"Now we are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem" : Sermon for Sunday 1 December 2019

Sermon for First Sunday of Advent

1 December 2019

Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem

The Rev. Carrie Ballenger

Psalm 122

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the LORD.”

Now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.

So begins our psalm for this First Sunday of the Advent season, which got me thinking a lot about Jerusalem—and about feet.

Actually, I’ve spent quite a lot of time thinking about feet in these last months. I thought about my feet as I prepared to walk a portion of the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James, in September. I was only planning to walk for a week, a small segment of a much longer pilgrimage, and still I really needed to think about foot health. I bought new, expensive hiking boots and broke them in with some hikes around Jerusalem. I bought new socks. I was told by someone “in the know” that wearing nylon footies underneath those expensive socks would protect my feet even more. I also came prepared with a back-up first aid kit: Bandaids and blister protectors, Advil and an assortment of other foot-care items.

And then I set out on my one week of pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres, a little over 100 km.

My roommate and walking buddy for the week was named Carol, an American music professor who has lived in Paris for several decades. She also came prepared with good walking shoes. But after the first day, as we were settled in our room after the first 23 or so kilometers, she took off her shoes and said “I don’t think I can wear these tomorrow. They’re killing me!”

I looked and saw that the back of one of her heels was already bruised and painful after just one day of walking. But what were the options? We were in a tiny French village, with no fancy shoe stores anywhere near.

 “I think I’ll walk in my slippers tomorrow.” said Carol.

Carol was holding in her hands a pair of wool slippers with rubber soles. They were very nice slippers, good quality, and still I thought: She’s crazy.

How could anyone walk the Camino in slippers? These were long walks, not to mention that it had been raining all day and was forecasted to continue all week long. It would be wet, and muddy and potentially treacherous walking through the forest.

But I said, “Um, ok. But let’s just see how your feet are feeling tomorrow.”

When tomorrow came, Carol’s heel still felt awful, and she could barely put her shoe on. So we set out for the day, me in my expensive hiking boots, and her in her slippers.

We walked just like that for the next 5 days. 20 plus kilometers a day, in the rain and the mud, up hills and down hills, through forests and fields and sometimes crossing large highways.  Both of us, with our different shoe situations, were still thinking mostly about our feet along the way, thinking how we just wanted to get to solid and dry ground, to put our feet up and to rest.

Sometimes along the way, when the rain had soaked every bit of me and I couldn’t imagine taking another step, I would imagine what it would feel like at the end of the day, how glorious it would be just to sit down, and not on something wet but on a dry chair, or a freshly made bed, and to take my seat at the dinner table.

I imagined myself already there, and able to say:

Now my body is dry. Now my socks are changed.

Now I’ve arrived! Now I am safe. Now I can rest.

Now my feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.

The psalmist writes of Jerusalem as the end point of every faithful person’s pilgrimage, a place of rest and security, a place of praise and worship, a place where every person would be in and know the presence of God.

It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, to read these words of the psalmist from ancient times and to think “Well, now my feet actually ARE standing within the gates of Jerusalem”? I still find this strange, even after being here a number of years. In some ways, these bible texts which once seemed foreign because I knew very little about Jerusalem, now feel even more foreign because I know plenty about Jerusalem.

I know that it is not a city “built in unity with itself”, in spite of what the psalmist says and in spite of what municipal authorities want us to believe. I know that this Jerusalem is not a place of safety and security for all its people. It is a place where people come from around the world to praise and worship, for sure, but it’s not yet equally a place of rest or of welcome for all people,  for all tribes, for all who are loved by God and want to praise God.

Of course, Psalm 122 is not talking about the Jerusalem of today. This is a psalm of ascent, a psalm of pilgrimage. Although it says “NOW we are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem”, it was not written by one who had arrived, but by one who was still on the way. The psalmist wrote, and the people of God would then sing, this psalm in anticipation of arriving. It was sung by those who were still “going up” to Jerusalem. For this reason, I read this psalm not as a celebration of success, but as words to be sung while our feet hurt, and our socks are wet, and we can’t imagine taking another step. They are for the moments when we just need to keep going, and so we sing in hopeful expectation:

“Now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.”

