Psalm 122: On Praying for Both Israelis and Palestinians

Bruce Epperly, in his comments on the scriptures for the first Sunday in Advent at Process & Faith, has a note about praying for Jerusalem. The call for this is made in the Psalm for this first Sunday in Advent, 122.

Bruce notes:

“I was glad when they said unto me let us go unto the house of the Lord,” rejoices the Psalmist. The Jerusalem temple becomes a focal point for the nations through its vision of peace. Without peace in Jerusalem, there is no peace on Earth, the Psalmist asserts. The Psalmist commands, “pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” This is a strong admonition for progressives who often side with the Palestinians over the State of Israel. We must pray for Israel as well as Palestine; we must insure a just peace that protects Israel as well as liberates Palestine. We must go beyond polarization in the Middle East, recognizing the universality of threat, violence, and self-interest, along with the possibility of personal, national, and regional transformation. God loves the whole world, without exceptions; and God’s love embraces the diversity of nations and ethnicities, inviting them toward peace, goodness, and beauty.

As Christians, it is our duty to love and care for all people, not just particular people. It’s very easy in promoting a particular political agenda to ignore the needs of those who are out of our focus. But the agenda of the Christian should be to build the kingdom of God.

There are many responses to Psalm 122 amongst Christians. There are those for whom the command is a simple command to us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Some would respond that this command was given to the people of Israel, and not in general to the people of the world. And it is truly “decreed for Israel.” At the same time, the language of this Psalm is such that it’s hard not to get an eschatological sense from it, or perhaps to read one into it if it’s not already there. Others might see its application in praying for our own nations and their leaders. My point is not to deal with all possible issues of interpretation, nor to answer policy questions regarding the middle east. Rather it’s to look at our prayers, starting at home, but extending to all people.

Bob MacDonald, in Seeing the Psalter,  notes that the reference to the house of David (verse 5) falls between opening and closing references to the house of the LORD (verses 1 & 9). This explains to some extent why the passage is an advent passage. That eschatological sense comes through. God’s presence is, according to the Psalmist, manifested in Jerusalem in the house of the LORD. God’s presence will be manifested. Eschatology always has a sense of the future in the present.

I must mine another one of my Energion authors, Edward W. H. Vick, quoting from Eschatology: A Participatory Study Guide:

Christian theology is essentially eschatology. ‘From the beginning, eschatology is not primarily an apocalyptic conception, but an understanding of being in faith.’ The question then is, Which eschatology? Is it a theology of the future? Or, may it be better understood as a theology of the present? Are there other alternatives, relating present and future? (p. 51)

If the tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ in the New Testament and in the Christian message is maintained, there is no antagonism between ‘salvation-history’ and Christian existentialism. Indeed the two positions are complementary. To raise the essential question of continuity between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith is to press beyond the position of Bultmann. The question is whether a sequence of events can be an object of faith as well as of assent. Cullmann answers with an emphatic affirmative. In faith the believer is overwhelmed by that in which he did not participate (p. 115). The events of salvation are pro nobis, but first they are extra nos. (p. 63)

Now there’s quite a bit of theological terminology in that quotation, especially without the 12 pages that come between the two paragraphs I quoted. But I want to bring out two points. First, Christian theology is essentially eschatology, that is, it has to do with the age to come, last day events, or something similar. What we often miss, however, is that God coming near is also now, not just something to await in the future. Second, when we participate in Advent we are celebrating events “in which [we] did not participate” and in that celebration we certainly hope they “overwhelm” us, i.e. bring us into themselves.

It’s in that “overwhelming” that “to the Jew first, but also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16) becomes also “there is no longer Jew nor Greek” without contradiction. At the same time, it is only in that way that we can both pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and for justice for Palestinians without contradiction.