Episode Transcript
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Jerusalem, previously referred
to as the City of David,
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was in some ways not a city
as we would see it today.
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It was more like a fortress in the Judean Hills.
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Jerusalem, with its rises and falls over time,
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presents us with an opportunity to reflect
on its story and its history.
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We hope you enjoy
T<i>he Navel of the Earth:</i>
<i>Jerusalem in time, theology and imagination. </i>
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In the first three of these podcasts,
focusing on Jerusalem.
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We have more or less looked at Jerusalem
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in time and place,
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and that itself is a fascinating enough story.
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But in fact, Jerusalem is much more than
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a city in time and place.
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And now I want to expand our horizon a little,
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to consider Jerusalem,
as it were, in theology and imagination.
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And this is a
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rather more subtle thing to attempt.
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So, Jerusalem has been
more than just a place.
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Jerusalem has become an idea.
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And if I might talk the language of poetry,
and hence imagination,
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Jerusalem has also become
a metaphor, a symbol.
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So, it's
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that that I want now to explore with you.
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Jerusalem not so much in time and place,
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but Jerusalem in theology and in imagination.
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Now, traditionally
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Christianity has spoken of
the four senses of Scripture.
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Now, the first of them
is the literal sense of Scripture.
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And that's where we've been
in the first three podcasts.
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We have been looking
at the literal sense of Jerusalem
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as it occurs in the Bible and beyond.
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In other words,
Jerusalem in time and place.
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Now that's very important,
that we stay grounded
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in the facts of history.
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So that literal interpretation is
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very important.
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But it's not the full story,
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because Christianity traditionally
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has also spoken of the allegorical
interpretation of Scripture.
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And this is where we touch upon
metaphor and
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symbol, I'll come back to that.
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Christianity has also spoken of the moral,
or it's sometimes called,
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and don't get spooked by the language,
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the moral, or the tropological
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sense of Scripture.
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And then finally,
the fourth sense of Scripture
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that we find in Christianity through time
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is what is called sometimes,
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again don't get spooked by the language,
analogical.
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In other words, it looks to the end.
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Kind of eschatological if I could use
another rather baffling word, perhaps.
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And there was a little saying,
and I'm going to give it to you in Latin.
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It never hurts you to hear a little bit of Latin.
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Lettera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, Moralia quid agas, quo tendas, anagogia.
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In other words, the literal sense of Scripture
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teaches you what happened, history.
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And that's what we've been exploring so far.
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And that's important.
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You can never say farewell to the facts of
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history.
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The allegorical sense
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tells you what to believe.
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In other words, it focuses
not so much upon knowledge of the facts,
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but upon, what faith requires,
what to believe.
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And then the moral sense of Scripture
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teaches you what to do.
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What am I, how am I to respond
at the point of action?
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What am I to do as a result
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of what I read or hear?
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And then this final,
or anagogical sense that looks to the end,
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tells you where you're going.
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So, if I can just go over those again,
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because it can be confusing,
but in fact it is fairly simple.
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And Jerusalem is a prime example
of what I'm talking about.
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The literal tells you what happened.
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The allegorical sense tells
you what to believe.
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The moral sense tells you what to do.
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And the anagogical
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sense that looks to the end,
where you're heading, where you’re going.
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Okay, so it's these,
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having looked at the literal,
Jerusalem in time and place.
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I now want to have a look
at the other three senses of Scripture.
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In other words,
there's more to a text than meets the eye.
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And this spiritual reading of the Scripture
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goes way back in time.
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It goes back to Saint Paul;
you find it there in his letters.
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So, it's in the New Testament.
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In other words, a more than literal
reading of the Scripture.
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You find it, then, in some of the greatest
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thinkers and teachers
that Christianity's ever known.
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People like Origen,
who was based in Alexandria,
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Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo,
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Thomas Aquinas.
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I mean, these are the giants
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intellectually,
the giants of the Christian story.
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And in all of these great
thinkers and teachers,
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you find this more than
literal sense of Scripture.
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So, Jerusalem is a city in time and in place.
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But it’s more than that.
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Its meaning overflows
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the literal sense of Scripture.
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Now this touches upon
the nature of language.
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Because language always overflows.
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It always means more than I intend.
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In that sense, language speaks me
rather than I speak language.
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And sometimes they speak
about a surplus of meaning.
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There's more to what I say or write
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than might appear on the page
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or even be part of my intention.
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In other words,
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all language has in some sense a symbolic
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or a metaphoric force,
particularly a text like the Bible.
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Which we say is certainly
the work of human authors.
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But there's something more
than human authorship in the Bible,
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and that's why we say it's an inspired text.
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In some ways, the Spirit breathed text.
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That God is somehow caught up
in the composition of the Scripture.
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Even though the work of human hands
is abundantly clear in the Bible.
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There's something more
than human authorship.
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So, that symbolic force.
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That's why in years of teaching,
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I have often waved the Bible at my students
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and said to them, this is your life,
it's not once upon a time.
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It's not a text back there.
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This stuff tells the story of your life,
this is your life,
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in a most remarkable way.
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So, it also relates
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to a particular Christian
understanding of history.
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That history is moving
towards a future fulfillment.
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Sometimes this is called an eschatological
understanding of history.
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But again,
don't get spooked by the language.
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We are moving
towards a future fulfillment.
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And therefore, things in the past
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can in fact foreshadow
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things that are to come.
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Now, we saw this with the Jerusalem Temple,
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the building in Jerusalem,
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foreshadowing the body of Christ.
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Now, this is an understanding
of time and of text
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that is often called typological.
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For instance,
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the crossing of the Red Sea
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in the story of the Exodus
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was taken to be a foreshadowing of baptism.
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The bronze serpent
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held up in the Book of Exodus,
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when the people are being bitten by serpents,
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is seen to be a foreshadowing
of Jesus on the cross.
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Now, this is a very distinctively
Christian way of reading the Bible.
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That things in the past, and there are many, Eve in the garden,
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foreshadows Mary in the New Testament.
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There are so many examples.
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Things and people and places in the past,
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foreshadowing things
and people and places to come.
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And there's a greater fullness
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when the foreshadowing is realised.
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Sometimes, again, this is called
a typological understanding of Scripture.
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And at Mass today with the lectionary,
you often find
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this kind of connection
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between the first reading from
the Old Testament and the Gospel.
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That there is a kind of
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a symbolic connection
or a typological connection.
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Okay, so the past is a foreshadowing
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of a greater fullness still to come.
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So similarly,
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Jerusalem in time and place
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is a foreshadowing
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of a greater fullness
that is still to come.
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And that's why we speak of
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these spiritual senses of Scripture,
not just the literal sense,
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but a spiritual sense that looks
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to a fulfillment further down the track.
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And this is basic to Christian preaching
I have to say too.
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The Christian preacher takes the Scripture
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and applies it to the life of his or her people
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in a way that sees in their life
a fulfillment of that which
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has just been recounted from the Scripture.
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It's like me saying to my students,
this is your life.
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That if we have the prodigal son,
for instance, is the Gospel on a Sunday,
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the preacher will apply that story
to the lives of his people,
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that they are the prodigal son.
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But that story, in a sense,
is fulfilled in their life.
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And so, on it goes.
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So, there's nothing particularly exotic
or whatever about the language.
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There's nothing particularly exotic or
unusual about this reading of Scripture.
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We as Christians tend to take it for granted,
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but it is a distinctively Christian
understanding of history.
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So having looked at the
literal sense of Jerusalem,
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let's have a look now at these
other so-called spiritual senses
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of Jerusalem, not so much in time and place,
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but in theology.
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So, in other words,
Jerusalem as a religious idea.
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And Jerusalem in imagination.
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Jerusalem as a metaphor, as a symbol.
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Because it's certainly both of those,
a religious idea
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and a metaphor or symbol.
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Now, Jerusalem eventually,
this is for Christianity.
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Is seen as applying to the Church.
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In other words, the Church becomes
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the kind of New Jerusalem.
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So here we see that fulfillment
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of something in the past.
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The city of Jerusalem,
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the place where God chooses to dwell,
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and which God chooses to protect,
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in fact becomes, is fulfilled,
in the community of the Church.
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So, this is Christianity's way of,
as it were, claiming the Old Testament.
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And this was a big question
in early Christianity.
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How can we read the,
how should we read the Old Testament
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to call it that, the Hebrew Bible?
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How can we make that our own,
or should we reject it out of hand?
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Because there were people
in early Christianity who said,
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no, no, you don't read the Old Testament,
that's another world.
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And the God of the Old Testament
is a terrible, dark, vengeful God.
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We want only the New Testament,
the God of grace and peace and love.
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Christianity eventually rejects that
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and says, no, no, no,
what we call the Old Testament,
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the Hebrew Bible,
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is as much our Bible as is the Jewish Bible.
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But that required a particular way
of reading the Old Testament,
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to see it as a promise
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in search of a fulfillment.
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And the understanding
to which Christianity comes,
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is that the Old Testament is fulfilled
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in Jesus
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and in the Church,
which is eventually understood,
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in fact very early, understood
as the body of Christ.
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That's an extraordinary way
of understanding the Church,
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the body of Christ.
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I'll come back to that.
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So, Christianity, then,
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in seeing Jerusalem now as the Church.
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Is claiming as its own
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the Hebrew Scripture.
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Jerusalem in this sense,
becomes not so much a place, but a people.
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And a people
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whom Saint Paul
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describes as the body of Christ.
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Now, how Paul came up with this
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to me is mysterious.
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And he does so very, very early.
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When you think of it,
these were small and often troubled
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communities that look pretty ordinary,
seen from many angles.
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And he is saying, no, no, no,
these communities
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are the body of Christ.
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Now, what does that mean?
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It means that these communities, the Church,
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is where the glory of God dwells,
just as God dwelt in the Jerusalem Temple.
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God now, where does God choose
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to dwell among human beings now?
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Where does the glory settle?
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Not, it is said,
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not in a city in time and place,
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not in Jerusalem, in that literal sense.
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But in this community that is everywhere.
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So, in other words, the glory of God
is not tied to a place, it is tied to a people.
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And again, the body of Christ
was that body that hung on the cross
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and which was pierced by a lance or a spear,
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and from which there flowed
forth that blood and water,
the river turning death to life.
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So, the new temple,
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in fact, is this community called the Church.
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And that's the fulfillment.
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But this is a long, long way from
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an understanding of Jerusalem,
just as the city in time and place.
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So, if you're looking for the temple,
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don't go looking in the city of Jerusalem
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and seek to rebuild the temple
that has been destroyed.
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The new temple is the body of Christ.
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And where is the body of Christ encountered?
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In this community of those
who put their faith in Christ.
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They become the new temple,
and in that sense, the new Jerusalem.
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To which all God's promises
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to Jerusalem apply, that God will protect
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His own.
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Jerusalem in fact, was thought to be,
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because of the teaching
of the prophets, inviolable.
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No one could
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ultimately violate Jerusalem.
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It could be destroyed,
but it will be rebuilt.
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And the fact is, it still exists
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seventeen times destroyed,
eighteen times rebuilt.
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So, in that sense,
the prophets have been shown to be right.
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Jerusalem is inviolable.
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And that same sense of inviolability
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you hear in the New Testament when,
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Jesus says to Peter, you are Peter,
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and on this rock, I will build my Church,
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and the gates of hell
will not prevail against it.
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In other words,
the Church established by Jesus
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has about the same kind of inviolability
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that attached to Jerusalem.
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So again, you see that kind
of shift from historic city
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to the community of those who put
their faith in the crucified and risen Jesus.
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So, the Church becomes
the place where God dwells,
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the place that is chosen by God.
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That is certainly wounded
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as Jerusalem was again
and again and again.
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Wounded, but holy.
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Now if we just look for a moment at what
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the Scripture means when
it talks about the Holy City.
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I mean, in fact, you've got the Holy Land,
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you've got the Holy City in the Holy Land,
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you've got the Holy Place,
which is what the temple
was called in Hebrew.
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And then within the temple complex itself,
you had
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the inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies.
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So again, you get this word repeatedly.
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So, the Holy Land, the Holy City,
the Holy Place, the Holy of Holies.
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What the Bible means by holy
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is that it is separate,
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separated by God for the sake of service.
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Alright, so, you've got to keep
those two elements in mind.
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It's separate for service.
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Now what is the service?
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So that through that which is separated,
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the blessing promised to Abraham
of a life bigger than death
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will flow out through these mediations,
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from the Holy Place,
from the Holy of Holies,
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into the Holy Place, into the Holy City,
into the Holy Land, and into the world.
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Because the blessing promised to
Abraham was to him, his descendants,
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and all the families of the earth.
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So how is that blessing going to flow
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from the inner sanctum
out into the whole world?
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It flows out through these separations.
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The Holy of Holies, the Holy Place,
the Holy City, the Holy Land,
and into the whole world.
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So, separate for that service.
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This was true of the temple.
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And we saw the blessing flowing
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from the side of the temple
in the prophet Ezekiel,
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out into the world, turning death to life.
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00:21:40,160 --> 00:21:42,120
That's the blessing.
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00:21:42,120 --> 00:21:46,880
And similarly now, the Church is to be,
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00:21:46,880 --> 00:21:49,760
wounded, yes, but holy, separated.
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00:21:49,760 --> 00:21:53,040
Called out of darkness into light,
the New Testament says.
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00:21:53,040 --> 00:21:57,000
In order, not just for its own sake,
to become some kind of glee club.
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00:21:57,000 --> 00:22:00,640
But so that through the Church,
out into the world,
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00:22:00,640 --> 00:22:02,720
you know, the desert of the world,
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can flow this extraordinary
blessing that turns death to life.
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So that's what it means to call the Church
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as Jerusalem, wounded,
yes, in all kinds of ways.
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But holy, chosen by God,
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00:22:17,960 --> 00:22:21,800
separated by God for the sake of service.
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00:22:21,800 --> 00:22:30,240
In other words, to mediate that
blessing to the whole world.
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00:22:30,240 --> 00:22:34,160
Therefore, in the Church, it is not surprising
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that you would find the best
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and the worst of humanity.
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And that has certainly been
my experience of the Church.
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And I suspect it might have been yours.
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00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:52,160
But if this is true of Jerusalem,
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it is not surprising
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that it is also true of the Jerusalem
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which becomes the Church.
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But it's not just the Church,
because Jerusalem
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in time
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00:23:13,320 --> 00:23:18,480
also is understood as an image,
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00:23:18,480 --> 00:23:21,920
a metaphor, if you like, or a symbol
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00:23:21,920 --> 00:23:26,720
of the individual soul.
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00:23:26,720 --> 00:23:30,480
And this is where you touch upon
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00:23:30,480 --> 00:23:34,120
the moral understanding of Scripture.
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00:23:34,120 --> 00:23:36,800
What am I to do?
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00:23:36,800 --> 00:23:41,080
How am I to respond?
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00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:45,640
The so-called tropological sense of Scripture.
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So again, the soul
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00:23:48,480 --> 00:23:50,600
is understood as the place
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00:23:50,600 --> 00:23:54,400
where God chooses to dwell.
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Not just in the community of the Church,
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as it were, out there and around me,
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00:23:59,720 --> 00:24:02,680
but also deep within me,
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in that deepest of deep places
that we call the soul.
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00:24:07,600 --> 00:24:13,280
That it's there that God chooses to dwell.
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00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:15,560
And that's why
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00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:18,320
the soul is understood
as a place of pilgrimage.
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00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:21,320
Just as you go on pilgrimage
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00:24:21,320 --> 00:24:23,960
to Jerusalem, you have to go
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00:24:23,960 --> 00:24:27,920
down, down, down into yourself
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and find God there.
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00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:35,400
Hear the voice of God there.
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00:24:35,400 --> 00:24:39,200
So, pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
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00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:42,560
A pilgrimage into your own soul,
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00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:44,040
enter into yourself.
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00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:50,360
And that's a theme throughout Christianity
and other religious traditions as well.
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00:24:50,360 --> 00:24:53,920
And there alone you will find
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00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:58,720
God, the God who chooses to dwell there,
to make a home
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00:24:58,720 --> 00:25:04,360
in the human soul.
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00:25:04,360 --> 00:25:06,320
The soul that is wounded, again,
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00:25:06,320 --> 00:25:09,400
like Jerusalem, and like the Church.
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00:25:09,400 --> 00:25:14,360
But which also lives in hope of healing
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00:25:14,360 --> 00:25:17,200
with the divine indwelling.
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00:25:17,200 --> 00:25:21,840
So, the wounded soul,
the wounded city, the wounded church.
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00:25:21,840 --> 00:25:26,280
But again,
made holy by the indwelling of God.
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00:25:26,280 --> 00:25:31,280
Now all of this looks to the
inbreathing of the Holy Spirit.
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00:25:31,280 --> 00:25:36,800
Because the Holy Spirit is breathed
into us by the risen Christ.
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00:25:36,800 --> 00:25:43,320
And it's that that gives substance to the
words that we hear in the Gospel of John,
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00:25:43,320 --> 00:25:47,840
where Jesus says,
we will come and make our home in you.
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00:25:47,840 --> 00:25:51,920
So, this understanding of
Jerusalem as the soul
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00:25:51,920 --> 00:25:55,440
has that sense of God making a home.
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It’s an extraordinary expression.
