Psalm 122.1-9, Luke 9:53, 19:41-44

Preached Canberra Baptist Church 24^th January 2010

Have you ever travelled with a friend or a spouse, and come to new country, or a new city, and one of you loved it and had a marvelous time and the other found it all terribly boring and depressing? Or have you visited a place and talked about it later with people who had been there before, only to find that your experiences don’t match up at all? "What a graceful, lovely place – the people so friendly and charming!" one of you will say, warmed by the glow of your memories. "Thieves and charlatans!" comes the reply. "Over-rated and over-priced – that place is just a waste of space!"

The pilgrims of Psalm 122 who made their way to Jerusalem for one of the ancient festivals were filled with joy and terribly impressed with the place:

This ancient Psalm is difficult to date – some scholars put parts of it way back before David to the earliest origins of Israel, others at the time of David, some as late as the time of the Maccabeean revolt a century and a half before Jesus. Whatever the date of the original, this psalm shines with the joy and excitement and the well-wishing of generation after generation of travelers and pilgrims!

But as any traveler will tell you, things don’t always turn out so well, even when you have been really looking forward to visiting and planning the trip for some time. Jesus set out for Jerusalem with quite some determination according to Luke’s gospel. In chapter 9:51-53 it is announced with a flourish: When the days drew near for him to be taken up he set his face to go to Jerusalem. Over the next ten chapters we are reminded many times that this was the plan and Jerusalem was the goal.

But when Jesus finally sees the city he is not a happy pilgrim. He weeps. "If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace." No joy on standing within the walls – just tears of disappointment. No blessing of peace or security, but a rebuke and announcement of war and judgment.

Even today, if there is any city that polarizes opinions, that crystallizes controversy, it is Jerusalem. What does it mean to pray for the peace of Jerusalem? Does the city even today know the things that make for peace? Should we stand happily in its streets and announce peace, security and blessing as pilgrims have done for thousands of years, or should we weep before its walls as did the Lord?

One of the great privileges of my time as a minister of this church has been the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, not once but twice – in 2006 and 2009. Does the peace of Jerusalem matter at all to us or to the world, or am I just sentimental old tourist? How do we pray for the peace of Jerusalem? Do we have any more idea of the "things that make for peace" than did Jerusalem on that distant day when Jesus wept over the city? Let us explore the peace of Jerusalem as both geo-political reality, and as a symbol of the people of God, and finally, whether the injunction of Psalm 122 to pray for the peace of Jerusalem is appropriate for us today.

But Palestinians see it also as their city. They have lived there for centuries, and have homes, businesses and places of worship in East Jerusalem. If you were watching the SBS World News last night you saw again the demonstrations and that the conflict over Jerusalem continues.

I don’t want to go into the background of the current troubles in this sermon, but each of us should have an idea of what is at stake in this conflict. Don’t think it is irrelevant to us. Just last week I received news of a dispute over SBS news coverage: it is now considered biased to use the term "Palestinian land" because this is to take sides and prejudge the situation. The way our news is reported, the words we use to talk about the situation is being constantly tussled over, argued about in the Australian media and in the political realm.

In such a situation of claim and counterclaim, what does it mean to pray for the peace of Jerusalem?

For some Jewish people around the world (but certainly not all) and for some Israeli citizens (but not all) it means to pray for the successful take-over of the city by the Israeli state and nation. They would like the international community to approve that and accept that. There are some Christians (but not all) who agree: Jerusalem should be a Jewish city… as the Scriptures say!

But Jerusalem is now a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians. Along with other places in the Holy Land Jerusalem is one of the great contested spaces of interfaith relations:

Bethlehem: the site of the nativity and of Rachel’s tomb (Christians and Jews)

Hebron: the site of the Tomb of the Patriarchs and sacred to both Jews and Muslims

Nazareth: the place where Jesus lived his early life and site of tensions between Christians and Muslims

Jerusalem: sacred to Jews as the city of David, to Christians as the city of Jesus’ trial, death and resurrection and the Muslims as the destination of the Night Journey of the Prophet and his ascent into Paradise

None of these is going to be easily resolved – and all of them reflect the ‘plate tectonics’ of interfaith relations, how the worlds of Christianity, Islam and Judaism bump up against one another. Is the peace of Jerusalem going to be served by any one group ‘owning’ and controlling the city? If so, which claim is to be honoured among the 44 victors who have captured or re-captured the city over the last 5,000 years?

