When I first saw Jerusalem it was a dream fulfilled. It did not look like I had imagined it would, except for the big buildings so frequently photographed. My pilgrim group, largely Episcopal priests and their families, had come to the City from Bethlehem, where we visited the Church of the Nativity. Now we were going into the Old City of Jerusalem, where we would visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We would stand atop the Temple Mount aka the Haram al-Sharif. We would also approach its base, where the Western Wall calls to its stone the supplications of devout Jews and curious Christians. And we beheld the City from across the Kidron Valley, when we walked down through the graveyards of the Mount of Olives to a church near its base, called Dominus Flevit (“The Lord wept”). There, right near the Garden of Gethsemane and its nine ancient olive trees, I sat in the front pew facing the altar. Through the arms of the Cross on the altar I sighted straight across to the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock.
Dominus flevit. The Lord wept. “As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.’” (Luke 19:41-42)
When he came to Jerusalem for the last time and beheld that same sight, the Lord had cause to weep. And he cried out, ‘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. And I tell you, you will not see me again until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” ’ (Luke 13:34-35)
When I first saw Jerusalem, I had a book along with me, in my luggage, packed carefully. It is by my college advisor Donald Nicholl, who served four years as rector of the ecumenical study institute at Tantur, outside Jerusalem on the way from Bethlehem. In it he related his attempts to be a bridge person, one whom people from various traditions and with varying viewpoints could all come for an understanding heart. And he related how he and his wife, Dorothy Nicholl, had agreed to try to maintain balance. If we find ourselves favoring one side to the exclusion of the other, they agreed, we will find that our hearts have been hardened. [Donald Nicholl, The Testing of Hearts: A Pilgrim’s Journal (Lamp Press/Marshall Morgan and Scott, 1989), rev. ed. 1998 subtitled A Pilgrim’s Journey. (Darton, Longman and Todd)
A friend emailed me from Santa Cruz Friday: ‘I remember him saying something quite similar, which was that they had a test that if they ever chose one side over the other, it was time to go home. And like you, I have always remembered it and it has come up in different circumstances fairly often.’ (Seana Graham, 3/14/2025, email)
Have our hearts been hardened? How difficult it is not to take sides. How challenging but how necessary to peace to engage and to humanize people with whom we disagree. Listen to them, see them as human, not as Those People or even as some sort of objects. In Dorothy and Donald’s time, forty years ago, as in ours, the Holy Land is in conflict, and still it is between those whose collective trauma is the Holocaust and those for whom it is an-Nakba, the Catastrophe. For the Israeli there is something in the past that can never be forgotten and should not ever be factored out of their perspective. For the Palestinian, 1948 was the time, not of the War of Independence, as Israelis may call it, but Catastrophe, the displacement from ancestral homelands that forms their historical trauma.
To take one side in such a struggle is to harden one’s heart. If we can keep our hearts as hearts of flesh and not of stone we can find peace. There are people in the Holy Land trying to do that. We pilgrims met two fathers, one Israeli, one Palestinian, who each lost a son in the conflict there, but now together will meet with groups such as ours to talk about their common work at building understanding across divides. And as recently as the Academy Awards ceremony American filmgoers learned of a pair of film makers, one Arab, one Israeli, who have documented together the life in one village during the current conflict.
Not long ago the Rev. Dr. Gary Mason, who directs a conflict transformation organization based in Belfast called ‘Rethinking Conflict’, came to Tucson to talk about how in Northern Ireland they have addressed the questions, Why are we divided? and What can we do about it? [Besides the Arizona Faith Network, he also advises Carter Center groups in several states, nonpartisan democracy resilience networks, to address these questions.]
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/northern-irelands-lesson-for-israel/
He told us that the Good Friday agreement was one of the peak achievements of American diplomacy of the last fifty years. That was a peace facilitated by George Mitchell and Bill Clinton. Indeed I remember when we were in the western islands of Galway our innkeeper made a point of telling us how grateful the people of Ireland were for this agreement and the American help to reach it.
We did not send guns or bombs. The coins and currency in glass jars on bars throughout the United States, that went for such things, did not help at all. What helped? Two people who helped them see what was dividing them and what could be done about it.
There is much there to discover. One thing I recall is that once people once divided began to see each other as people rather than adversaries, their eyes began to change. One man, once a partisan, said, if I had been born 300 yards away I would have grown up supporting the other side. It was just that. A human moment. It helped him imagine and acknowledge the humanity of a stranger, indeed an adversary.
In Jerusalem today the same Gary Mason sometimes visits and compares notes, shares what he and his compatriots have learned, as the peoples of that holy land seek to reconcile with one another and find a way to peace. This is the real Jerusalem. And you know what? It is not that far from that imaginary - or prophetic - holy new Jerusalem in the sky.
Because the distance from one to the other is the distance across a human heart. The distance, also, from one heart to another. The distance that closes when we begin to see each other in aspiration, that is, as the holy spirit conceives us to be in our best selves. And that best self, in each of us, is shaped by that spirit as we are brought closer to the perfection that is only ours as it is a gift of that savior and a work of that spirit that came to the Mount of Olives years ago, and called across the valley, “O Jerusalem Jerusalem, how often have I longed…”
In Jesus’ time the conflicts were perhaps even more bitter, within the Jewish community, with their neighbors, with the imperial power in whose unfond embrace they found themselves.
We recently recalled the miracle of the transfiguration, the end of the Galilean ministry, after which Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem. Accompanied by his disciples, he made his way into the City and into the Temple. After driving out the monetizers of devotion, and rebuking the hypocritical rule-makers, Jesus spread his arms and spoke the words we remember, O Jerusalem Jerusalem.
How can we imagine him as any other than the one sent by God to bring his people together? It is not a martial metaphor. He is not like the heroes of old, arming to resist conquerors. He is coming for more than political liberation. He is coming for the total liberation from bondage to more than political oppression. And he is coming for all people.
***
Civil conflicts, Gary Mason told us, ‘are mostly based in land, identity, and religion’. This is true for northern Ireland, for the Holy Land, and even for ourselves, when we find ourselves in polarized political headlock.
Various factors predispose a situation for conflict. Change can be hard. Fear. Polarization is bigger than any one of us – but understanding that should lead to grace. We need to identify shared values, and to create platforms for conversation.*
We need to move from misperception to understanding, to create a language of understanding. Engage and humanize. Invite and listen: “tell me your story.” And to realize: we love this place, this state, this country, this earth, we share, and in large part we do trust each other. And that can grow. And it must.
Democracy, quipped Winston Churchill or Mark Twain or my mom, is not the best form of government until you have tried all the others. Maybe human kindness is not the quickest way to sudden success, but it is, after you have tried all the others, the way forward to the day we live together in peace and charity, with liberty and justice for all.
The beginning of wisdom lies in acknowledgement of our own folly, and then forgiveness.
O Jerusalem Jerusalem - may the one who longed to gather your children to himself be the one to gather us together.
***
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You who kill the prophets and stone those who were sent to you. How often I wanted to gather your people together, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you didn’t want that”. (Matthew 23:37, Common English Bible)
* Nathan Stock from the Carter Center gave Arizona Democracy Resilience Network an excellent presentation on why we are divided and what we can do about it.
© 2025 John Leech
