My brothers and sisters
In the principal psalm for today’s lectionary readings – Psalm 48, we hear someone pour out their heart, as they look on a city they love and treasure. “Beautiful and lofty, the joy of all the earth, is the hill of Zion, the very centre of the world and the city of the great king.” To this day, as one stands on the western slopes of the Mount of Olives, looking toward Mount Zion , one can capture some of the sense of pride we hear in these lines.
There still remains a mysterious quality to this city, in spite of all the tides of cruelty and war and hatred that have swept across it. The psalmist alludes to this. “The kings of the earth assembled and marched forward together.” So they did, century after century, in successive invasions.
The psalmist’s claim that “they retreated and fled in terror” may not be literally true. It was certainly not true for the Tenth Legion of the Roman army in AD 70. Yet, long after the empire of the Romans has become a memory, Jerusalem stands, even as it wrestles with contemporary agonies.
As one listens to the psalmist saying, “The city of our God . . . God is in her citadels . . . God has established her for ever,” we find ourselves asking what this language means. Is there any sense in which we are prepared to believe that God is in the structures and institutions of our own country? We have almost lost the capacity to think in these terms, yet such a loss may have a high price. To think about our society as the dwelling place of God need not be an arrogant and self–aggrandizing claim. But we are not at all denying the presence of God to other societies and cultures.
The psalmist himself suggests a reason why a sense of the presence of God is important. “God is in her citadels,” he writes, “[God] is known to be her sure refuge.” What is being suggested to us is this – a society that owns the presence of God in its life is a society that can draw on a source of strength other than its own.
Consider a town or city you know well. In what places do you sense God’s presence? In what places do you not sense God’s presence? Pray that the citizens of this town or city may learn to seek, and find, God’s presence in these places.
Yours in Christ
+Patrick