This psalm has made me think about a Scripture text we didn’t hear this morning, but which will come to us in a few weeks: Mary’s Song, the Magnificat.

Have you noticed that Mary sings in the past tense about what God is about to do through the baby she is carrying? “He has scattered the proud…brought down the powerful…lifted up the lowly…filled the hungry and sent away the rich.” Mary sings of things God has already done. But the last time I checked, the powerful were still on their thrones, and the rich were still getting richer. Last time I checked, the wall was still standing. Last time I checked, people were still getting killed because of their race, or religion, or gender. But Mary, the one we call “Theotokos”, the God-bearer, insists “the Mighty One has done great things for me.”

Making sense of this forward-thinking past tense requires some mental gymnastics for sure, but perhaps we understand it more than we realize. This way of thinking is what we do all the time as Christians on our journey of faith. We rejoice, not because God did something amazing a long time ago in Bethlehem, but because that event is still happening today. God is come near. Jesus is born. The kingdom is come. And while we still wait to experience the completion of God’s good work in the world, we believe it is not only going to happen but has already happened. The virgin has conceived and has borne a son, and this means God’s peace, justice, and reconciliation have already defeated all evil, hatred, and violence. The wall has been brought down. The checkpoints have been opened. The peoples of this land have been reconciled—already, and not yet.

For this reason, we can hear Elsa play “O Come, Emmanuel” and also sing “What Child is This, laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping” right now, while we are just beginning our Advent pilgrimage. And that’s what this season is: a pilgrimage. Here we are, our feet standing within the gates of Jerusalem, and yet still we wait to arrive in the city of peace and rest and unity and welcome that is mentioned all throughout Scripture.

The funny thing about my friend Carol walking the Camino in her slippers is that she could easily have gone home at any time. She lived in Paris, after all! She could have packed up, hopped on a train, and been home within an hour. And yet, she kept walking, step after muddy step, kilometer after kilometer, in expectation of that moment when we would arrive—not in Jerusalem, but to the grand cathedral in Chartres.

And on Friday morning, we both did just that – me in my fancy boots, and her in her slippers. We both walked up the many steps to the doors of the cathedral, at 7:30 in the morning. The cathedral was lit only by candlelight, and not open yet to the public. But we were allowed in by special permission, and with our small group of fellow pilgrims, we prayed. We hugged. We cried at the beauty of the place, and at the feeling of having arrived: 

“Now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!” or rather, O Chartres.

And then…we started to walk again, this time, walking the ancient labyrinth built into the floor of the cathedral. It was once again a “now and not yet” moment. We had arrived, and yet we were still walking. I realized that although my small pilgrimage was over, the pilgrimage of faith, our quest to know more fully the presence of God, would continue every day of our lives.

Dear siblings in Christ, sometimes this journey of life and of faith isn’t easy. We prepare the best we can, and sometimes we still have to “make do.” Sometimes it feels we don’t have what we need, that we’re just slogging through the mud, through the messiness of life, through the endless news cycle of terror and war and human brokenness, and all we have is slippers to wear.

Advent is a time when we can both acknowledge that reality and look to the light of the world, Jesus Christ, who is both on the way and already here born among us. We see the lights on the trees, the lights on our tables, the lights in the Advent wreath, and we find the strength to stay awake to Christ’s presence and to keep walking: toward peace, toward love, toward justice, toward Jerusalem, or wherever your journey is taking you next.

As the Swedish statesman and writer Dag Hammarskjöld once wrote:

“Night is drawing nigh—How long the road is. But, for all the time the journey has already taken, how you have needed every second of it in order to learn what the road passes by.”

May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.