The peace of Jerusalem might be best served by learning to share the city, finding in it not a symbol of our disunity and enmity but of our ability to work together, to respect each other, to acknowledge our close kinship as ‘the religions of the book’.

If we are to pray for the peace of Jerusalem we must pray either for one side or other to win out, or for all of the sides to find some meaningful and viable peace. If we of different faiths are going to learn to get on, to tolerate each other, we will all need to revisit some of our missional theologies and our views about each other

Every faith has its spectrum of views between exclusionist and more open/tolerant perspectives. Every religion has its own internal dialogue between exclusion and inclusion.

If Christians are really going to pray for the peace of Jerusalem in terms other than one side winning out over the other, we have to confess the close alliance between colonialism and some of our missional theologies. We need to acknowledge how closely our mission has been closely allied to the colonial project for centuries.

The literal peace of Jerusalem is a powerful symbol of the challenge of a world of many faith communities. Does this multi-faith world mean that we have to slide into relativism, that anything goes? No, it certainly doesn’t. Does it mean there is no longer a claim to truth? No it doesn’t. It does mean that we have to take tolerance and secularism seriously.

Tolerance is a core Baptist principle: the freedom of all people, (for Baptists from the earliest days that includes "the Jew, the Mohammedan and the Turk") to follow their conscience and worship God according to their own conscience.

(O’Donovan, Oliver: Common Objects of Love p.69)

To pray for the peace of Jerusalem we can pray for victory, or we can pray for a peace grounded in both toleration and that secularism which is confident of the truth we know already but patiently waits for the revelation of God’s vindication of that truth.

But Jerusalem is not only the city where the hopes and the histories of three great faiths collide, it is also the symbol of the people of God, the new Israel. Jerusalem is a powerful symbol and it can be read many ways – a symbol of the Jews and God’s judgment on Israel (almost surely this sense that invoked in Luke 19). It can be a symbol of the heavenly city – the transformed future of the world as we find in the end of Revelation. Or it can be a metaphor for the church, such as we find in phrases like ‘being at ease in Zion’. Sometimes it’s easy for us to think about the bigger scale of the symbol – about world religions and other faiths: we don’t have to live with them, or attend assemblies with them. But a person’s enemies can be the members of their own household!

Praying for the peace of Jerusalem can also mean praying for peace among the people of God. And that can be an ask! Sometimes the household of faith has to live with different and sometimes incompatible theologies. Let me suggest just three examples of arguments within the Christian fold:

1. Creationism – a global battleground in evangelical circles

2. Sexuality – site of deep disruption within global Anglicanism and the Uniting Church in Australia.

3. Hermeneutics:- how we will interpret the Scripture, a continuing issue in in the Baptist World.

These dynamics are not foreign to us and to our neighbouring churches.

When I first attended a minister’s fraternal in Canberra I was engaged in a conversation about the former minister of this church, Revd. Dr Thorwald Lorenzen. I was told how terribly liberal Thorwald was, how he didn’t believe in Resurrection (which I thought an unusual observation given that he has written several books on the centrality of Resurrection to Christian faith). He dealt shabbily with the Scripture and his views on women in ministry were deeply disappointing.

Having run down the former minister of this church he turned to me and in a delightfully ingenuous way asked, "You wouldn’t be of the same theological stamp as your predecessor would you?" I replied gravely, "Oh no, Thorwald and I are very different in our outlook. (Pause for effect) I find him quite conservative on some things." (I did apologise later to Thorwald.)

Similarly two people once came specifically to hear me preach. They asked to speak with after the service. "We were told you were the most radical preacher in all of the BUNSW/ACT." "Who told you that?" I asked. "One of the senior staff of the Baptist Union of NSW/ACT" came the response. I felt very flattered, but wouldn’t it be a little sad if the most radical thing the denomination has to offer was a late-middle-aged, overweight , greying grandfather? I love this church dearly but if we are the most radical thing the Baptist denomination has to offer things are grim indeed.

