TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: God of all peoples, your arms reach out to embrace all those who call upon you. Teach us as disciples of your Son to love the world with compassion and constancy, that your name may be known throughout the earth, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.” Isaiah 56:7.
Following the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital during Donald Trump’s first term, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro remarked that,
″[Trump], like King Cyrus before him, fulfilled the biblical prophecies of the gods [sic] worshipped by Jews, Christians and, yes, Muslims, that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish state and that the Jewish people finally deserve a righteous, free and sovereign Israel.”
Perhaps, in addition to coming clean about her baseless allegations of vandalism to the Washington D.C. reflecting pool, Ms. Pirro should likewise revisit her remarks about Cyrus and her messianic assertions about Donald Trump. All who are moderately biblically literate know that Cyrus did not give back Jerusalem to the Jews returning from exile in Babylon as the capital of a “free and sovereign Israel.” Not by a long shot. Palestine under Cyrus was one of many satraps governed by local Persian rulers. Reoccupying the land of Israel was for the newly liberated exiles a privilege granted by the Persian Empire, not a right. Living faithfully in the land does not require and certainly does not entitle one to control or monopolize it.
To put all of this in context, understand that the earth is the Lord’s and whatever claim we have to it is provisional, contingent and temporary. Psalm 24:1. This is so for the State of Israel no less than any other nation state. What the people of Israel (as distinct from the nation state by that name) learned and what the church has had to learn over and over again is that the minute we start thinking of anything in our hands as a permanent entitlement, we are tempting the Almighty to take it away from us. Speak to the prophet Jeremiah about that. Israel initially occupied the land as seminomadic tribes with no central authority. When they demanded a king in order to be “like the other nations,” the prophet Samuel strongly discouraged them. It turns out that Samuel was right. The monarchy resulted in the stratification of Israelite society, the loss of land and livelihood for subsistence farmers to the ruling elite the distortion of Israel’s covenant faith and, finally, to conquest and exile. The new start given to the returning exiles from Babylon did not include sovereignty. But it did open up an opportunity for the people to rebuild their covenant faith on a surer foundation by “doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God.”
The Bible states clearly that, just as Israel is given as a covenant to the nations (Isaiah 49:6), so Jerusalem is a city belonging to all peoples. Consider, for example,
“Among those who know me I mention Rahab [Egypt] and Babylon; behold, Philista and Tyre, with Ethiopia-‘This one was born there,’ they say. And of Zion it shall be said, ‘This one and that one were born in her;” for the Most High himself will establish her, The Lord records as he registers the peoples, ‘This one was born there.’” Psalm 87:4-6.
“It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’” Isaiah 2:2-3.
“And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Isaiah 56:6-7.
“And the [New Jerusalem] has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by 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. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.” Revelation 21:23-26.
These passages all testify to Jerusalem as a center of worship and prayer open to all peoples. For Jews, Jerusalem is the City of David, the site of Solomon’s temple, the place where Abraham nearly offered his son Isaac as a burnt offering and, according to some Jewish traditions, the site of creation. For many Muslims, Jerusalem is the third holiest city after Mecca and Medina. It is the place to which the prophet Mohamed was transported during his “night journey.” Of course, Christians know Jerusalem as the place where Jesus entered in triumph, was arrested, crucified and raised from death. Turning this holy city into the capital of a modern nation state controlling and limiting access flies in the face of all that Jerusalem signifies in the scriptures. Only in the weird and wacky world of right wing pre-millennialism, a faith cooked up by sectarians in the late 19th Century, does nationalizing Jerusalem make theological sense. For more on that, see my post of Sunday, June 11, 2017. The scriptures offer not one single straw in support of nationalizing the Holy City.
