Jerusalem

Jerusalem

By Konstantin Gorbatov

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.

Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.

For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee.

Because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek thy good.

Psalms 122: 6-9

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For thousands of years, Jerusalem has stood at the crossroads of the human soul. No other city has gathered to itself the longings of so many peoples. Teddy Kollek, who served as the city’s mayor for nearly three decades, said it plainly: “If you want one simple word to symbolize all of Jewish history, that word would be ‘Jerusalem.’” David Ben-Gurion echoed the thought: “No city in the world, not even Athens or Rome, ever played as great a role in the life of a nation for so long a time, as Jerusalem has done in the life of the
Jewish people.” More than 2,000 years ago, the Talmud’s tractate Berakhot distilled the matter to three words: “Eternity means Jerusalem.”

But Jerusalem’s pull is not confined to one people. The scholar Alfred Edersheim — born Jewish, later a Christian — captured what is perhaps the most astonishing thing about this city: “In every age, the memory of Jerusalem has stirred the deepest feelings. Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans turn to it with reverent affection. It almost seems as if in some sense each could call it his ‘happy home,’ the ‘name ever dear’ to him. For our holiest thoughts of the past, and our happiest hopes for the future, are inseparably connected with it.” As early as the 4th century, Eusebius of Caesarea had noted that “Jerusalem, once the royal city of the Jews, has become a city of all nations, and the place of divine teaching for the whole world.” The result is, as Matthew Easton described it, “in Jerusalem every form of religion, every nationality of East and West, is represented at one time.”

Only a few centuries separated from Christ, St. Jerome suggested some of the draw of the city, teaching that “we understand Scripture better when we have seen Judea with our own eyes, and discovered what still remains of ancient towns,” recollecting of Jerusalem that “the whole mystery of our faith is connected with this city. … It would be tedious to enumerate all the prophets and holy men who have been sent forth from this place. All that is strange and mysterious to us is familiar and natural to this city and country.” Arriving in 1919, G.K. Chesterton was immediately struck by Jerusalem, which he described as “the shoulder of the world” — a place, he wrote, that proves “the hardest of all the hard sayings of supernaturalism: that there is such a thing as holy and unholy ground.” But he also named the ache of it: “The people of Jerusalem are doomed to have
difference without division. They are driven to set pillar against pillar in the same temple.”

ForChristians, Jerusalem is the place where Jesus set His face to fulfill His Father’s will. Oswald Chambers reminds us that “Jerusalem, in the life of our Lord, represents the place where He reached the culmination of His Father’s will.” He taught that “the greatest thing for us to remember is that we go up to Jerusalem to fulfill God’s purpose, not our own.” Reflecting on Psalm 122, Matthew Henry likewise pictured the faithful going up “from all parts of the country, as one man… to receive instruction from God…and to give thanks.”

In a fractured world, Jerusalem invites us to a hard and beautiful truth: holiness draws many peoples to the same ground. As the 19th century writer Israel Zangwill poetically put it, “In the din and tumult of the age, the still small voice of Jerusalem remains our only music.” May we all learn to stand in the holy city together and pray for its peace.  

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