Here we have two pictures of how this church is seen by our brothers and sisters within the denomination. And it’s not only others who tell stories about us: we say things about them. Someone said to me recently that they never go to church when they’re away on holiday because they never find any thing worth attending. We too tell stories about others and stereotype them. I know because I am guilty of it too – both confirming the stereotypes others hold about us (as I did in the discussion about Thorwald) or holding my own stereo-types about other Baptists.

Now we don’t have to put up with silliness or surrender our grasp of truth but we do need to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, for the peace of the churches, for the peace of our own church.

Part of this is being honest of our own failures and praying and working for genuine peace between the churches. What are our failures? I once invited several of the other ministers in town to lunch to discuss a recent large meeting of Baptist churches in the area. As we started one ministers asked with a suspicious look what the agenda was for this conversation. I simply wanted to hear what others really thought of the issues in the recent meeting. At the close of the meeting the same minister said, "It’s refreshing that Canberra Baptist Church wants to listen to what others have to say…" Rightly or wrongly this is the way we are sometime seen by our colleagues.

Among the strengths of this church are that we have an important role in the ecumenical scene here in Canberra. We also were established as ‘national Baptist church’ (with all the ambiguities and contradictions that entails in a denomination committed to independence and congregational government). I believe we have a role in Baptist life within Australia, a role we have yet to recover and fully live out.

Praying for the peace of Jerusalem is to pray for the well-being and prosperity of the churches.

Prayer always starts in powerlessness. The tensions of which we have spoken, international and local, are such that we are largely powerless before them. The most appropriate response is prayer. Prayer however is not the fatalism that nothing can be done but the conviction that what can be done is found in God, in the mystery of God’s plan and love for the world. Prayer acknowledges that we too are part of the problem that we too have prejudices and even hatreds.

We should end where we began, by going back to that ancient Psalm, to try to read from the Psalm’s own terms what praying for the peace of Jerusalem might mean. Let us look at some of the earlier elements of the Psalm.

Vs. 4. To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord… Some scholars see this as a very ancient reference: Jerusalem as the focal point of the tribes of Israel – a symbol of unity when the people of Israel were forming their shared vision of Yahweh, when the different tribes were bringing together their various traditions and beliefs in the emerging faith of early Israel. A bit like our own city, Jerusalem was a gathering place.

Those scholars who hold a later date for the Psalm see in this reference to the gathering of the tribes that Jerusalem was still a focal point of unity in the time the country had split into two, the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms.

It may yet be a focal point if the country is again split in two – the two-state solution that is the policy of so many countries, including our own. It may even be a focal point of peace between the three religions.

Vs. 5 For there the thrones for judgment were set up,

Thrones usually reflect aspirations of rule, of kingship, of political power. But these are thrones for judgment: What judicial function would such thrones serve? They were not a function of administering the law – that was done by the elders in the gate or the priests at the shrine. The "central judicial office of Israel … related to the divine law to which Israel was subject and which had to be regularly proclaimed anew, …[T]he ‘judge’ of Israel had to know and interpret it… and see that it was observed … [His] duty was to apply it to new situations and thereby assume responsibility for its development and constantly instruct the tribes about [its] meaning and application" Hans-Joachim Kraus, The Psalms, A Commentary Volume 3, pp 434-435.

According to this scholar, at the heart of the peace of Jerusalem stands a law that is above the law of any tribe or any sect or even the national law of any nation. It is the law of God, a law that is dynamic and unfolding and engaging new situations and pointing to new truth.

We live in the heart of Babylon, but this community is an outpost of Jerusalem, longing for the unity and the wholeness that the city symbolizes and praying for peace. The things that make for peace are not the political calculus of victory, of weighing up winners and losers, but attending to that law which leads us beyond suspicion into trust and beyond enmity into friendship and makes of us peacemakers.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, not just in that distant land or between different faiths, but here close to home, with those we find it easy to stereotype and discount and who find it easy to dispose of us! May we and they be built as