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
The Navel of the Earth:
Jerusalem in time, theology and imagination.
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In these podcasts focusing upon Jerusalem,
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we have looked at Jerusalem in time.
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The city, with its extraordinary history.
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Seventeen times destroyed,
and eighteen times rebuilt.
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We've also looked at Jerusalem,
understood as the soul
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of the individual believer.
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And then Jerusalem as the Church,
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in that Christian understanding.
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In this podcast,
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I want to turn to Jerusalem as the end.
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And the word sometimes that is used is,
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Jerusalem understood eschatologically.
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In other words, the New Jerusalem,
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as the New Testament puts it.
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Because Jerusalem becomes
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the great goal towards
which human history is moving,
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according to Scripture.
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So, it is the future.
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It is the end of things.
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And in Christian understanding too,
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it's another way of understanding Paradise,
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or what we have come in history,
in English at least, to call heaven.
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The fullness of life.
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Which is found in God
and into which God wants to draw us.
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Jerusalem has become
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the locus, the place, of that fullness of life.
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This sense of Jerusalem as the end
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really arises out of an experience
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of historical disappointment,
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even defeat.
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Because the roots of what we find
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spectacularly in the book of Revelation
in the New Testament, as we shall see,
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are found deep in the Old Testament,
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particularly in the prophets.
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Because the fact that they were dealing
with was the destruction of Jerusalem,
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the catastrophe.
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The destruction of the Babylonian exile
that came in 587 BC.
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But that had, as we have seen,
a considerable pre-history.
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So, given that Jerusalem
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in place and in time, in history,
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had been destroyed,
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what happened to all those hopes
and beliefs that attached to Jerusalem
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as the place where God had chosen
to pitch His tent on earth,
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the place where the glory of God dwelt?
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Had that hope,
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had that belief simply
collapsed or evaporated?
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Or could it be in some ways
reshaped, reconfigured,
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so that we could hold on to the hope
and retain the belief?
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The reconfiguration is what
actually happens in the Bible.
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And it becomes a vision,
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not of the Jerusalem destroyed in history,
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but a new Jerusalem that will be
indestructible, inviolable,
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and where God will make a
home among human beings
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once and for all,
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and then draw all human beings
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into that place which is the fullness of life.
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So out of the experience of catastrophe
and historical disappointment,
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what is borne is a kind of
eschatological hope and belief
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that we are moving away
from the experience of catastrophe
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and human and historical disappointment,
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towards a fullness of life
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that will be found in a Jerusalem
which is indestructible,
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beyond the ravages
of human violence and time.
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One of the great voices,
prophetic voices of the exile,
the Babylonian exile,
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was the prophet Ezekiel.
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And it's in Ezekiel that we find the roots
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of this kind of vision of a new Jerusalem.
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The last eight chapters of the Book of Ezekiel,
chapters 40 to 48,
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are an extraordinary
and extraordinarily detailed vision.
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Not so much of Jerusalem, but the temple.
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But you've got to keep
in mind with Jerusalem
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that the city and the temple
are inseparable.
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To speak of the city
is to speak of the temple.
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To speak of the temple
is to speak of the city.
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And this is because the temple was
the place where the glory of God dwelled.
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And that's what gave and gives
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Jerusalem its very peculiar
power and resonance.
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So, in the midst of all the devastation,
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and that's important to
keep in mind with Ezekiel.
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The city is destroyed,
its leaders are taken off to Babylon.
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They're transported
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in the midst of all of this devastation.
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And it's huge, huge disappointment.
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And the questions
it puts to hope and faith.
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Ezekiel has this vision
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of a new temple
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and a new city.
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And the very last line of this great vision,
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chapters 40 to 48 is this,
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and the name of the city henceforth
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shall be, the Lord is there.
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Now this is the key,
the presence of God, the glory.
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Because Ezekiel at the time of the exile
has this vision, extraordinary vision,
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which he recounts of the glory of God,
leaving the temple in Jerusalem
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and going up
and stopping on the Mount of Olives,
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overlooking the city, and then leaving.
