Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 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!
Jerusalem.
City of David.
City of God.
The Holy City.
A place set
apart.
A sacred place
for Jewish people, for Christian people, and for Muslim people.
Jerusalem.
The name itself
means “City of Peace”.
Of Jerusalem
Isaiah wrote:
In days to come
the mountain of the Lord 's house
shall be established as the highest of the
mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
3 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."
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into
plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against
nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
John writes in
Revelation:
And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband.
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne
saying,
"See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no
more,
for the first things have passed away."
Jerusalem.
It stands as a
beacon on a hill for all that is good and right and Godly.
And it also, at
one and the same time, represents what is wrong with the world.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How often have I
desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her
wings, and you were not willing!
Jerusalem, the
City of Peace and the place of war.
As such it
epitomizes that which is right about religion, and that which is oh so wrong.
What is wrong.
One could
identify many different failures, I suppose.
Today, three
stand out to me.
Religion has
failed when it becomes the cause of hate, when it is used to oppress, and when
it promotes a nationalism that divides the people of the world and sets one
against another.
It is hatred that
caused a gunman to enter the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand and gun down
Muslims in their place of worship.
It is hatred that
caused another gunman, not long ago, to enter a synagogue in Pittsburg and gun
down many Jewish people during their worship.
And it was hatred
that led Dylann Roof to enter Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston,
South Carolina and gun down those people gathered to study the Bible.
Hatred is often fueled
by a marriage of religion and racism.
It
has no place in any of the religions of the world.
Oppression.
Exploitation. Abuse.
Religious faith gone wrong has been used in all three.
The marriage of power and religion has been a bad trip.
Women have been
subjected to abuse and shamed into submission in the name of religion. This is not something that just occurs in
some distant far off land. I’ve seen it
in my own congregations.
Slavery, among
other things, has been justified on the basis of religion.
And
people have been devalued and subjected to oppression—deprived of basic civil
rights and access to the necessities of life, all in the name of religion.
And finally, a
few words about nationalism.
When I choose to
use the word “nationalism” I’m not referring to simply patriotism, or any other
healthy appreciation for one’s own country.
It’s alright to get
teary eyed at the sight of Mt. Rushmore, or to stand in awe in the nations
capital.
It’s alright to
be proud to be an American, or Norwegian, or South African, or Chinese.
Nationalism is
something different.
It is exalting
one’s own nation at the expense of all others.
“Deutchland uber
alles” or “Germany over all” was the marching song of the Third Reich during
WWII. It epitomizes the nationalistic
spirit.
Nationalism is
often, though not always, the result of the union of religion and patriotism,
of the belief that one nation is superior to all others because of its special
relationship to God.
And nationalism
has been used to justify wars throughout history.
Religion has
failed when it becomes the cause of hate, when it is used to oppress, and when
it promotes a nationalism that divides the people of the world and sets one
against another.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How often have I
desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her
wings, and you were not willing!
Jews, Christians,
and Muslims.
All Children of
Abraham and people of faith.
Cousins, if you
will.
And of all
people, we should know that there is a different way.
Paul writes:
For many live as enemies of the cross of
Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their
end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame;
their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it
is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
I particularly
love that phrase “Our citizenship is in
heaven.”
Jewish people
recite the “Shema”: “Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord
is One.”
Muslims have the shahada,
"There
is no god but God; Muhammad is the messenger of God"
And Christians
confess “Jesus is Lord.”
Though our faiths
differ in substantial ways, as children of Abraham these basic statements of
faith mean that each of us in our own way acknowledges the Lordship, the
Sovereignty of the God who created the heavens and the earth.
To recognize the
Lordship of God is to reject the supremacy of anyone people or nation over all
others.
It is to confess
that all people are created by God and because of that have intrinsic worth and
value.
Rather than
seeking to destroy one another in the name of religion, we are to care for one
another in the name of God. Big
difference.
Religion gone
wrong has been used to oppress, exploit, and abuse, using power to subdue.
For those of us
who are Christians, though, there is a different way, and that is the way of
the Cross.
In Phillipians
Paul writes:
Let the same mind be in you that was in
Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality
with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of
a slave, being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, he humbled
himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.
To follow Jesus
on the way of the cross, if it means anything at all, means that we surrender all
power and instead, serve one another as Christ has served us, giving his life
for us.
It is to lift
each other up, not put each other down.
And in doing
this, we are following Jesus commandment that we love one another as he first
loved us.
Religion that is
true, is a religion that embraces love, not hate;
Justice, not oppression;
And unity, not
division.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 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!
That too often
has been the reality with which we have lived.
But in Isaiah, we hear of another vision for the Holy City of God.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge
of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment