Sermon preached by Hugh Bryant at St Peter’s Church, Old Cogan, on 14th January 2024

Jerusalem the Golden

Isaiah 60:9-22 – https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=572149666

‘Jerusalem the Golden with milk and honey blest’. I have to share with you that when I was little and I first heard this hymn, of course I was struck by how joyful and beautiful everything in it was, but nothing was more striking to me than the fact that Jerusalem was the home of my favourite biscuit.

I’m not sure that you can get them any more, but Jacob’s Milk and Honey, in those days, was the biscuit that I really liked. It was a bit like a jammy dodger, but it was oval rather than round. ‘Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest’. Whatever else this wonderful place had, it had the best biscuit. Also, of course, chapter 60 in Isaiah, which Bernard of Cluny must have had in mind when he was writing our hymn in the 12th century, originally in Latin, had some very memorable lines for a little boy, which the compilers of the lectionary have chosen to omit tonight. We have started at verse nine, but I think you ought to know what you are missing. Here is some of the beginning of chapter 60 of Isaiah.

’60 Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
2 For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.
3 And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
……..’
And then this immortal verse:

‘6 The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall shew forth the praises of the Lord.’

The dromedaries of Midian and Ephah: dromedaries, please: not ‘young camels’ as the modern translation limply puts it. But that might have been all right when I was eight or nine years old, but what about ‘Jerusalem the golden’ today?

I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a slight feeling of unreality when I started talking about childish enthusiasms for particular types of biscuit, in the context of Jerusalem. Equally, the visions of Jerusalem shown to the Jews in Isaiah’s prophecy, on their return from exile in Babylon at the beginning of the sixth century BC, when scholars think Isaiah 60 was likely to have been written, just seem totally different from what we see today.

Jeremy Bowen, the BBC Middle East, editor, has written that, following the war of independence of Israel in 1948, and the Six Days war in 1967, ‘the Jews and the Arabs went about their business and the weight of the conflict never lifted. Israelis scrabbled to build a new state while Palestinians mourned the loss of the one they never had.’ [Bowen, J., (2022), The Making of the Modern Middle East, London, Picador; page 45].

The holy places of the three monotheistic religions, the religions of the book, so-called, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, are all in Jerusalem, right on top of each other. For as long as most of us can remember, the Holy Land has not been entirely peaceful. there have been major wars, the Six Days War, the Arab-Israeli war.

The occupied territories on the West Bank, which did belong to Jordan, were seized by Israel in 1967: the United Nations resolutions, forbidding the Israelis from creating settlements in the occupied lands, have been ignored, and there has been a constant undercurrent of violence. When Mr Guterres, the United Nations Secretary General, indicated that he believed that the trouble had not started on seventh October, he was pointing to the terrible history of violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians over many years.

Specifically in Gaza, in 2009 Israel bombed the Gaza Strip systematically over a period of 22 days in a campaign which they called Operation Cast Lead. It killed 1400 Palestinians and on the Israeli side there were 13 casualties. What is going on now is even worse.

I have been following the proceedings in the International Court of Justice, where South Africa has started a case against Israel alleging that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza, and that ‘provisional measures’ to preserve the rights of either party, as they are defined in the statutes of the International Court, article 41, are being sought, which would have the effect, if the parties would obey such an order, of bringing about a ceasefire.

The Israelis have sent a full team of lawyers to appear in the Hague before the court, including several leading British barristers. They say that South Africa’s claim that Israel is guilty of genocide is wrong, for three reasons. First, that under the Genocide Convention 1948, there needs to be an intention to bring about genocide. Israel has no such intention, they say. Second, the Convention requires that there be a dispute between the parties which has not been resolved, and, they say, there is no dispute in being between South Africa and Israel. And then, finally, that what Israel is doing is self defence and not genocide.

Probably the most powerful speech from the South African side was by an Irish barrister, Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC, who made the most powerful speech [see https://youtu.be/yhsWyBWGoCU?si=GjVSf6PyqnHYEoC%5D, which ended up quoting a sermon which was preached at Christmas by the Reverend Dr Munther Isaac, the minister at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, who is a Palestinian.

The sermon is called “Christ in the rubble.” It is available to see on YouTube and I highly recommend it. [See https://youtu.be/aEGiANa0-oI?si=whdmciTT00C6is-t%5D South Africa’s counsel, Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC, quoted this at the end of her address.

‘I want you to look in the mirror and ask, where was I when Gaza was going through a genocide?’

She produced staggering figures of the numbers, killed and injured, including 9000 children killed by the Israeli army, and a number of quotations from Israeli politicians suggesting that they want to drive all Palestinians out of Gaza and raze it to the ground. Dr Isaac, in his sermon, raised the issue of complicity: that Western nations, that he characterised as ‘the Empire’, (by analogy with the Roman Empire) are standing idly by or even supporting genocide, by providing arms and other support.

Clearly, there are strong arguments on both sides, but one thing which we must surely agree on, is that the current situation has nothing to do with that golden Jerusalem, with milk and honey blest.

Isaiah’s prophecy is so different.

‘I will appoint Peace as your overseer
   and Righteousness as your taskmaster. 
Violence shall no more be heard in your land,
   devastation or destruction within your borders;
you shall call your walls Salvation,
   and your gates Praise. 
The sun shall no longer be
   your light by day,
nor for brightness shall the moon
   give light to you by night;
but the Lord will be your everlasting light,
   and your God will be your glory.’

What a wonderful vision that is. Now all we need to do is to turn it into a realistic hope.

What shall we do to bring peace to the Middle East? I think that bringing things before the International Court of Justice is a good and constructive step. Others have suggested that there should be boycotts for as long as the genocide goes on.

If you agree with Dr Isaac and many other commentators, indeed, that it is genocide, then maybe there should be no more pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and we should stop buying Jaffa oranges. As the author Naomi Klein has pointed out, a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions was very effective in bringing about the ending of apartheid in South Africa. [See https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/10/only-outside-pressure-can-stop-israels-war-crimes?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other%5D

As Prof. Vaughan Lowe, KC, one of the counsel for S. Africa, said to the International Court of Justice, however awful the attack on October 7 was, 9000 Palestinian children killed, and countless others maimed, and continuing to be killed and maimed, along with tens of thousands of their mothers, cannot under any circumstances be justified as self defence. [See the verbatim record at https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240111-ora-01-00-bi.pdf%5D

Let us pray.

Let us pray to you Lord, that your will be done and that you will bring about peace in your Holy Land, and in particular, in Gaza, today.

Amen.