What does it mean to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem”?  Are we praying primarily for a political peace?  Of course, political peace is good and an asset to all parties.  But the peace must mean a fundamental change of heart and action on the part of all those who live in Jerusalem and the surrounding area.  Such peace must include a spiritual peace for all and a health and wholeness for all peoples.

 “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; may they prosper who love you” (Psalm 122:6).

Jerusalem inspires hope and stirs passions like no other city.  Jerusalem is the only city with both an earthly location and a heavenly one.  Just before the U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, he leaned over to his wife and said, “as soon as I am able, I would like to visit Jerusalem.”  After her husband’s death, Mary Todd Lincoln said that her husband desired to visit the earthly Jerusalem but instead he is rejoicing in the heavenly Jerusalem.

Jerusalem’s importance in history cannot be explained in human terms.  Most major cities are located on a key central river or harbor.  Cities guard trade routes or are critical to the defense of a vast region.  Jerusalem does not accomplish any of these purposes.  The city is on the top of a mountain away from any trade routes and does not defend a region.  There are no rivers or harbors within many miles of Jerusalem.

Yet Jerusalem is “the holy city.”  God touched the world according to the story lines of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  Jerusalem’s “holiness” is contested and disputed by these three worldwide religions.

Jews believe that the Temple Mount is “the creation stone” from which the rest of the world originated.  For Muslims, the Dome of the Rock commemorates Muhammad’s night journey into the heavens on his horse and is the third most holy city after Mecca and Medina.  For Jews, Jerusalem is the holiest place of all.  Christians believe Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem and was crucified and rose again in Jerusalem.

For Christians, the church of the Holy Sepulcher is the climax of the 14 Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa, the way of sorrows from Bethany to the trial before Pilate and to the cross. Millions of pilgrims visit Jerusalem and the “Holy Land” each year to re-live the last steps of Jesus.

One Christian believer whose family is from Egypt, yet he lives in Jerusalem, reported that when he goes back to Egypt, everyone wants to touch him because he may have touched a stone Jesus touched.

Jerusalem generates a loyalty and emotion as expressed in Psalm 137:5, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her skill.”  The Jewish people flock to the Western Wall of the Temple to pray.  This is because they believe God hears prayers at this place which is so close to the ancient Holy of Holies.  Many believe that prayers from the Western Wall are heard before God hears prayers from any other place.  God who chose the Temple site and commissioned Solomon to build the Temple said, “For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that My name may be there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually” (2 Chronicles 7:16).  Is this still true today?  Can we dismiss Jerusalem as irrelevant to us today without greater consideration?

Just as the Jews recognize the rock in the Dome of the Rock as the place Abraham began to sacrifice Isaac, Muslims assert a different story line asserting that the rock is where Ishmael was sacrificed by Abraham.  After all, Ishmael is the literal first born.  The gold of the Dome of Rock is the most visible symbol of Jerusalem today.  It is on the 35-acre platform built by Herod the Great for the 1^st century Temple.  The Dome has eight free-standing archways.  Inside, the walls are covered with tile work of geometrical designs that reflect the order of the worshipper who is submitted to Allah.  At the southern end of the platform is the Al-Aqsa Mosque used for daily prayers.  This mosque is a massive building with scores of Persian rugs on which thousands of worshippers kneel for prayer.

A few hundred meters from the Dome of the Rock is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  In this church are the sites of Jesus’ prison, the pillar where He was whipped, the hill of crucifixion, and the tomb where Jesus was buried.  Various Christian groups, the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Coptic and others struggle with each other over custodianship of this sacred place.  If one tradition cleans a stain, then they have rights to that part of the church exclusively from other groups.  The result is conflicts over scrubbing the floor and the use of the building.  Over the centuries, the conflicts are so significant that no Christian has the keys to the Holy Sepulcher.  Two Muslim families have had the keys for centuries to open the Church of the Holy Sepulcher each morning.  Aded el Judeh age 80 hands Wajeeh Y. Nuseibeh a heavy medieval key and goes to open the doors of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at 4:00 a.m. each day.

