St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA
The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh +
Some of the most deeply felt words from Jesus in the Gospels. There are so many echoes, in Scripture and in later writers. One echo is certainly the longing cry of the exiles in Babylon, from the 137th Psalm: (1)
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
Here is a poem by Yehudah Halevi, from the late part of the 12th century:
Would that I had wings
that I could wend my way to Thee,
O Jerusalem, from afar!
I will make my own broken heart
find its way amidst your broken ruins.
I will fall upon my face to the ground,
for I take much delight in your stones
and show favor to your very dust,
to the air of your land!
And finally, bringing us to our own times, words from 20th century Rabbi Abraham Heschel : (2)
Who will fan and force the fire of truth to spread across the world,
insisting that we are all one, that mankind is not an animal species
but a fellowship of care, a covenant of brotherhood?
There is cursing in the world, scheming, and very little praying.
Let Jerusalem inspire praying: an end to rage, an end to violence.
Let Jerusalem be a seat of mercy for all men. Wherever a sigh
is uttered, it will evoke active compassion in Jerusalem.
Let there be no waste of history. This must be instilled in those
who might be walking in the streets of Jerusalem like God's
butlers in the sacred palace. Here no one is more than a guest.
Jerusalem must not be lost to pride or to vanity.
All of Jerusalem is a gate, but the key is lost in the darkness of God's silence.
Let us light all the lights, let us call all the names, to find the key.
On this Second Sunday of the Lenten Journey, we open ourselves to a core theme in the Jewish and Christian faiths: that of Covenant. “Covenant” lies at the heart of our relationship with God. “Jerusalem” becomes, from at least the 5th century BCE, the universal symbol of the goal and destination of Faith. “Jerusalem” is both that place where God and God’s people dwell together, or where, as in the Gospel today, that relationship fails. In her usual eloquence, my friend and colleague Suzanne Guthrie says, bringing us full circle:
In Christian symbolism Jerusalem is everyplace and the ultimate place. Jerusalem
is the conflicted city within our hearts and the hoped for heavenly city of promise.
Jerusalem is Earth herself. We lament over the world and our continual warfare
and our ongoing destruction of land and seas and air. We (3) are the holy place that
kills prophets, healers, sages and innocents in the complex chaos of our passions. (4)
In the Hebrew Scriptures, the word for “covenant” is always berith. The derivation of the word is uncertain. Some think it comes from the Assyrian word beritu, which means “to bind”. This makes sense. But most believe it comes from the Hebrew verb barach, meaning “to cut”. That links us immediately to our reading from Genesis 15, where God establishes His covenant with Abraham, affirming His promise that Abraham, though now childless, will be the “father of many nations”. In the ritual sacrifice that affirms the covenant and binds Abraham to God, the animals are cut down the middle. This ritual will be seen many times in the Hebrew Bible. In Jeremiah 34, God says, “The men who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces.” (5)
Berith can mean a legal contract, a mutual voluntary agreement. But when used of God and us, it is clear that God and we are not equal parties. Berith in this case says more about God’s disposition towards us. Simply, our failing faithfully to keep the relationship does not break the relationship, as a broken contract would. God’s relationship with us is unbreakable. This is clear in God’s promise to Abraham, clear in the covenants with Moses, Joshua, with the whole of Israel – and with us in the person of Jesus.
The knowing, in the mind and heart, that God will never break our relationship, and the knowing that when we abandon God there is always a way back on the path of self-knowledge and repentance – so powerfully depicted in the parable of the Prodigal Son – is the core principle that this Second Sunday in Lent calls us to embrace. It is the rock foundation on which to build our Life. Our life with God is never contractual, never subject to cancellation due to “pre-existing conditions”. It is always Covenantal. “God” is ever-faithful in Love, Justice, Forgiveness.
“Jerusalem” is the living symbol of our life-giving relationship with God. It is extolled in the Song of Solomon, and in the vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem in Revelation. It is hoped for in that overly sentimental but stirring Blake poem set as the hymn “Jerusalem” by Parry – a deep cry for God’s Peaceable Kingdom to come among us: “and is Jerusalem build-ed here / among the dark Satanic mills.”
Our work is to let God build “Jerusalem” in our hearts. To bind ourselves together with God in the covenant of Love. To live our lives out of that radiant core. To build “Jerusalem” stone by stone around us, extending the Covenant Community to all peoples and nations.
Our rallying cry, in this week of our Lenten journey, can be the words of the 18th century Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav: (6)
Wherever I go, I go to Jerusalem.”
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets
and stones those who are sent to it!
How often I've longed to gather your children,
gather your children like a hen,
her brood safe
under her wings—
but you refused and turned away!
