Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Psalm 122

Psalm 122 is considered one of the “Songs of Ascent” in the Psalter.  Scholars speculate that pilgrims would sing these songs as they make their way to the Temple in Jerusalem to offer sacrifice and prayer.  In 2013 when I visited the Holy Land, along with about twenty or so others from Trinity College and my Diocese, I remember listening to an old praise song about Jerusalem as the bus entered the capital city.  For a moment when I was on that bus, I pondered entering Jerusalem with the countless other pilgrims in history, from the Psalmist to Jesus as he entered the city for his passion and resurrection. 

We can get wrapped up in thinking Jerusalem as other-worldly, as a sacred space made free from all the politics, distress and hardship of ordinary life.  This is of course an illusion; anyone with a basic familiarity with the history of Jerusalem would recognize that the city has always been a site of political and often violent contestation and confrontation.  I remember someone muttering that Jerusalem is the most fought-over piece of real estate in human history.  For some critics of religion, it is the fact that the city is so idealized, so prized as a spiritual space, that makes it so hotly contested.  

There is another view of Jerusalem found in Christian history, which is to ignore the physical Jerusalem altogether.  “Our Jerusalem is in heaven” or “Our Jerusalem is the Church” are phrases which come to mind.  The physical and earthly Jerusalem is too riddled with politics, riddled with the messes of human folly to ever live up to its spiritual ideal.  After I returned from the Holy Land, one of my interlocutors stated that he had little interest in going to there because his faith was not bound to any particular historical location, even if that location was where Jesus walked 2000 years ago.  

I disagree with both approaches, the first of viewing Jerusalem as an idealized and utopian city, free from the reality of human sin, the second views Jerusalem as irrelevant, part of the dustbin of history.  I find my answer by returning to the Psalm, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”  Jerusalem, like all of our cities is never free from the rough and tumble of human sin and folly.  But faith is not about being utopian or seeing the world in a rose-tinted lens.  Rather, our hope is that Jerusalem remains part of the overall redemptive purpose of God.  We pray for peace, understanding that God has not abandoned the city, but remains and journeys with it, through its tumultuous and often chaotic history.  

So, two years after I visited Jerusalem, I continue to pray for it, resting my hope that it will one day, be the city of peace.

- Rev'd Justin Cheng

[Former co-head of the Divinity Class of Trinity College, Rev'd Justin is Deacon and Assistant Curate at St. Paul's Anglican Church in Nanaimo, BC]