Here is the image source for the rock on which the Church is built.
Here is proof that stone foundations are lasting foundations.
Here are altars of sacrifice, stones of resurrection and ascension.
Showing posts with label Jerusalem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jerusalem. Show all posts
22 July 2011
Stones and Bones (Updated)
For me, the enduring image of Jerusalem is the stones that are its bones. The very ground here is stone. There is more stone than soil. And nearly everything is built out of this creamy earth-stone.
Here is the image source for the rock on which the Church is built.
Here is proof that stone foundations are lasting foundations.
Here are altars of sacrifice, stones of resurrection and ascension.
Here is the image source for the rock on which the Church is built.
Here is proof that stone foundations are lasting foundations.
Here are altars of sacrifice, stones of resurrection and ascension.
15 July 2011
Sacred Spaces
What makes a place holy? It's association with a holy person or event? The belief that it is holy? The sanctifying rituals and prayers of believers?
I have found on this third trip to Israel that I'm not particularly attached to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and its anointing stone on which Jesus' body may have been laid after his death
or its Calvary Chapel in which he would have been crucified.
I'm not entirely sure those spaces are in the right places, but on the other hand they can't be but so far off (unlike the multiple tombs - I have even less faith in the so-called Garden Tomb).
But I do have a particular attachment to the Wall. The Western Wall is all that remains of the Israelite temple from the time of Solomon. The remaining stones go back in time through the period of the Maccabees and even further, built on the foundation that Solomon laid. (The stones with the frames around them are from the time of Jesus.)
The holiness of that place is palpable to me. I can feel the residue of God. I don't know how to explain it, but I believe that God resided there in a particular way even as God exists across space and time too vast to be contained in any one place.
As surely as I believe that God became incarnate in Yeshua, Jesus, I believe that God became inhabitant in that temple. And it for me is the holiest place I have ever been.
I have found on this third trip to Israel that I'm not particularly attached to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and its anointing stone on which Jesus' body may have been laid after his death
or its Calvary Chapel in which he would have been crucified.
I'm not entirely sure those spaces are in the right places, but on the other hand they can't be but so far off (unlike the multiple tombs - I have even less faith in the so-called Garden Tomb).
But I do have a particular attachment to the Wall. The Western Wall is all that remains of the Israelite temple from the time of Solomon. The remaining stones go back in time through the period of the Maccabees and even further, built on the foundation that Solomon laid. (The stones with the frames around them are from the time of Jesus.)
The holiness of that place is palpable to me. I can feel the residue of God. I don't know how to explain it, but I believe that God resided there in a particular way even as God exists across space and time too vast to be contained in any one place.
As surely as I believe that God became incarnate in Yeshua, Jesus, I believe that God became inhabitant in that temple. And it for me is the holiest place I have ever been.
14 June 2011
Living in a Holy (Wholly Sinful) City
I said I wanted to experience what it was like to live in Jerusalem, to be more than a tourist or pilgrim passing through. I don't know that I'll accomplish that even in two months but I am having more contacts with regular folk in neighborhoods away from shrines and monuments. I am heartened that so many of the Christians who are here for more than a pilgrimage are peace workers or actively engaged in interfaith and ecumenical work. I'm also struck by how loud (and rude) is the conservative minority that wields nearly majority power. There are some truly awful people here crafting heinous dehumanizing policies in the name of God, scripture and religion. There is also a huge mass of people who are embarrassed by them but are not politically involved enough to reign them in. I see them as complicit. Israel's treatment of its own citizens differs depending on whether they are Arab or (ostensibly) Jewish. Where they can live, move, build, get permits, travel.
And the truth is the Arab Israelis live far better than the Palestinians who are largely kept in squalor. Israel collects tax money "for them" and then does not release it to pay teachers or police or even to pick up trash. Israel refuses to let the Palestinian police enter Palestine to investigate crimes or protect the people but won't go in themselves because it's "foreign soil."
There ought not be any role for systematic governmental discrimination in the modern world. And our tax dollars ought not support it. Right now the US is building roads for Palestinians which the Israelis are designating as reservation roads, to keep the Palestinians off their Israeli roads.
I've never understood how a traumatize people could traumatize others: Whether it was the newly liberated Israelites enslaving each other and the Canaanites, or the AMerican revolutionaries throwing off the yoke of England but keeping the yoke on their African slaves, or black folk denying the civil rights of gay folk or any oppressed community making sure the women and girls are more oppressed than the boys and men.
Jerusalem is a holy city and a wholly sinful city. It is filled with people after all. But as long as it is an Israeli city - including the Muslim Quarter of the Old City and 1/4 to 1/3 of all Israelis live within it, its suburbs and illegal occupying settlements on seized Palestinian land, Jerusalem will remain the crucible of jihad - righteous struggle against evil.
The struggle for the soul of Jerusalem is the struggle for sole control of Jerusalem. Israel deems itself as custodian of the holy places of all faiths - even as it shuts them down, digs under them and declares them state treasures.
Without justice there can be no peace. Without basic respect for human dignity, religious and cultural diversity, there can be no justice.
I still can't believe that we live in the world where those who so narrowly escaped the fires of hatred seek to destroy someone else's children. How did the children of Israel come to this? And who willed them through the wilderness of sin to the promised land where each shall sit under their own olive trees and none shall make them afraid.
Micah puts it this way:
And the truth is the Arab Israelis live far better than the Palestinians who are largely kept in squalor. Israel collects tax money "for them" and then does not release it to pay teachers or police or even to pick up trash. Israel refuses to let the Palestinian police enter Palestine to investigate crimes or protect the people but won't go in themselves because it's "foreign soil."
There ought not be any role for systematic governmental discrimination in the modern world. And our tax dollars ought not support it. Right now the US is building roads for Palestinians which the Israelis are designating as reservation roads, to keep the Palestinians off their Israeli roads.
I've never understood how a traumatize people could traumatize others: Whether it was the newly liberated Israelites enslaving each other and the Canaanites, or the AMerican revolutionaries throwing off the yoke of England but keeping the yoke on their African slaves, or black folk denying the civil rights of gay folk or any oppressed community making sure the women and girls are more oppressed than the boys and men.
Jerusalem is a holy city and a wholly sinful city. It is filled with people after all. But as long as it is an Israeli city - including the Muslim Quarter of the Old City and 1/4 to 1/3 of all Israelis live within it, its suburbs and illegal occupying settlements on seized Palestinian land, Jerusalem will remain the crucible of jihad - righteous struggle against evil.
The struggle for the soul of Jerusalem is the struggle for sole control of Jerusalem. Israel deems itself as custodian of the holy places of all faiths - even as it shuts them down, digs under them and declares them state treasures.
Without justice there can be no peace. Without basic respect for human dignity, religious and cultural diversity, there can be no justice.
I still can't believe that we live in the world where those who so narrowly escaped the fires of hatred seek to destroy someone else's children. How did the children of Israel come to this? And who willed them through the wilderness of sin to the promised land where each shall sit under their own olive trees and none shall make them afraid.
Micah puts it this way:
Micah 4:1 In days to come the mountain of the house of the Holy One of Old
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised up above the hills.
Peoples shall stream to it, 2 and many nations shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Holy One of Old,
to the house of the God of Jacob; that God may teach us God's ways
and that we may walk in God's paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Holy One from Jerusalem.
3 God shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
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;
4 but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Holy One of Heaven's Armies has spoken.
01 June 2011
A New Adventure
I'm on my way to Jerusalem, a city that is larger than life, overburdened with hopes and dreams, fears and schemes. I'm going to live in Christian community, first a community of scholars, later an Anglican community. I'm going to write and read and reflect. (And hopefully eat well and exercise.)
I have some anxiety.
I am not afraid of terrorists or of falling prey to an act of violence. Although there is some risk. The risk is there, here, everywhere.
The anxiety I feel stems from my love for Israel as a theological space, my love for Judaism, my love for our shared scriptures and my real disappointment, frustration and sometimes anger with the Israeli government.
I am keenly aware of the calling to be a peacemaker. And I confess I do not know how to bring peace to even a small morsel of this deeply divided soil. I feel such outrage at the dignities heaped on the Palestinian people and such horror at the atrocities perpetuated by and against them.
I'm frustrated with the posture of those who reject any criticism of Israeli policies as anti-Semitic, yet I find myself choosing my words oh so carefully, trying to avoid the mines. In this regard it feels like a battering relationship. Israel has more power now that David could have ever dreamed of, and it is not enough.
The revenge-fantasies of desperately oppressed and abused people have become scripture and that is the heart of my anxiety. My beloved Hebrew Scriptures call for the establishment of ancient Israel in an inhabited land. And some texts call for the annihilation of its inhabitants. And we live in a world in which the tools of genocide have kept pace with those who have the will to wield them.
In some ways it doesn't matter what the archaeological record says, or what other portions of the scripture say, there is Exodus - Joshua calling for the dispossession and annihilation of non-Israelite peoples in God's name and voice. Today, the biblical scholar in me has been beaten, wrestled down and pinned by the text.
So I'm packing my bruises and anxieties and flying across to water. I do not seek an overly promised land. I seek peace, within and without. Wholeness and restoration. Wellbeing and security. שלם
17 January 2011
The Last Day of Christmas
21 July 2010
Lamentation
Ay. Ay-ya-yai. Ay-kah!
A day of weeping and lamentation. A day of fasting and remberance.
Today, millions mourn the loss of the temple in Jerusalem. Tradition has it that the Romans razed the temple on the anniversary of the day the Babylonians ravished the temple so long ago.
On this day Israel's children's children sing the blues, chanting the book of Lamentation in a solemn trope. Lamentations, the very sound of the word (in Hebrew) is a lament: Ay-kah!
Ay. Ay-ya-yai. Ay-kah!
It is virtually impossible I think, for modern peoples to comprehend the sense of abandonment the Israelites had at the loss of their temple in 567 BCE and again in 70 CE. (And this was after Antiochus desecrated the rebuilt Second Temple in 167 BCE.)
The book of Lamentations is a book of raw anguish. And blame. It is God's fault. But because a just god cannot be blamed; it is the people's fault for provoking God.
Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow...
A day of weeping and lamentation. A day of fasting and remberance.
Today, millions mourn the loss of the temple in Jerusalem. Tradition has it that the Romans razed the temple on the anniversary of the day the Babylonians ravished the temple so long ago.
On this day Israel's children's children sing the blues, chanting the book of Lamentation in a solemn trope. Lamentations, the very sound of the word (in Hebrew) is a lament: Ay-kah!
Ay. Ay-ya-yai. Ay-kah!
For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears;
for a comforter is far from me, one to revive my courage;
my children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed.
Zion stretches out her hands,
but there is no one to comfort her;
the Sovereign God has commanded against Jacob
that his neighbors should become his foes;
Jerusalem has become a filthy thing among them.
It is virtually impossible I think, for modern peoples to comprehend the sense of abandonment the Israelites had at the loss of their temple in 567 BCE and again in 70 CE. (And this was after Antiochus desecrated the rebuilt Second Temple in 167 BCE.)
The book of Lamentations is a book of raw anguish. And blame. It is God's fault. But because a just god cannot be blamed; it is the people's fault for provoking God.
The Holy God has become like an enemy and has destroyed Israel;
God has destroyed all its palaces, laid in ruins its strongholds,
and multiplied in daughter Judah mourning and lamentation.
God has destroyed all its palaces, laid in ruins its strongholds,
and multiplied in daughter Judah mourning and lamentation.
It was for the sins of her prophets
and the iniquities of her priests,
who shed the blood of the righteous in the midst of her.
and the iniquities of her priests,
who shed the blood of the righteous in the midst of her.
The text ends with a cautious hopeful plea: Restore us to yourself, Holy One, that we may be restored; renew our days as of old. But one can never be certain of an inscrutable god. The final words: unless you have utterly rejected us, and are angry with us beyond measure. Ay. Ay-ya-yai. Ay-kah!
What temples shall fall in this new age?
What blues shall we sing?
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