Sunday Morning Meds--Jerusalem the Golden?

“Extol the LORD, O Jerusalem; praise your God, 

O Zion, for he strengthens the bars of your gates 

and blesses your people within you.”  Psalm 147:12

For as long as I can remember, no one seems to have listened to this command. The command to praise, the very heart of the psalmist’s cheer-leading, is here given to Jerusalem, to Zion, to the heart of the nation of Israelites, to a very real place, a city.

But for as long as I can remember, Jerusalem the city has been anything but Jerusalem the Golden. Its gates offer little safety, and its residents seem not particularly blessed, at least with peace. Jerusalem’s thousands are cordoned off from each other as if they were their own worst enemies, which they seem to be. Jerusalem is a hand grenade, no more holy than Vegas, maybe less so, President Trump's latest directive notwithstanding.

Some claim Jerusalem’s Temple Mount to be the site of the first and the second Jewish temple. When the Messiah returns, the third and final Jewish temple will be built there too, or so goes the tale. Jerusalem’s Temple Mount may well be considered the most holy site in Judaism. 

But it is also the site of two major Muslim shrines, the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. To Islam, Temple Mount is the place some Muslim clerics and historians claim to be the third most holy site of their faith. 

The dirt on and around Temple Mount was the earth God chose to form Adam, man, in his very likeness, some say, and the place where Adam, in turn, made sacrifices to God.  It’s the place where David bought a threshing floor and built an altar. Temple Mount is rich with biblical history for Christians—as well as Jews and Muslims.

This paean, the pageant of praise that is Psalm 147, surveys nothing less than creation itself for the first ten verses, then marries a promise to the exhortation of the very first line of the poem: praise him, Jerusalem, because he keeps you safe and blesses you. The psalmist knows a different Jerusalem than I do.

Biblical language always spreads a wide tent. Maybe Jerusalem doesn’t mean the Israeli city at all. Maybe Jerusalem means, in a sort of general way, all believers, the church—or maybe, well, just me. Maybe it means the small town where I live; some of my neighbors think so. But then some believe the Jerusalem of verse 12 is the United States of America. One can wander far in the broad landscape cast by these words.

But then, maybe my pre-conceptions are wrong; perhaps peace isn’t the blessing that war is. Perhaps the ongoing warfare of the Middle East, in Jerusalem as anywhere, is really a kind of joy, keeping believers on their knees. Maybe peace is as much a curse as affluence, fear a blessing.

Maybe today, this verse means nothing at all. Maybe it meant something when the psalmist sang it because Jerusalem was soon to become address of God’s own house, the temple, the city of God. Maybe the line is an artifact from ancient Mesopotamian history.

Maybe Jerusalem has simply never taken the command to heart.  Maybe if it would, its defenses would be strengthened, its people blessed. 

But then maybe none of us have listened. Maybe none of us have extolled. Maybe none of us bring praise. I’m sounding like a Calvinist.

Still, he loves us.  Listen to this: “For God so loved the world.”  “Jesus loves me, this I know.”

Amazing.