Some of the most deeply felt words from Jesus in the Gospels. There are so many echoes, in Scripture and in later writers. One echo is certainly the longing cry of the exiles in Babylon, from the 137th Psalm: (1)
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
Here is a poem by Yehudah Halevi, from the late part of the 12th century:
Would that I had wings
that I could wend my way to Thee,
O Jerusalem, from afar!
I will make my own broken heart
find its way amidst your broken ruins.
I will fall upon my face to the ground,
for I take much delight in your stones
and show favor to your very dust,
to the air of your land!
And finally, bringing us to our own times, words from 20th century Rabbi Abraham Heschel : (2)
Who will fan and force the fire of truth to spread across the world,
insisting that we are all one, that mankind is not an animal species
but a fellowship of care, a covenant of brotherhood?
There is cursing in the world, scheming, and very little praying.
Let Jerusalem inspire praying: an end to rage, an end to violence.
Let Jerusalem be a seat of mercy for all men. Wherever a sigh
is uttered, it will evoke active compassion in Jerusalem.
Let there be no waste of history. This must be instilled in those
who might be walking in the streets of Jerusalem like God's
butlers in the sacred palace. Here no one is more than a guest.
Jerusalem must not be lost to pride or to vanity.
All of Jerusalem is a gate, but the key is lost in the darkness of God's silence.
Let us light all the lights, let us call all the names, to find the key.
On this Second Sunday of the Lenten Journey, we open ourselves to a core theme in the Jewish and Christian faiths: that of Covenant. “Covenant” lies at the heart of our relationship with God. “Jerusalem” becomes, from at least the 5th century BCE, the universal symbol of the goal and destination of Faith. “Jerusalem” is both that place where God and God’s people dwell together, or where, as in the Gospel today, that relationship fails. In her usual eloquence, my friend and colleague Suzanne Guthrie says, bringing us full circle:
In Christian symbolism Jerusalem is everyplace and the ultimate place. Jerusalem
is the conflicted city within our hearts and the hoped for heavenly city of promise.
Jerusalem is Earth herself. We lament over the world and our continual warfare
and our ongoing destruction of land and seas and air. We (3) are the holy place that
kills prophets, healers, sages and innocents in the complex chaos of our passions. (4)
In the Hebrew Scriptures, the word for “covenant” is always berith. The derivation of the word is uncertain. Some think it comes from the Assyrian word beritu, which means “to bind”. This makes sense. But most believe it comes from the Hebrew verb barach, meaning “to cut”. That links us immediately to our reading from Genesis 15, where God establishes His covenant with Abraham, affirming His promise that Abraham, though now childless, will be the “father of many nations”. In the ritual sacrifice that affirms the covenant and binds Abraham to God, the animals are cut down the middle. This ritual will be seen many times in the Hebrew Bible. In Jeremiah 34, God says, “The men who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces.” (5)
Berith can mean a legal contract, a mutual voluntary agreement. But when used of God and us, it is clear that God and we are not equal parties. Berith in this case says more about God’s disposition towards us. Simply, our failing faithfully to keep the relationship does not break the relationship, as a broken contract would. God’s relationship with us is unbreakable. This is clear in God’s promise to Abraham, clear in the covenants with Moses, Joshua, with the whole of Israel – and with us in the person of Jesus.
The knowing, in the mind and heart, that God will never break our relationship, and the knowing that when we abandon God there is always a way back on the path of self-knowledge and repentance – so powerfully depicted in the parable of the Prodigal Son – is the core principle that this Second Sunday in Lent calls us to embrace. It is the rock foundation on which to build our Life. Our life with God is never contractual, never subject to cancellation due to “pre-existing conditions”. It is always Covenantal. “God” is ever-faithful in Love, Justice, Forgiveness.
“Jerusalem” is the living symbol of our life-giving relationship with God. It is extolled in the Song of Solomon, and in the vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem in Revelation. It is hoped for in that overly sentimental but stirring Blake poem set as the hymn “Jerusalem” by Parry – a deep cry for God’s Peaceable Kingdom to come among us: “and is Jerusalem build-ed here / among the dark Satanic mills.”
Our work is to let God build “Jerusalem” in our hearts. To bind ourselves together with God in the covenant of Love. To live our lives out of that radiant core. To build “Jerusalem” stone by stone around us, extending the Covenant Community to all peoples and nations.
Our rallying cry, in this week of our Lenten journey, can be the words of the 18th century Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav: (6)
Wherever I go, I go to Jerusalem.”
+++++
Footnotes:
(1) Ps 137: 5-6
(2) Abraham Heschel: "Israel: An Echo of Eternity"
(3) emphasis mine
(4) The Rev. Suzanne Guthrie, on her website "At the Edge of the Enclosure"
(5) Jeremiah 34: 18
(6) Nachman of Bratslav, 1772-1810
