wfn.org | Archbishop of Canterbury Palm Sunday Sermon Jerusalem

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

Sermon given by the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams at the 
Cathedral Church of St George the Martyr, Jerusalem, on Palm Sunday, 13th 
April 2003

Nancy Dinsmore
Development Office
Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem
Email:	devedjer@netvision.net.il

Sermon given by the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams at the 
Cathedral Church of St George the Martyr, Jerusalem, on Palm Sunday, 13th 
April 2003

At the beginning of Holy Week, we stand with Jesus before the gates of a 
city.  We know that once we have entered we shall be swept up in events 
that we cannot control and that will bring us to the very edge of what we 
can bear, as we walk with him to Calvary and the tomb.	This week tells us 
that God is able to change everything about us our fear, our sin, our 
guilt, our untruthfulness.  In his death is my birth, in his life is my 
life , as the song says; but the new birth is for us a kind of dying 
too.  Remember this morning s epistle: Let the same mind be in you that was 
in Christ Jesus .

As believers and as human beings, we stand at the gates of the city a city 
of wrong as one great Muslim writer called it in the title of his fictional 
meditations on the last week of the Lord's life; a city where so many 
sufferers are silenced and where so many innocent on both sides of the 
terrible conflict are killed and their deaths hidden under a cloak of 
angry, selfish, posturing words, whatever language they are spoken in.	We 
know that in this city, trying to live by faith, hope and love leaves us 
looking pretty helpless.  And we also know in our hearts that so much of 
what fuels the violence is in ourselves too: the passionate longing never 
to be a victim again, the hunger for security expressed in the ownership of 
the land, the impotent near-mindless fury that bursts out in literally 
suicidal ways, and brings destruction to so many.something.  We too are 
citizens of this city of wrong.

Jesus does not steer us away from the gates and send us back into the holy 
silence of the desert or the peace of the countryside.	He keeps us close 
to him as we stand at the gates, and he tells us that these are also the 
gates of heaven.  If you recognise your involvement and prepare to walk 
with Jesus into the city, to the cross and the tomb, there is a joy and a 
mystery at the end of the path, because it is inexhaustible divine love 
that walks with us. We stand not just at the gates of the city of wrong, 
the great city where the Lord was crucified, as revelation says, but also 
at the entrance to the Garden of Eden.

Some of you may recognise the title of an extraordinary and heartbreaking 
book by the Israeli journalist, Yossi Klein Halevi, in which he describes 
how he, initially knowing almost nothing about Christianity and Islam, and 
fearing or loathing what little he did know, discovered ways of speaking of 
God and worshipping God in a quite unexpected fellowship with those of 
other faiths, without abandoning his deep Jewish commitment.  In surprising 
and challenging words, he says that it was only as an Israeli, not a 
diaspora Jew, that he found the confidence to engage compassionately and 
acceptingly with his neighbours a profound testimony to the true, confident 
Jewish commitment to the stranger, the minority, the other.  He describes 
how he absorbs the teaching of Sufi masters into his own Jewish devotion, 
how he overcomes his fear of the Christian Holy Week, which he had always 
seen as the focus of violent anti-Judaism.  It is a book full of wonders 
not at all sentimental here too there are corrupt and lazy souls, here too 
there are good men trapped by prejudice; but overall a real glimpse of the 
hope that might be.

The Epilogue, written in June 2001, begins, And then the madness came .  He 
can no longer travel and keep connection with the Palestinians he has 
befriended; they are at deadly risk, and some disappear.  One of his 
children narrowly escapes a suicide bombing.  The roads are literally 
blocked.  I had stood at the entrance and glimpsed the garden, but that was 
all.   It's as if he is forced to stand instead where we stand today, 
looking through the gates into a city where we cannot as yet see the light 
of the garden, where violence seems to reign, and death waits for us.

Yet, as we have seen, that city of wrong where we are citizens is the place 
where, if we are willing, God works transformation.  At the end of this 
week s story is the garden of resurrection, where our wounds are healed but 
not hidden away.  Are we willing to move towards that garden, learning the 
mind of Christ?  We, Israeli, Palestinian, British, American, Iraqi?  It 
probably means an infinity of small gestures that won t be noticed, tiny 
personal admissions that we cannot live forever in isolation, pride or 
unforgiveness.	That is the insistence that will finally bring 
reconciliation.  Yes, faced with threat and oppression, we must insist on 
the dignity due to us as fellow-humans; but Halevi reminds us that we must 
insist to ourselves on the dignity due to others.

It is precisely at times like these , he writes, that the beautiful 
teachings of faith become either real or mere sentiment.  More than ever, 
the goal of a spiritual life in the Holy Land is to live with an open heart 
at the center of unbearable tension&The best I can say is that I m 
struggling, and that maintaining a painful awareness of the gap between 
what I ve been taught and my inability to embody those teachings defines my 
spiritual life.

At these city gates, we see the possibilities.	We can enter with Jesus and 
walk with him to his garden of new life.  Or we can enter and find 
ourselves caught up in the murderous crowds, and, at the end of it all, 
find ourselves with hands both empty and bloodstained.	Halevi takes his 
title from a story of one of the rabbis, who related how Abraham was given 
a vision of an opening to the Garden of Eden in a mysterious cavern; and it 
was so wonderful that Abraham yearned to dwell in that site; his heart and 
will focused constantly on the cave .

Today we reaffirm our desire to live there, whatever the cost.	We pray 
that God will raise up leaders, on all sides, whose vision of this is 
clear.	Halevi quotes a Muslim friend saying: There are enough politicians 
in the land of the prophets.  But where are the prophets in the land of the 
prophets?   Prophets arise when there is real, hungry openness to the 
healing Word of God; perhaps things have to be very dark indeed for such a 
hunger to be felt.  But we look to One who is more than a prophet, who has 
cleared the way for us not just back to Eden but forward to the new city, 
new Jerusalem, in which the nation are healed and strangers live gratefully 
together.  This Land was touched by God so that it would be forever a sign 
of our hope for the commonwealth of heaven.  The gates are open.  Let us 
with Jesus prepare to go through, to walk with him to his cross and his 
resurrection.

+Rowan CANTUAR: