SCRIPTURE READINGS
for Thanksgiving Day, November 24
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 100
Philippians 4:4-9
John 6:25-35
for Sunday, November 27
Psalm 122
Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44
Luke 21:5-19
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
‘May they prosper who love you.’
- Psalm 122:6
These words come from a Song of Ascents. This kind of psalm was probably developed for singing while walking uphill toward the city of Jerusalem and, once within its walls, further up hill and into the courtyard of the Temple itself. There are quite a few of these songs in the Bible: Psalms 120 through 134 are specifically given this title, and there are others sprinkled through that book.
I have not been to Jerusalem. Perhaps someday I will get to make the trip, and walk uphill into the modern Old City. Yes, if you caught that, it is a lot like “Antique Tables Made Daily” (a Sperryville business). The Old City has been built, destroyed, and rebuilt many times since the time of Jesus.... and it was built, destroyed, and rebuilt many times before Jesus walked there, too.
What is there now, scholars tell us, is a mixture of ancient ruins and buildings put up by Romans, Muslims (Palestinian Arabs and others), Crusaders, other Christians, and Zionists in the one thousand nine hundred and forty-six years since the Romans tore it all down, beginning in the year we call A.D. 70.
Jesus warned his followers that their generation was headed for a terrible time of destruction. Try reading from Matthew 23:29 through all of chapter 24, keeping in mind what the Romans actually did to Jerusalem. In the lifetime of some of Jesus’ disciples, the Romans desecrated the Jewish Temple by setting up within it a statue of Caesar as a god: Jews called it “the abomination of desolation.” (Matthew 24:15) (Around 200 years before Jesus’ prophecy, the Syrian-Greeks had committed similar outrages in Jerusalem: see Daniel 9:27, 11:31, and 12:11; also 1 Maccabees 1:54). Later, the Romans completely destroyed the Jerusalem where Jesus had walked.
Later still, the Romans built a new city on top of the ruins to which they had reduced Jerusalem. They named it Aelia Capitolina. Once they had crushed rebellion after stubborn rebellion in that land of religious zeal, they wanted to erase all trace of Jewishness from the place. “This is a Roman city— period!” they strove to prove.
How chilling, to realize the horror the Jews felt as their Jerusalem-centered civilization was trampled and burned by the pagan might of Rome.
Yet pagan Rome did not have the last word. Christians and Jews came back and added buildings. Helena, mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, ordered churches to be built on spots where, according to local legends, great events of Jewish and Christian history were said to have taken place. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is one of these.
In the 600s, the new faith called Islam put down roots in the Jerusalem landscape, eventually erecting a great plaza and two houses of prayer on the highest hill— where, many believe, the Jewish Temples had stood, six hundred years before. It was from the heights of Jerusalem that the Prophet Muhammad dreamed he was carried up to experience a vision of heaven. For this reason, the high platform, called the “Noble Sanctuary” is holy to Muslims all over the world today.
Nowadays in Jerusalem, the city is fiercely divided among competing groups of Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims. Many of their claims date back centuries— although much of what the Jews now claim is what they conquered in the 1967 war against the Arabs. It is hard to believe that that was only forty nine years ago.
Some friends of mine who frequently visit Jerusalem tell me that peace exists there: you just have to learn where to look, to see people coexisting side-by-side. Those who make peace there are living in the vision of Isaiah 2 and Micah 4, of a Jerusalem where the LORD shall judge or arbitrate between peoples of many nations.
Since the founding of the modern state called Israel in 1948, the U.S. government has taken many different positions toward it. Until now, we have agreed with most other nations, that for the sake of peace we should not recognize Jerusalem as the national capital of the modern State of Israel, but rather keep our U.S. Embassy in the long-time capital city, Tel Aviv. Now, President-elect Trump says he will move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. That would be an outrageous provocation against the people who have lived there for many generations. Once again,
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
‘May they prosper who love you.’
for Thanksgiving Day, November 24
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 100
Philippians 4:4-9
John 6:25-35
for Sunday, November 27
Psalm 122
Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44
Luke 21:5-19
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
‘May they prosper who love you.’
- Psalm 122:6
These words come from a Song of Ascents. This kind of psalm was probably developed for singing while walking uphill toward the city of Jerusalem and, once within its walls, further up hill and into the courtyard of the Temple itself. There are quite a few of these songs in the Bible: Psalms 120 through 134 are specifically given this title, and there are others sprinkled through that book.
I have not been to Jerusalem. Perhaps someday I will get to make the trip, and walk uphill into the modern Old City. Yes, if you caught that, it is a lot like “Antique Tables Made Daily” (a Sperryville business). The Old City has been built, destroyed, and rebuilt many times since the time of Jesus.... and it was built, destroyed, and rebuilt many times before Jesus walked there, too.
What is there now, scholars tell us, is a mixture of ancient ruins and buildings put up by Romans, Muslims (Palestinian Arabs and others), Crusaders, other Christians, and Zionists in the one thousand nine hundred and forty-six years since the Romans tore it all down, beginning in the year we call A.D. 70.
Jesus warned his followers that their generation was headed for a terrible time of destruction. Try reading from Matthew 23:29 through all of chapter 24, keeping in mind what the Romans actually did to Jerusalem. In the lifetime of some of Jesus’ disciples, the Romans desecrated the Jewish Temple by setting up within it a statue of Caesar as a god: Jews called it “the abomination of desolation.” (Matthew 24:15) (Around 200 years before Jesus’ prophecy, the Syrian-Greeks had committed similar outrages in Jerusalem: see Daniel 9:27, 11:31, and 12:11; also 1 Maccabees 1:54). Later, the Romans completely destroyed the Jerusalem where Jesus had walked.
Later still, the Romans built a new city on top of the ruins to which they had reduced Jerusalem. They named it Aelia Capitolina. Once they had crushed rebellion after stubborn rebellion in that land of religious zeal, they wanted to erase all trace of Jewishness from the place. “This is a Roman city— period!” they strove to prove.
How chilling, to realize the horror the Jews felt as their Jerusalem-centered civilization was trampled and burned by the pagan might of Rome.
Yet pagan Rome did not have the last word. Christians and Jews came back and added buildings. Helena, mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, ordered churches to be built on spots where, according to local legends, great events of Jewish and Christian history were said to have taken place. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is one of these.
In the 600s, the new faith called Islam put down roots in the Jerusalem landscape, eventually erecting a great plaza and two houses of prayer on the highest hill— where, many believe, the Jewish Temples had stood, six hundred years before. It was from the heights of Jerusalem that the Prophet Muhammad dreamed he was carried up to experience a vision of heaven. For this reason, the high platform, called the “Noble Sanctuary” is holy to Muslims all over the world today.
Nowadays in Jerusalem, the city is fiercely divided among competing groups of Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims. Many of their claims date back centuries— although much of what the Jews now claim is what they conquered in the 1967 war against the Arabs. It is hard to believe that that was only forty nine years ago.
Some friends of mine who frequently visit Jerusalem tell me that peace exists there: you just have to learn where to look, to see people coexisting side-by-side. Those who make peace there are living in the vision of Isaiah 2 and Micah 4, of a Jerusalem where the LORD shall judge or arbitrate between peoples of many nations.
Since the founding of the modern state called Israel in 1948, the U.S. government has taken many different positions toward it. Until now, we have agreed with most other nations, that for the sake of peace we should not recognize Jerusalem as the national capital of the modern State of Israel, but rather keep our U.S. Embassy in the long-time capital city, Tel Aviv. Now, President-elect Trump says he will move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. That would be an outrageous provocation against the people who have lived there for many generations. Once again,
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
‘May they prosper who love you.’
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