Each of these visions and dreams of the city are in competition with each other.  At dawn each day, the three holy places come to life in their own distinctive way.  The muezzins’ high pitch call-to-prayer is heard first while it is still dark.  The tolling bells of the churches also call Christian worshippers to prayers and to service.  The blowing of the Shofar, the ram’s horn, proclaims the Shabbat for Jews and motivates joyful singing and dancing at the kotel (the Western Wall).

Three faiths and three narratives compete with each other, and yet each faith pretends the other faiths do not exist.  The same identical sites have different names such as the Temple Mount is Al Quds to Muslims but the Western Wall supporting it is the Kotel to Jews.

As Islamic Imams pass Jewish rabbis or Christian priests none exchange words but often continue to recite their prayers.  They look past one another as if they did not exist.  They exist in parallel realities although moving in the same space.

Yet Jerusalem can unite rival factions in spite of severe differences.  For example Jerusalem is a cause that can unite Sunni and Shiite Muslims.  Such unification motivates Islamic fundamentalists of both Shiite and Sunni convictions to fight against the western secularism they see in Jerusalem tolerated by the Jewish State.  Anwar Sadat, the President of Egypt, assassinated for his attempt to bring peace to the region said, “The Arab Israeli conflict is about psychology.”  Both sides have different visions that flow from a distrust and disrespect for the other side.

Peace in Jerusalem and the region will not come from political negotiations, because the roots of the conflict are spiritual not political.  The problems are distrust, respect, and vision.  These all grow out of identity – who am I as a Jewish Israeli, an Arab Israeli, or a Palestinian?  The conflicts prompted by the answers to these questions of identity are at the heart of the conflicts.

Unity will come about only through reconciliation in a story larger than each party now sees and identifies themselves.  As Shimon Peres has said, “Jerusalem is more of a flame than a city and no one can divide a flame.”[1]

Jerusalem holds the hopes and dreams of the nations and people of the earth.  The city mirrors the world.  The problems Jerusalem faces are the same problems that face the entire world, only exponentially magnified before a watching world.

The history of Jerusalem is a history of the world.  As Jesus approached Jerusalem on a donkey just days before His death, the Bible says, “He saw the city and wept over it, saying ‘If you had known, even you, in this day the things that make for your peace!’” (Luke 19:41-42)

Jerusalem is the site where God has touched this earth in the past and offers hope for the whole earth in the future, but yet as Jesus expressed His love for the city by His tears, the city did not know “the things that make for your peace.” So we are instructed by God to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6).  Our prayer is that the city would know what is essential to the peace of the city.

It is the complexity of the conflicts and the seeming impossibility of peace that calls us to reconsider our God’s command to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.  Jerusalem has been conquered 11 times in the past 2,000 years, almost always by the horror of war and destruction and always motivated by religion.  In the past 100 years alone, over 60 political solutions were offered to bring peace to Jerusalem and the surrounding region.  Yet the story of Jerusalem is one of war, sieges, massacres, destruction, and rebuilding. None of the peace efforts have brought lasting peace.  What does it mean to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem”?  Are we praying primarily for a political peace?  Of course, political peace is good and an asset to all parties.  But the peace must mean a fundamental change of heart and action on the part of all those who live in Jerusalem and the surrounding area.  Such peace must include a spiritual peace for all and a health and wholeness for all peoples.

A new narrative is needed that visualizes God’s work for the future.  A story that grows out of God’s revealed Word that stimulates hope that “Jerusalem shall become a praise in all the earth.”  “Jerusalem’s righteousness will go forth with brightness and indeed salvation will come out of Zion” (Isaiah 62:6-7 and Psalm 14:7).  We can only pray for God’s mind about the city.  Prayer will bring our thoughts, goals, dreams and visions into accord with God’s purposes.  Let us pray then.

What to Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem:

• Pray that the Lord would enable you to see the importance of praying for Jerusalem.
• Pray that the city would know what things will make for her peace (Luke 19:41-42).
• Pray for yourself that the gospel story may transform your own narrative in relation to Jerusalem.
• Pray that there will be a single narrative for Jews, Arabs, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Dr. Douglas W. Kittredge is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is pastor of New Life in Christ PCA in Fredericksburg, Va.

[1] Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography, Phoenix, 1988, p. 620