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So, the departure of the glory
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and the vision now in the midst
of all this devastation,
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is the vision of the glory returned.
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So, the name of the city
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henceforth shall be, the Lord is there.
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And it's there that you find the roots
of this vision of a new Jerusalem.
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Now, another prophetic voice
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that speaks of the New Jerusalem
is the prophet Isaiah.
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In fact, it's the prophet
we know as Second Isaiah.
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Keep in mind that with the prophet Isaiah
in the scroll of the prophet Isaiah,
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there are three different voices.
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They are related,
and yet they are quite distinct,
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and they come from different moments
of ancient Israel's history.
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First Isaiah is the late eighth century prophet.
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So, in about 715 BC, based in Jerusalem.
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And his prophetic oracles are
contained in chapters 1 to 39.
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Second Isaiah is chapters 40 to 55.
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He's a different kind of poetic voice.
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And he is a voice that comes with the return
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from exile fifty years
after the Babylonian exile.
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So we are at about 537 BC,
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so centuries later than First Isaiah,
but related
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to a tradition of prophetic preaching
that looks back to Isaiah of Jerusalem
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in about 715.
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So, Second Isaiah is 40 to 55,
and then Third Isaiah, again,
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a different kind of voice,
but related in terms of theology,
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is from chapters 56 to 66.
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And he is a prophet of the period
of the return from exile.
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So, after they have returned to Jerusalem.
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So, First Isaiah,
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late eighth century.
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Second Isaiah,
is the middle of the sixth century BC.
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And then Third Isaiah, a later period again,
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once they have returned
from Babylon to Jerusalem.
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So, the voice we're about to listen
to is the voice of Second Isaiah.
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So, he's at the time of the return
from the Babylonian exile.
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Which was a time of new hope, certainly.
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Hope to rebuild Jerusalem.
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But a time of enormous challenge.
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Because, in fact, when they return,
when the exiles return to Jerusalem,
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they find a city that is in
complete and utter ruin.
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So, the challenge of rebuilding the city
and rebuilding the temple
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was extraordinarily daunting.
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And at times, Spirit's flag.
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So, the prophets at about this time
had to say, now come on.
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The task is enormous, but up and at it.
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So, Second Isaiah, as they are
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returning from Babylon to Jerusalem,
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says this,
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O afflicted one storm tossed
and not comforted.
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That's what Jerusalem was.
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Behold,
I will set your stones in antimony.
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And lay your foundations with sapphires.
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I will make your pinnacles of agate,
your gates of carbuncles,
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and all your wall of precious stones.
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So, it's a vision of glory, of splendour,
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at a time when there wasn't
much glory and splendour at all.
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He goes on,
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all your children shall be taught by the Lord.
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And great shall be the
prosperity of your children.
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This was not the case at the time.
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In righteousness you shall be established.
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You shall be far from oppression,
for you shall not fear,
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and from terror,
for it shall not come near you.
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And so, on it goes.
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So, this is a more mature vision
of a new Jerusalem
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and a new temple at a time
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when it was anything but that.
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In a time when spirits were low,
the vision is high.
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So here again, you find the roots of
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the vision of the New Jerusalem that will
come to full flower in the New Testament.
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A still later prophetic voice is the last
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of the prophets we hear in the
Old Testament, the prophet Zechariah.
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Now, he is of a later period, again,
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when they're trying to rebuild the city
and rebuild the temple.
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And he's raised up as a prophetic voice
of encouragement.
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To encourage the people
to keep pursuing a task
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that seemed overwhelming.
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And the prophet Zechariah says this,
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Jerusalem shall be inhabited
as villages without walls,
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because of the multitude
of people and cattle in it.
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And that wasn't the way
Jerusalem was at the time.
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It was a small population,
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that was part of their problem.
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For I will, so the prophet goes on,
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for I will be to her a wall of fire
round about, says the Lord.
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And I will be the glory within her.
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Here again,
the key is the presence of God,
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who pitches a tent among us
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in this city,
high in the Judean mountains.
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So, I will be the glory within her.
