be the tomb of Christ. 300 years earlier Jesus had risen from the tomb, now the tomb itself had risen. And this provoked a resurgence of Christian faith. Christians, who had thought themselves to be spiritually superior to those who venerate sacred places, found themselves deeply moved by the evidence of the life and death of Jesus. Jerusalem became for Christians a holy city. Maps made at that time place Jerusalem as the sacred center of the world. Christian pilgrims began to come to Jerusalem from all over the Holy Roman Empire. And as the Christians arrived, the Jews were kicked out of the Holy City.

2 great faiths of Judaism and Christianity now looked upon the city as sacred and holy, soon to be joined by a third faith. Winds of change were blowing across the sands of Arabia with the teaching of a new prophet, Mohammed. The prophet Mohammed ignited a dynamic spiritual movement across Arabia, with his vision of the one God, and a strong ethic of social justice. In the famous story of the prophet’s night vision, it is told that Mohammed 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. This night journey would become the paradigm of Islam’s spiritual journey. This night journey linked forever in the Islamic heart the one holy city of Mecca to the other great holy city, Jerusalem. By the time Mohammed died 632ad, the whole of Arabia including Jerusalem was under Muslim control. Under the Muslim King, Saladin Christians were allowed to stay in Jerusalem and practice their faith. Jews that had been expelled by Christians were invited to return. Jews and Christians became protected minorities. And on the temple mount, the rock of Abraham, the Muslims commemorated their prophet’s night journey by building the most beautiful temple in all the Middle East.

But the Christians could not let this stand. And so we entered the horrific age of the crusades. Around the year 1000, Pope urban preached a holy war against the Muslims and pledged that the church and the Christian empire must stop at nothing to regain control of the Holy city. The church told armies of 10’s of thousands of Crusaders followed by even larger armies that every soldier who killed a Muslim would be rewarded in heaven. Along the way, many of these armies massacred Jewish communities who with the Muslims were the declared enemies of the Christian God. In this religious fanaticism barely that barely concealed greed and violence, the first pogroms against Jews were unleashed. And each time another crusade was launched these attacks against Jews were repeated. The lure of Jerusalem helped to make anti-Semitism an incurable disease across Christian Europe. The crusader armies finally surrounded Jerusalem and using new military technology of belfries, fortified towers that could be wheeled up to the walls of a city under siege, they recaptured Jerusalem. Over the next few days, the Crusaders proceeded to slaughter almost all of the 30,000 inhabitants of the city, Jew and Muslim, men, women and children. The streets ran with blood. Overnight the Crusaders had turned a thriving populous city of Jerusalem into a stinking charnel house. The struggle went on and on between Muslims and Christians. 7 crusades later, Jerusalem was once again a Muslim city.

Flash forward to the 1940’s and WW2. The anti-Semitism of the Christian west reached its horrific culmination in the death camps of the Holocaust. A world seeking to atone for this great evil makes it possible for Jews across Europe and Russia and America to return to a homeland in Israel, to return to Jerusalem. It is a right and good thing that Jews everywhere would be able to live in peace in Israel. But how would they look upon those who lived there as well? How would they treat the Muslims who also had a claim to Jerusalem and the Holy Land? 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.

If Jerusalem is indeed to become the capital of peace instead of the capital of violence and hatred we must learn from its history. What can the history of Jerusalem teach us about the way forward toward peace? The crucial moral, spiritual question posed by Jerusalem is how do we treat the other? How do we treat the other who is different from us? On this score, King David did pretty well. Solomon did not. Saladin the Muslim ruler did very well. On two occasions it was Muslim rulers that allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem. The Christian crusaders treatment of the "other" was the very worst. Far worse than the present day Israeli’s. Separated by decades of hostility and fear, Israeli’s and Palestinians both claim that Jerusalem rightly belongs to them. Until the question of Jerusalem is resolved, peace is impossible in Israel, in the Middle East and ultimately in the world. 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. With this painful history before us, it would be easy to give up on Jerusalem and to consign it to oblivion. But we cannot. As the song by Steve Earle that we heard this morning, we cannot give up on Jerusalem We cannot consign it to hopelessness. The salvation of the world depends upon it. Jesus said Jerusalem O Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets, and stones those who are sent to it. If only you knew the ways that make for peace. 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 is more than just unrestricted access to our holy places. It is a shared sovereignty by Palestinians and Jews. A city dominated by the Israeli’s as it is now can never be an open city shared by all. And as much as US policy makers make lip service to a two state solution for Israeli’s and Palestinians, there can be no Palestinian nation without Jerusalem as the capital of that homeland. Israeli’s and Palestinians and their allies the West and across Arabia must sit down at the table as equal partners. Acknowledging and taking responsibility for the past. Respecting international law. Demonstrating willingness to compromise. And we must never give up hope. 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. As I speak the prospects for peace seem bleak. But there are many Israeli’s and Palestinians, many Arabs and Jews and Christians who long for peace and who are prepared to make the sacrifices that peace requires. If the long history of Jerusalem teaches us anything it is this. No human society, no human city can thrive without respect for the other, which is the foundation of peaceful co-existence. To enact that in Tucson, to enact that in every city in the world, is the true way to celebrate the sacredness of the Holy city. In the book of Revelation the Apostle John speaks of the New Jerusalem coming down to earth at the end of time. A city that has the glory of God around it like the radiance of a very rare jewel as clear as crystal. And John saw no temple in this city for its temple is the Lord God almighty. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it. For the glory of God is its light. And the nations will walk in its light and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there. Let us long for this New Jerusalem. Let us pray for it, let us work for it. Amen.