Jerusalem the Golden?

Towards the end of February, I spent eight days in and around Jerusalem. For part of the time I enjoyed the hospitality of my brother and sister-in-law, who are living and working there at present. I also valued a brief retreat with the Sisters of Zion at Ein Kerem – the village of John the Baptist – in the Judaean hills nearby. After a three-month stay in Israel some years ago this was a welcome return.

My time in Jerusalem was rich, colourful and painful. The old city is, of course utterly unique. It seems to be almost organically alive – clothed in its honey-coloured walls and topped with spires, minarets and the great golden Dome of the Rock. Its fundamental place in Jewish memory and affections: Its crucial significance in the Christian story: and its special role for Muslims combine to make any visit an intense and intensive business. The religious habits (both clothing and practices!) of three distinct traditions lend colour and variety to virtually every street scene.

Yet there is tension all around.  Soldiers with machine guns patrol the hallowed area adjacent to the western, or “wailing”, wall of Herod's temple. Just four or five miles away the security wall - separating Israel from Palestinian territory - blocks one’s free access to Bethlehem and snakes onwards across the landscape. A day visit to Hebron (the burial place of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) proved heavy with hurt. In a bustling Arab city of at least 150,000 people, a Jewish settler population of 450 is guarded by a detachment of 1,200 Israeli soldiers. Posters and flags in support of Hamas in the recent election fluttered from many windows and public buildings.

In conversation, resentment and chasms of incomprehension are everywhere present. Israeli voices express revulsion at the suicide bombings of innocent civilians and – since this is just after the General Synod debate about disinvestment in Caterpillar for its part in creating the aforesaid wall – amazement at the partiality of the Church of England. Palestinian voices talked of daily harassment and discrimination and speak about the expropriation of ancestral farmland and olive groves by the Israeli authorities.

Jewish voices assert a Palestinian leadership of extremism or cowardice: Muslim voices accuse Jewish leadership of arrogance: and minority Christian voices (Palestinian Anglicans among them) express some unease at the electoral success of militantly Muslim Hamas while saying that this is only to be expected in response to a Jewish state that relies solely on force and coercion. And so on and so on . . .

This little patch of land really is a key point in the pressure cooker of our world.  The imperial interests of the United States are heavily invested in the fabric of Israel as well as in the future of nearby Iraq. A respondingly militant Islam expresses itself in the new Palestinian administration and doubtless has soul-friends in Iran. Opportunities and risks abound – for the people of that region and for us all.

Talking about such themes one of the sisters at Ein Kerem reflected: “There is always a mystery to Jerusalem. It seems that there will be no peace for Zion until there is significant peace and justice in the wider world. Likewise, if some true peace can be established among us here that will be a signal of real hope for the world at large”.

Put like this it appears that in a way that is both mysterious and challenging Jerusalem is a sign of spiritual and social potential and paralysis.

This gives added depth to our hearing of the psalmist's cry: “O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee”. It is imperative that we pray earnestly and seek intelligently the peace of Jerusalem – and that of all her children.

May your summer, dear reader, be a blessed one!

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