Grace-St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Mercerville, New Jersey

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem" - the City of God,
the realm where "all is just and all is right."
The golden city, the city of endless harmonious song,
the city of "neither pain, nor grief, but life everlasting."
The city whose inhabitants do no wrong,
where everyone worships Our God day and night - not only literally,
but by treating every other inhabitant as
brother, sister, mother, father.
Jerusalem, the city "set on the hill of Zion," to whom all nations and
peoples stream; the golden city of "milk and honey blessed;"
the city "by the river that flows to the home of God."
"God," we are told, "is in the midst of her."

If we listen to the hymns, the poetry, the music, or scripture of the
great desert religions, all of them will tell us the same thing:
Jerusalem is God's city, the final destination of all humanity,

"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem." says Psalm 122,
"may they prosper who love you."
Jerusalem, our final and ultimate dream, the goal of God's people . . . So
WHY do Jerusalem's people kill the prophets, and stone those who are sent to
them? Why must Jesus weep endlessly over Jerusalem,
right up to this present moment,
and why is there no end of that weeping in sight?

Why, just as his work as a prophet was prospering, did Jesus turn toward
Jerusalem, absolutely determined to deliver his prophetic challenge
In the heart of Judaism,
and to suffer the consequences?

That question lies at the heart of Lent
AND it lies at the heart of our relationships with God.
Why, oh Why, do we humans ignore and deny --
indeed why do we rise up so regularly and destroy – the messengers
who speak of and demonstrate our God's love?
In one sense, of course, that question feels unanswerable.
Yet, in another sense we could give almost too many answers.
The one that seems to me most comprehensive and important is this:
we humans ignore and distort and misuse God's message because with all
our hearts and minds, indeed with our whole being,
we are afraid of being out of our own control.

We simply do not trust that God will support us safely
through the chaos of our lives.
Because we humans can't really understand how and
the world is as it is and behaves as it does,
we choose instead to control as much of it, as we can
for as long as we can.

We kill the prophets, we even killed Jesus
because we're afraid that we’ll loose power and control
by listening to his message –
or so we seem to believe.

Had he listened to Jesus - Pilate would have been required to govern justly
as well as to admit that he and his superiors had no imaginable claim
to another's city, possessions and peoples.
Herod would have lost his "in group" connection to the conquers --
the connection that kept him and his small group of family and friends
quasi-safe from the Romans’ greed,
and which offered him some modicum of worldly power and respect.
The citizens of Jerusalem would have had to give up their status as victims
of a conquering army, and to admit that they often treated each other
just as badly as Rome treated them.

The Pharisees and Sadducees would have needed to stop arguing over the
potential resurrection of the dead and start admitting that
their communities widows, children, sick and maimed were being ignored
by the very officials who were called to claim them as her own;
and to provide for their safety and well-being

"No ma'am, No sir," Everyone said.
This justice stuff is very expensive! ! !
You see, from our personal point of view,
we fear that we will be the ones to pay the price of all this loving.

Even Christians tend to wince, possibly start to tighten up and want to run
away when someone proclaiming goodness and justice walks in.
I personally know how easy it is for a genuinely good thing to "hit me wrong."

Unfortunately, Justice, goodness and such routinely make us wince away -
I/We don't like comparisons between what we are
and what justice and love tell us we should be.
Goodness and holiness are challenges to our indifference, greed and lack of love.
They are also challenges to our lack of belief – masquerading as
“Hopelessness.”
The conviction that feels, “that’s just how things are and always will be.”
St. John says it quite poetically:
we are those "who love darkness and not light."
We find it easier to operate in a combat situation against our enemies
than in mutual loving service toward anyone at all
especially if that service requires us to join forces with our enemies.

Will it, will we, ever, ever change?
At this very moment tanks and guns, stones and hatred,
rule the physical city of Zion.
Endless horrors happen - - in name of protecting access to the God of Abraham, Sarah, Muhammad & Jesus
People are dying, out of work, restricted in their travel, often unable to
worship publicly and are subject at all hours to random death and destruction.
And all of this destruction and human toll is undertaken in the name of the holy &
merciful God who dwells in the midst of Jerusalem. Is Jerusalem possibly an anomaly, a strange problem seen nowhere else?

Scarcely. Here in the USA, a country which has been called a new promised land,
many of our cities rest on a base population of poor, sick, chaotic people
who have no hope of, who cannot even imagine living,
indeed, who have never even seen any one else live, a decent working-class life.
Out in the center of the country, things are frequently not much better.

In the name of each individual's responsibility for our own lives
and for the future of our children,
we are destroying generation after generation of poor, tired, homeless, futureless children,
Children who, whether we realize it or not, are also our children - literally our children, because the great majority of them
are baptized Christians, and therefore are part of our personal family household.

In what significant theological or ethical way
does this picture differ from our picture of Jerusalem in 33 CE?

Church folk don't seem much better at pushing fear aside.
Our primates – the senior bishop of every Anglican country (province) in the world - met last week in Tanzania /Dar es Salaam (meaning of word “peace”)
They talked about the great needs of people especially children, throughout the developing world - They heard about war, poverty, starvation, lack of clothing, personal safety, health care and education.

They also spent two to three days on talking about and then lambasting the American. Church because we actually admit out loud that many of our people
Including clergy are gay and often partnered in monogamous relationships.

With straight faces, they implied that the second problem was as disruptive to the church and to human life and health as the first.
And while they plan to do much that is good and holy to combat the traumas of the African & Asian continents over the next decade
they also decided to combat the international trauma of hearing about American LGBT folk who live freely and in public
by asking our Bishops to promise not ever to be bad people again,
to neither consent to the consecration of openly gay-partnered Bishops (and given the internet, where would anyone find a closet?)
nor to do any “public rite” blessing of gay unions -
_________________________________________________________
Undoubtedly we Christians still love darkness rather than light.

Now I had a professor, Dr. Kung, who always warned against putting things or ideas in nutshells - unless of course they were in fact nuts.
Still, if I need to put a single word explanation to our "loving darkness rather than light," I would choose the word "fear."
I - you - we - all humans are afraid, actually we're terrified of being hurt, of losing out, and of looking stupid or uninformed.
We even fear believing wrongly and thus missing our hope of heaven. -- Something Jesus NEVER suggested.
We are afraid of our losing pretended control over our lives.
(How many times do we hear, “’My life’ – or just ‘life’ is out of control at the moment!?” “At the moment?!!” When is it NOT out of control?
We fear having to put our money (or our selves) where our mouths have been. --What if I don’t have enough money to control the rest of my life??
We are afraid of being shown up in the light of day for what we "really" are. To borrow Gershwin's phrase, human beings are "'fraid a livin' and skeered a dyin'"
So we hide in the darkness, our muscles clenched and our eyes wary, and we shiver whenever goodness or holiness enter with a task for us to perform -
never mind entering with a gift for us to enjoy.

I sure you've been told not to fool with or annoy a frightened animal - frightened animals lash out.
So do we, my brothers and sisters, so do we.
And, in the process of lashing out, we stone the prophets,
kill those who are sent to us,
and reduce "Jerusalem the golden" to blood smeared rubble.

What can we do about this? - nothing much!
What can God do about this and help us to do about this? - everything
Indeed God has already done everything.
Because God loves us, aches for our lack of understanding,
and cries over our fear and blindness,
God has come to live and die with and among us,
hoping that we may finally understand how greatly she loves us,

Again, it is John who sees what has happened:
"God is light, and in God there is no darkness at all.”
God is love, "there is no fear in love, because perfect love casts out fear."
"God loved the world so much that God sent us the only begotten . . . "
We killed that only begotten, and we hanged him on a tree -
Thus Lent.

But God raised Jesus from the dead on the third day,
So that we might know that we have nothing,
not "height, depth, principalities nor powers, death nor life,"
nothing which we need fear here or in any life to come
Thus Easter.

Our Christian journey is always from the first to the second,
from Lent to Easter,
from death to life.
We're on that road again - right now.
May God in mercy and love,
forgive us our fear, and all of the sins fear causes,
and bring us to the trust and faith of Easter.
Then we may rebuild Jerusalem's walls and her life, in this and every land,
and even in Jerusalem
So that our Lord may no longer weep over the golden city
but may dwell with her inhabitants in joy and peace.

In nomine . . .