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00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:04,560
Making a home in
the soul of the individual.
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00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:08,720
Now, to go down
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00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:14,960
to that deep place, to go on pilgrimage
to the deep place, to find God there,
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00:26:14,960 --> 00:26:18,440
involves struggle.
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00:26:18,440 --> 00:26:21,560
You’ve only got to see
in a classic of English literature,
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00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:27,440
<i>The Pilgrim's Progress</i> by John Bunyan,
the kind of struggle that it involves.
402
00:26:27,440 --> 00:26:33,840
Because Bunyan's pilgrimage in many ways
is a pilgrimage into his own soul.
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00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:35,440
And a lot of the struggle
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00:26:35,440 --> 00:26:38,840
contains the hope of a moral transformation.
405
00:26:38,840 --> 00:26:42,320
And the question that arises
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00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:44,120
from the depths of the soul is
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00:26:44,120 --> 00:26:46,800
the question that they asked
John the Baptist in the Gospel,
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00:26:46,800 --> 00:26:50,360
what must we do?
409
00:26:50,360 --> 00:26:52,400
For the sake of this change of life,
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00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:55,520
or for this moral transformation,
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00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:57,560
the transformation that leads
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00:26:57,560 --> 00:27:01,040
from turmoil to peace.
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00:27:01,040 --> 00:27:06,200
In that sense, leads us out of the desert,
back to the garden of Paradise.
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00:27:06,200 --> 00:27:07,800
So that's
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00:27:07,800 --> 00:27:11,640
the goal of all moral transformation.
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00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:16,480
Is that peace, the great shalom of God.
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00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:19,720
So, what should we do?
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00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:21,760
How should we act?
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00:27:21,760 --> 00:27:25,920
If we are to find our way
to the peace of God.
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00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:29,280
The God who dwells therein.
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00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:34,400
Now, to move to that place of peace,
there needs to be a process of healing.
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00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:37,520
Again, the Church is wounded, but holy.
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00:27:37,520 --> 00:27:40,240
Jerusalem, the city is wounded but holy.
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00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:45,280
The individual soul is also
wounded in all kinds of ways.
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00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:47,240
The Irish poet Yeats said,
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00:27:47,240 --> 00:27:49,680
that to go deep into yourself,
427
00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:54,120
into your own soul, is to go down to the
foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
428
00:27:54,120 --> 00:27:56,360
That's not the full truth,
429
00:27:56,360 --> 00:27:58,080
but there is truth in it.
430
00:27:58,080 --> 00:28:03,200
So, you've got to go down into that
dark and empty and chaotic place,
431
00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:06,200
and that's where you discover God.
432
00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:08,120
And that's where
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00:28:08,120 --> 00:28:13,560
in that moment of discovery,
that's when the real healing can happen.
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00:28:13,560 --> 00:28:19,320
So, Jerusalem, as the Church
435
00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:23,240
and Jerusalem as the individual soul.
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00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:27,800
There you have two of
the spiritual understandings
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00:28:27,800 --> 00:28:32,360
of Jerusalem in time and place.
438
00:28:32,360 --> 00:28:35,600
All are important.
439
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:40,360
But it's Jerusalem in time and place,
the literal sense,
440
00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:42,600
that's where we start.
441
00:28:42,600 --> 00:28:44,760
And only then can we build
442
00:28:44,760 --> 00:28:48,240
upon a literal understanding
of the city in time and place
443
00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:51,280
to move to these other understandings.
444
00:28:51,280 --> 00:28:56,000
The broader and more resonant
understandings of Jerusalem, yes,
445
00:28:56,000 --> 00:28:59,240
but as the Church and as the soul.
446
00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:01,240
And in speaking in that way,
447
00:29:01,240 --> 00:29:05,920
we take on board this distinctively
Christian understanding of history.
448
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:10,400
That the past looks to a future
449
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:14,440
that will bring a surprising fulfillment.
450
00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:19,000
But that that fulfillment
was always within the plan of God.
451
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:21,640
Who leads us beyond time and place
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00:29:21,640 --> 00:29:25,000
into the larger world.
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Thank you for listening to this episode of
<i>The Navel of the Earth:</i>
<i>Jerusalem in time, theology and imagination.</i>
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00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:38,280
A new episode is released weekly.
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00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:44,680
You can find more podcasts
from the Archdiocese of Brisbane
from most major podcast providers
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00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:49,200
or from our website: brisbanecatholic.org.au