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And that's the key to understanding
Jerusalem at many different levels.
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It always was, and it still is.
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Now, that kind of vision
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that you find so strikingly
in the prophets through time
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really comes to full flower
in the Christian understanding
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in the last book of the Christian Bible,
and that is the Book of Revelation.
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Or as we know it
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sometimes, the Apocalypse,
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which simply means the unveiling.
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This again was a text written
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for a people under pressure
and suffering persecution.
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So, it was a dark and tough time.
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So, it's a vision of glory,
not unlike what we found in the prophets.
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A vision of glory
in a very inglorious moment.
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So, it's high vision for low morale,
as it were.
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Because this was the persecution that was
suffered, under the Roman Empire.
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Almost certainly the Book of Revelation
speaks about the situation in Rome,
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towards the end of the first century
of the Common Era.
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So, the author of the Book of Revelation.
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Has this extraordinary vision really,
of the New Jerusalem.
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And this is what he says,
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I saw the Holy City.
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So, it's a prophetic vision.
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The New Jerusalem is our phrase.
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The New Jerusalem
coming down out of heaven from God.
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So, it's all God's work.
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Prepared as a bride
adorned for her husband.
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This is drawing upon
the great nuptial imagery
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of the Old Testament, God and his people.
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Imagined as a marriage,
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which itself is extraordinary
the more you think about it.
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And I heard a loud voice
from the throne saying,
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here is the dwelling place
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of God with human beings.
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So here again, it's the presence of God.
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I will be the glory within.
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God will dwell with them,
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and they shall be His people,
and God Himself will be with them.
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And this is the vision
of the New Jerusalem.
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He will wipe away every tear
from their eyes.
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And this in a city that was drowning
in tears, and it still is.
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And death shall be no more,
a city full of death.
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Neither shall there be mourning
or crying or pain anymore.
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For the former things have passed away.
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He goes on,
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I saw no temple in the city.
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Now this is crucial,
because the temple was the very heart,
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and as it were, the raison d'etre
of Jerusalem in the Old Testament,
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you couldn't imagine the city
without the temple.
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And here, in this vision, this Christian
vision of the New Jerusalem,
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you have the seer, the prophet,
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saying, I saw no temple in the city.
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Why?
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For its temple is the Lord God Almighty
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and the lamb.
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Now in the Gospel of John,
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we saw that the body of the crucified Christ
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becomes the new temple.
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This is the crucial shift.
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The temple is no longer a building.
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It is the body of the crucified Christ.
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The crucified Christ whose side is pierced
with a lance, a spear,
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and from the side of his body
there flows forth
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the stream of blood and water.
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Now this looks back
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to the vision of Ezekiel in chapter 47,
part of those chapters
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at the end of the book of Ezekiel,
the talk about the new temple.
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Where in chapter 47,
the prophet is taken to Jerusalem,
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and he sees that trickle of water
flowing from the side of the temple.
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It becomes a stream,
then it becomes a mighty river
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flowing east down through the Kidron Valley,
up over the Mount of Olives,
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and down through the Judean Desert
until it hits the Dead Sea.
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And wherever this river goes,
the prophet says, death is turned to life.
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There are flowers and trees,
and the Dead Sea is full of fish.
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So, death becomes life.
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Now, John,
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with his vision on Calvary,
a different mountain.
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He sees another stream.
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Now not just water, but blood and water.
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The life blood of Jesus.
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Flowing from the side of Jesus,
which is the new temple.
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And the understanding is, and the vision
is, that that stream flowing from the side
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of the new temple, which is his body
hanging on the cross, unbelievably.
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This is the epicentre of the
divine presence and glory.
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That from the side of that temple
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there flows out a stream into
all the deserts of the cosmos,
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even the cosmic desert of death,
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and turns death to life.
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That's the whole meaning of his vision.
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So that's why there is no temple in
the city, there's no building you can see.
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And so,
this is where God has chosen to dwell.
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Now you look at Jesus,
you have a vision of the lamb.
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And you see God.
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You say, that's where God has chosen to be.
