Explainer

Creed

Israel

Middle East

23 March 2024

6 min read

The most contested real estate on the planet

Can contradictory views about how God connects to Jerusalem ever be reconciled?

Peter Walker

Peter is a rector, writer and theologian.

A gold-domed, blue-walled octagonal mosque seen through a row of arches.

The Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount.

Andrew Shiva via Wikipedia.

It was Saturday 14 October last year. BBC Radio were about to play a pre-recorded interview with a spokesman for Hamas and needed to explain to listeners something in advance: “the reference you will hear in a moment, stating that one of the causes of the Gaza conflict is the desire to preserve the freedom of ‘Al Aqsa’, is a references to the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem—regarded as the third holiest site in the Muslim world”.

That was it in a nutshell. The Hamas spokesman was making it plain that, behind all the many political causes of the conflict erupting so tragically in the Holy Land, there was an essentially theological issue. Yes, as in other conflicts around the world, there are strong human desires in both Israeli and Palestinian communities to live in a place of security and to have their aspirations for some political independence to be adequately met, but here in the Holy Land there is an irreducible ‘God-component’ to the conflict.

The heart of the conflict

It’s not just that the conflict is predominantly between two major monotheistic religions—Judaism and Islam. It’s that those two world-religions have conflicting theological views—derived from their respective scriptures, the Hebrew Bible and the Quran—about physical places in the Holy land. And, even more particularly, they are have essentially contradictory views about the piece of land which Christians now often refer to as the ‘Temple Mount’: namely, the place where the former Jewish Temple stood, but which Muslims refer to as Haram Esh Sharif (‘the noble sanctuary’), because it is now the site both of the Dome of the Rock and the above-mentioned Al Aqsa mosque.

This is the most contested piece of real estate on the planet. The same site is, on the one hand, revered by Jews as the site of Solomon’s temple centred on the ‘holy of holies’ and, on the other, is revered by Muslims as the place from which Muhammed went on his mysterious ‘night journey’ up to heaven and back, as recounted in the Qu’ran. So, for both religions the site is not just of historical interest but rather is invested with theological weight—as a place associated like no other, with God himself.

The Hamas spokesman was thus helpfully laying bare the irreducible theological crux at the root of this conflict. Secular politicians and humanitarian agencies might want to take this ‘God-component’ out of the equation, but it will not go away. For this conflict is based on essentially contradictory views about how God connects to Jerusalem and especially to the Temple Mount.

Enter Jesus

The familiar story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem is remembered on Palm Sunday every year. It is an event with layers upon layers of meaning. At its heart, however, is the conviction of the Gospel writers and of the early Christians that Jesus had entered Jerusalem as the human embodiment of God himself.

A hint of this may be found in the way that Jesus, when criticised by the religious leaders for the extravagant claims the crowds were making for Jesus at that moment (especially haling him as the ‘Messiah’), himself claims that “even the stones would cry out” in honour of him, if they could—presumably because they know that their Creator was passing by at just that moment!

Yet this conviction—that Jesus had been the human embodiment of God—is perhaps best sensed when we note how Jesus’ coming over the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem can, arguably, be seen as the return of the Lord’s Shekinah glory into the Temple. This comes through noting a highly significant passage in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel. The prophet, writing from exile in Babylon, had seen a vision about the ‘glory of the God of Israel’: ‘the glory of the Lord went up from within the city and stopped above the mountain to the east of it’ — in other words the Mount of Olives, the hill to the east of the city of Jerusalem, that looked over the Temple Mount

Now Jesus comes over the Mount of Olives and storms into the Temple: this is Ezekiel’s vision but now in reverse. He is embodying the return of the Lord’s glory; he is the personal presence of Israel’s God; he is, as the prophet Malachi predicted, ‘the Lord himself coming into his Temple’.

If true, then Jesus was God’s embodied presence coming into the Temple. God had previously made the Temple to be the place where he dwelt on earth; now Jesus was that presence himself—in human form.

And, when Jesus goes on solemnly to announce that “your house is left desolate”, he is making it clear that that divine presence, which had genuinely filled the Temple back in the days of Solomon, was now being removed once and for all.

After some further teaching Jesus eventually makes his own final departure from the Temple precincts—a clear sign for the writer of Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus is taking the divine presence with him out of the building. And a few weeks later, as described by Luke, we are presented with the picture of Jesus taking divine presence back into heaven in the event of the Ascension.

Viewed in this way, we can see the whole story of Jesus’ going into the Temple as effectively a ‘de-secration’ of the Temple. He was making it clear that he alone was now where God’s presence was to be found. Divine presence was no longer to be associated with a place, but with a person.

Back to the present

Coming back to the present day, then, there is a profound sense in which those who associate the former Temple Mount with a doctrine of divine presence are chasing after ‘thin air’. The Temple once upon a time had housed the presence of God, but, according to this Christian understanding, it does so no longer—it is an ‘empty pot of gold’. ‘The Glory has departed’—in Jesus.