Beyond the obvious humanitarian concerns plaguing the middle east, should Christians care about Jerusalem? Does the fate of Jerusalem matter anymore than the fate of any other city in the world? Wouldn’t the gospel be the gospel whether Jerusalem thrives or perishes? I think not. The three Abrahamic religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity have this in common: place and time. Our beliefs are grounded in historical events that occurred in specific places. Ours is not a religion of pure spirit divorced from the things of the world. The career of Muhamad, the saga of Israel and the life and death of Jesus and his disciples’ witness to his resurrection are not mere historical accidents illustrative of but not essential to larger moral and spiritual truths. They are intertwined with and inseparable from our teaching, faith and practice. It is no accident either that all three of these faiths intersect at Jerusalem. Though this holy city has been at the center of some very bloody and unholy conflicts throughout history, that should not and need not be so.
The New Jerusalem described in the above citation from the Book of Revelation is everything the current Jerusalem is not-but might be. Might be if enough Jews, Muslims and Christians own up to all that Jerusalem means to them; if enough ecumenically minded representatives of all three faiths can help us all see beyond the ancient blood feuds, global politics, conflicting claims of sovereignty to a different way of honoring the holy city; if our longing to see a Jerusalem that reflects God’s future prevails over the cycles of retribution that entrap us in our violent past, then we might just catch a glimpse of that holy city God is so eager to give us.
Here is a hymn/poem by Johann M. Meyfart celebrating the new Jerusalem envisioned by John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation. Would that God’s Spirit strengthen the determination of all who seek the peace of Jerusalem that we might in our lifetimes see something of that newness in the here and now!
Jerusalem, Thou City Fair and High
Jerusalem, thou city fair and high,
Would God I were in thee!
My longing heart fain, fain to thee would fly,
It will not stay with me;
Far over vale and mountain,
Far over field and plain,
It hastes to seek its fountain
And quit this world of pain.
Oh happy day, and yet far happier hour,
When wilt thou come at last?
When fearless to my Father’s love and power,
Whose promise standeth fast,
My soul I gladly render,
For surely will His hand
Lead her with guidance tender
To Heav’n, her fatherland.
A moment’s space, and gently, wondrously,
Released from earthly ties,
The fiery chariot bears her up to thee
Through all these lower skies,
To yonder shining regions,
While down to meet her come
The blessèd angel legions,
And bid her welcome home.
Oh hail thou glorious city! Now unfold
The gates of grace to me!
How many a time I longed for thee of old,
Ere yet I was set free
From yon dark life of sadness,
Yon world of shadowy nought,
And God had giv’n the gladness,
The heritage I sought.
Oh what the nation, what the glorious host,
Comes sweeping swiftly down?
The chosen ones on earth who wrought the most,
The Church’s brightest crown,
Our Lord hath sent to meet me,
As in the far-off years
Their words oft came to greet me
In yonder land of tears.
The patriarchs’ and prophets’ noble train,
With all Christ’s followers true,
Who bore the cross, and could the worst disdain
That tyrants dared to do,
I see them shine for ever,
All glorious as the sun,
’Mid light that fadeth never,
Their perfect freedom won.
And when within that lovely paradise
At last I safely dwell,
From out my blissful soul what songs shall rise,
What joy my lips shall tell,
While holy saints are singing
Hosannas o’er and o’er,
Pure hallelujahs ringing
Around me evermore.
Innumerous choirs before the shining throne
Their joyful anthems raise,
Till Heav’n’s glad halls are echoing with the tone
Of that great hymn of praise,
And all its host rejoices,
And all its blessèd throng
Unite their myriad voices
In one eternal song!
Source: The Lutheran Hymnal, (c. 1941 by Concordia Publishing House). Johann Matthäus Meyfart (1590-1642) was a German Lutheran theologian, educator, academic teacher, hymn writer and minister. Meyfart was born in Jena, the son of a minister, and studied at the University of Jena beginning in 1608 graduating in 1603. He went on to study theology at the University of Wittenberg in 1614. He taught from 1617 at the Gymnasium in Coburg and served as its Rektor from 1623 until his death. Meyfart authored numerous hymns and composed several theological essays, including one fiercely criticizing witch trials.
Peter's Outer Cape Portico 