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That's where God has chosen
to pitch a tent among us.
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He is God with us,
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and from His side there
flows the life-giving stream.
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The seer in revelation then goes on,
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the city has no need of sun
or moon to shine upon it,
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for the glory of God is its light,
and its lamp is the lamb.
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No need for sun and moon,
because the lamb,
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the new temple,
is the shining light that nothing can dispel.
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So, a source of light
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that is not purely physical.
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It is the light of God.
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And this looks back to the very beginning
in the book of Genesis, where we are told
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that God said,
let there be light, and there was light.
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But this is two or three days
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before God creates the
sun or moon and the stars,
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the physical sources of light.
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So, what the Bible is saying,
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is that there is a light that comes before
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and after the physical sources of light,
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and this is the light
which is the Word of God.
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Your word is a lamp for my steps,
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the psalmist says.
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So, the lamb now is the light.
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And the seer goes on,
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by its light shall the nations walk.
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And they won't walk in any other light,
or any other light will be cosmetic.
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And the kings of the earth
shall bring their glory into it,
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and its gates shall never be shut by day,
and there shall be no night there.
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They shall bring into it
the glory and the honour of the nations.
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Then he showed me the
river of the water of life.
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This again takes us back to Paradise,
the book of Genesis.
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Bright as crystal, flowing from the
throne of God and of the lamb
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through the middle of the street of the city
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and on either side of the river.
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This is straight from Ezekiel chapter 47.
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The Tree of Life, with its twelve kinds
of fruit, yielding its fruit each month.
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And the leaves of the tree
were for the healing of the nations.
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And night shall be no more.
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They need no light of lamp or sun.
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For the Lord God will be their light,
and they shall reign forever and ever.
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It's hard to imagine a more splendid or
glorious vision of where we are heading.
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And it's all the more
extraordinary and powerful,
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given that this was addressed
to a people under enormous pressure
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and suffering a persecution.
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So again,
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saying to them, in this dark moment,
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don't lose sight of the vision
of where we're heading.
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Don't think that this is all there is.
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Because we are heading towards this
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New Jerusalem.
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Now, what this means is that Jerusalem
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becomes another way
of talking about Paradise.
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Because the whole of the Bible
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is really a story of the
human being's return to Paradise.
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The biblical story begins
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with the expulsion from Paradise.
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And from Genesis chapter 4
until the very end of the Bible,
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the story that is told is of a return
to Paradise, which is our true home.
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So, it's a story of homecoming.
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And Jesus, when he rises from the dead,
is the first one home.
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Mary, when she's assumed into heaven,
is the second one home to Paradise.
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Now, Paradise in Genesis
is imagined as a garden.
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But now, and by the time we get
to the end of the Book of Revelation,
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it's no longer a garden, it's a city.
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And that in itself is interesting.
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Because
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it mirrors what happened within Christianity.
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Christianity begins in rural Palestine,
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in the countryside,
as it were, in the garden.
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But eventually it moves and takes root
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in the great urban centres
of the Mediterranean world.
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Christianity very quickly becomes
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an urban phenomenon,
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takes root in the cities.
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So, Paul, for instance, in writing his letters,
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isn't writing to people out in the countryside.
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He's writing to people in the great urban
centres of the Mediterranean world.
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So, what you find, this shift in the Bible,
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the Christian Bible, from a garden to a city,
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in fact, tells the story of Christianity
moving from rural Palestine to
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the cities of the Mediterranean world.
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So, we’ll rest it there for
this particular podcast.
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We will return from this vision of the end,
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this eschatological sense of Jerusalem,
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to Jerusalem in time and place,
in the next and final podcast.
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Because the story continues.
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But in the midst of a story
which in some ways is a tragic story,
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there is still this grand vision
of what Jerusalem
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will be in the plan of God.
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Thank you for listening to this episode of
The Navel of the Earth:
Jerusalem in time, theology and imagination.
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A new episode is released weekly.
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You can find more podcasts
from the Archdiocese of Brisbane
from most major podcast providers
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or from our website: brisbanecatholic.org.au
