Believe it or not, there are some people (I meet them online) who think that when a prophet like Isaiah refers to Jerusalem, as in our 1st Reading (Isaiah 66:10-14), he is talking about the actual City of Jerusalem. You can hear and see me give this Homily on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQN6EwRF_gw
Of course, I assume you know better, not least because as soon as you hear Isaiah describing Jerusalem as a nursing mother, you know that he’s using the idea of the city to speak about something much greater and much more mysterious. For Isaiah, Jerusalem stood for the whole nation of Israel, but not just as it was then, but as he believed God intended it to be. Jesus, as you know, was much more explicit about what was going to happen to the actual City and its Temple. We read that “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said ….. The days will come upon you when your enemies will… dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls.” (Luke 19:41-44) But he also made clear that he could rebuild the Temple within it in three days.
We know what he meant. The Temple he would build was his own Risen Body. Jesus is the new Temple. His heart is the place where we humans are drawn into union with God; and the City that rises around him, indeed the renewed nation of Israel is us, all those who follow him, all those who are his family, the new Israel. We hear this made clear in our 2nd Reading today (Galatians 6:14-18) when St Paul, writing to the Christians in Galatia more than a 1000 miles from Jerusalem, indeed in modern day Turkey, says to them “Peace and Mercy to all.. who form the Israel of God.” So we know, that even when the Bible appears to be just talking about the actual City of Jerusalem, deep within the text is the interpretation that Jesus gives it, the one that Isaiah hints at in our Reading today. The new Jerusalem is us, the people of God. St Peter in his 1st Letter actually calls us “A chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (2:9)
I am avoiding using the word “Church” too often today because, sadly and all too often, the “Church” is seen simply as the human organisation we belong to, led by the Pope and the Bishops; and we know only too well that from the very beginning when Judas betrayed Jesus and Peter denied him, the Church has been imperfect. However, the Jerusalem that is our Mother is the Church as it will be when finally perfected by Christ, and we get a glimpse of this in the last Book in the Bible where the author in a vision sees “The Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” (Rev 21:2) Then we will be what we are called to be, “Jerusalem the Golden” whose streets are paved with gold, but a gold that is not a precious metal but is humanity perfected and one with God. Isaiah too has a vision of this when he writes “At the sight your heart will rejoice, and your bones flourish like the grass. To his servants the Lord will reveal his hand.”
The question that we must then ask is whether this vision of us as the people of God is worth having, especially since it is so far from what the Church is really like? Those outside the Church will tell us that we’re kidding ourselves, that believing that God can become present to us when we are gathered at Mass as a foretaste, a prefiguring, of what is to come, is simply believing in a fantasy; and that we should just get on with living life as best we can, without such silly ideas. We would argue however, that without vision humanity becomes degraded, humanity begins to take for granted all the war and corruption and suffering. We would go further and say that we need to believe in a power that is greater than us imperfect humans, a power that can draw us gradually, and with many ups and downs, away from all that is wrong and towards a vision that is there ahead of us, a vision that inspires us in our own little ways to work together for the coming of this new Israel. Thus, we think it is worth believing in all this, and so we pray every day “Thy kingdom come”, and then try and live it out in our ordinary lives.
The poet William Blake knew this, living as he did amongst the “dark satanic Mills” of early 19th Century London, and so he shared with people a vision that they might build Jerusalem despite all the poverty and filth of that time. His Christianity was not necessarily very orthodox, but he still catches what it’s all about, and turns his hopes into a prayer: “Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear, Oh clouds unfold, bring me my chariot fire.” Powerful images of glory, the glory that can only come from God, “The glory that is his as the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) It was this glory that inspired the 72 that we hear of in our Gospel today (Luke 10:1-2.17-20) ; and their message was very clear. Whether people accepted them or not, they had to say, “The kingdom of God is very near.”
That is what we are called to do too aren’t we? We have a glorious calling as the new Israel, the new Jerusalem, dedicated to proclaiming God’s glory, and in his power making his peace and mercy more present in our sad world. To do this we need to know that belonging to the Church, being the people of God together, is the supreme way in which God supports us in this work. Of course God does work in each of us individually, but gathered together as his people he can and does work much more powerfully. We may not feel that power when we come to Mass, but the power is there whether we feel it or not. It’s rather like breathing isn’t it? Most of the time we don’t notice what our intake of oxygen is doing for us. It just happens, but if we’re faced with some kind of more strenuous exercise, or if illness reduces the amount of oxygen that we can receive, then we know how important breathing is for us. But at Mass, it is only as we offer ourselves to God without expecting anything in return, that we receive the power we need.
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