Jesus’ observation on the outskirts of Jerusalem – often depicted as taking place on a hillside overlooking the city – is seen by many as a compassionate lament for the great city which had been for many centuries the center of Israel’s religious life. Maybe it’s that repetition of “Jerusalem,” and the hen thing, that make it sound that way.
But when we look at what he actually says, and what’s going on at the time, it’s hard to read “soft lament” into it. Jesus is passing judgment on the ancient city, which he says has always excelled in missing the point, often violently so. After noting – with sarcasm? – that “it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem,” he goes on:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you.
Israel’s history was replete with stories of prophets whose dire warnings of judgment to come went unheeded, who were rebuked, imprisoned, tortured and sometimes killed by the powers against whom they ranted. Prophets were considered holy men who spoke for God – unless their message was too harsh or unpopular, or perhaps even conflicted with the message of another self-acclaimed prophet. Who’s to know who to believe? People will generally stay with the one whose message is most palatable, much in the way Americans can now choose which media from which to get their news, and what friends’ opinions are likely to show up on their Facebook feeds. We didn’t invent the narrow feedback loop.
It’s awfully hard to know who is a true prophet until after the fact. But we have been given a fullness of revelation in Jesus Christ, and it’s not so hard to know him. Those who knew him in the flesh ultimately turned away from him, rejecting, betraying, even condemning him. What would we have done? Would we have recognized him as a true prophet or rejected him as one more disappointment, one more person out of touch with how the world really is, one more would-be prophet distorting God’s word? Go back and read the words of Jesus in the Gospels this week. What is he really saying? Do we accept his often hard teaching, or dismiss him?
Jesus may have been uttering judgment upon Jerusalem, so soon to repeat its tradition of death-dealing, but we would be foolish if we thought this lament doesn’t cover us too. Jerusalem was and is a place with a particular history and customs, but in the Bible it is also a symbolic place where God and humankind meet. The Book of Revelation speaks of the “new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven like a bride adorned for her husband.” Jerusalem represents the hope of reconciliation, of fidelity and obedience, of that mystical place where God himself will dwell, “and they shall be God’s people God himself shall be with them.” (Revelation 21:1-4)
We have a choice of which Jerusalem we will be – the one that kills its prophets and stones its messengers, or the new Jerusalem where heaven and earth can truly meet.
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