Jerusalem, Jerusalem

 

March 16, St Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

In early October 2001, I stood at the edge of Ground Zero with several World Council of Churches colleagues.

The acrid smoke was still hanging in the air weeks after the terror attacks that felled the World Trade Center. Mounds of twisted metal debris were being created by huge bull dozers, and scores of hard-hatted workers labored amid the rubble.

I stood next to a Russian Orthodox priest from Moscow, a member of the World Council of Churches Central Committee. Other WCC representatives were from Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim, a delegation of sympathy and support sent to U.S. churches.

We stood in silence as the General Secretary, a German Lutheran, prayed over the vast smoking crater. I felt my eyes filling with tears as I recalled a visit my friend Sonia and I made to the twin towers only days before the attacks. It was a warm summer day and we were glad to stand in the shade of the towering edifices.

And now, unbelievably, they were gone, leaving a forlorn emptiness on Manhattan’s famous horizon.

We all felt that anguish, if we were around then, in September 2001.

The anguish helps us understand Luke’s emotions as he writes about the Jerusalem Jesus laments.

When Jesus cried out, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he was addressing the spiritual center of the Middle Eastern world, the seat of the great Second Temple, the focal point of Jewish worship that had stood magnificently for 500 years.

But when Luke was writing the story the temple had been reduced to rubble by Roman forces led by Titus. According to Wikipedia, “The Romans ultimately captured the entire city … with tens of thousands killed, enslaved, or executed.”

When he records Jesus’ lament, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” Luke’s heart is filled with pain over what was and is no more.

What is going through Jesus’ mind when he stands on the outskirts of the city? “The city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.” (Lk 13:34)

Jesus’ words are expressions of love for the people and the city he loves.

Jerusalem kills the prophets. But Professor Richard W. Swanson of Augustana College in Sioux Falls, notes that is not all that Jerusalem does.

Swanson writes, “Christians who only know Jerusalem from church … may well imagine that Jesus is setting up a basic conflict between a religion centered on Jerusalem and one centered on the Messiah; between organized, formalized, entrenched religion and the freedom of the Christian. They may even imagine that this way of understanding saves them from anti-Semitic or anti-Judaic interpretation.

“I hear in this a theology that remakes Jesus into a modern Christian, one who is not tied to a place, to a Temple, or to a priesthood whose job it was to bring the world back into balance. But in Luke’s story, Jesus comes from a family that goes up to Jerusalem for the pilgrimage festivals every year, “as usual.” 

Remember, Professor Swanson says, that Jesus is not like (modern Christians). He is a Jew of the first century, and Jerusalem is, for him, the center of the world. When he says, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he is grieving for a city that he loves. 

It’s worth noting here, I think, that when Jesus expresses his grief, he is addressing Pharisees.

These Pharisees have come to Jesus not to criticize him, as is often the case, but to warn him of a threat against his life. “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” (Lk 13:31.)

But Jesus’ determination to continue his trek to Jerusalem is unabated. 

“Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today, tomorrow, and on the third day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.” (Lk 13:32-33)

How is it that Pharisees are so worried about Jesus’ safety that that they go out of their way to protect him?

Even a cursory reading of Scripture gives us the impression that Pharisees, in general, were the bane of Jesus’ ministry. They gripe when Jesus performs miracles on the Sabbath. They seethe when Jesus outsmarts then in debates about the law. They deplore when Jesus’ disciples rub their hands together on stalks of grain to gather a Sabbath breakfast. They blanch when Jesus’ disciples stuff food in their mouths without purifying their hands.

But it seems that if Jesus was not around, the Pharisees would miss him.

And there are also instances in Scripture when Jesus and Pharisees get along. Jesus has dinner with Pharisees, speaks cordially with Pharisees, and seems to seek out their company.

Professor Swanson writes: 

“Interpreters sometimes imagine that they knew this because they were in the room when Herod was hatching the assassination plot. They were not. The Pharisees were not (at least not in the main) collaborators with Rome or with Roman stooges like Herod. The Sadducees collaborated, certainly because Rome forced them to, and also surely because it was to their economic advantage to do so. But not the Pharisees. They generally held themselves separate from Roman culture. They extended the holiness of the Holy of Holies to even Jewish dinner tables because they recognized the danger posed by Roman chaos and violence. 

“And they warn Jesus about Herod. Jesus probably does not really need to be warned. He already knows that Herod is a fox, a sneaking predator. But their act of protection is an act of allyship, and forgetting that leads to a serious misunderstanding of the complexity of this scene and of Luke’s entire story.”

Some scholars speculate that Jesus was, himself, a Pharisee. He trained to be rabbi and it is possible that his education took place in the Pharisaical tradition.

Hyam Maccoby, a Jewish-British scholar and dramatist, speculates that Jesus was a Pharisee “and that his arguments with Pharisees is a sign of inclusion rather than fundamental conflict (disputation being the dominant narrative mode employed in the Talmud as a search for truth, and not necessarily a sign of opposition.”

This is interesting speculation and we may never know for sure on this side of heaven. But there are many mysteries about Jesus of Nazareth. As John wrote at the end of his Gospel, “There are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” (Jn 21:25)

So let us revel in the mysteries of the triune God. 

Let us continue our Lenten pilgrimage to follow Jesus at this stage in his ministry when, as Luke writes, “the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” (Lk 9:51)

We know he will not go alone.

To quote Professor Swanson one more time, “The Messiah has more allies than you might imagine. So do you. Recognizing that is how you prepare to welcome the one coming in the Name of the God Whose Name Is Mercy.”

Amen.