If so, this major source of tension in the contemporary Middle East—the conflicting theologies of Judaism and Islam concerning the sanctity of the Temple Mount and its historic connection to God’s presence—can only be resolved by a recognition that Jesus has decisively changed all this.

If Jesus is ‘God incarnate’ (something clearly not recognised in Judaism and Islam)—if, in other words, he is the place where we go to find God—then that takes the ‘God-component’ out of the equation and brings to an end the elevated status that so many give to Jerusalem and the Temple.

Jerusalem, understood in this way, now points in God’s purposes to the far greater reality of Jesus Christ who alone embodies the true presence of God in human form. Jesus himself said that “one greater than the Temple is here”. But, tragically, the overwhelming majority of those who live in Jerusalem and the Holy Land today are committed to religious systems which deny these and other New Testament claims for Jesus.

Taking this further

Alternatively, you might like to access to a suite of resources for Holy Week: take your pick from some ‘In the Steps of Jesus’ videos (filmed in Jerusalem), or some audio recordings (‘The Week that Changed the World’) or a book (‘Immersed in the Passion’) that retells the story from Palm Sunday to Easter Day.

Article

Advent

Awe and wonder

Creed

Wildness

22 November 2024

4 min read

Why does snowfall still awe us?

We long for snow this time of year because longing is all there is to do.

Josh Richards

Josh is a curate in London, and is completing a PhD in theology.

Durham Cathedral.

Jeffrey Zhang on Unsplash.

Why are we so drawn to snow? And what does it say about us that we are? The German theorist Hartmut Rosa begins his wonderfully titled book The Uncontrollability of the World with these words:

"Do you still remember the first snowfall on a late autumn or winter day, when you were a child? It was like the intrusion of a new reality. Something shy and strange that had come to visit us, falling down upon and transforming the world around us, without our having to do anything. An unexpected gift. Falling snow is perhaps the purest manifestation of uncontrollability. We cannot manufacture it, force it, or even confidently predict it."

Rosa argues that we find greatest meaning in that which remains uncontrollable, beyond our grasp. We long for snow this time of year because longing is all there is to do. Artificial snow will always disappoint. We cannot manufacture our own awe.

Rosa warns that modernity is built around "the idea, the hope and desire that we can make the world controllable." At a certain point more influence over something results in that thing being reduced to a mere instrument capable only of frustrating our desires.

I sit down to watch a film that's finally streaming. It gets a bit slow 20 minutes in. I start watching something else. I wonder if I should have seen the film in the cinema.

I catch up with the podcast of the event I decided not to go to. I speed it up as I put the washing in. I couldn't tell you what they discussed.

I turn to social media as one might turn to a snow globe. In its careful curation, all I feel is the ache for the real thing.

In each of these cases, technology has, at least on one level, given me greater control and allowed me to shape my environment in greater accordance with my desires. Rosa identifies that all desire is “driven by a longing to bring something as yet unreachable within our reach.” And yet, in each case, that which I desired—the experience of watching a great film, participation in a stimulating conversation, meaningful human connection—is jeopardised by this supposed improvement.

So, it makes sense that we are on the lookout for snow at this time of year. Something in each of us is still looking to be caught up in something beyond us.

What we think of as a drive to increase choice is often really about control. Putting it in these terms does not invalidate the drive but it should make us more alert to the cost. Greater choice for me means greater control over something or someone.

At the same time, greater control over the environment can also mean less self-control. I am a bundle of contradictory desires, and the more I am empowered and encouraged to pursue all of them, the more I am empowered to pursue none of them consistently. (I still haven't finished Inside Out 2)

The self-frustrating desire that Rosa identifies sits at the heart of so many of the most important debates from artificial intelligence to assisted dying. Control can be conflated with dignity or fulfilment. As uncontrollability is marginalised so too do we risk marginalising that which makes life worth living.

In the season of Advent, Christians remember the birth of Jesus, but its primary purpose was and is to direct our gaze to the end of the world. We might be able to sentimentalise and sanitise the Christmas story, but Advent's apocalyptic summons will always resist our desire for control. It proclaims that we are going to die, that the world will end, and that we will all be judged. You are not in control.

No matter how exhaustive and efficient we believe our control to be, Advent reveals it to be a pretence. There will always be things beyond our grip, and we spend a great deal of time distracting ourselves from them, pretending that it is otherwise.

Advent assures us that we can face this reality because we do not so alone. The God who came as a baby and was executed, experiencing the extremes of human vulnerability, is with us now. It is that God who comes at the end. It is that God whose love gives us comfort and courage.

So, it makes sense that we are on the lookout for snow at this time of year. Something in each of us is still looking to be caught up in something beyond us, something that no technology or system can organise or tame. Snow then acts as an echo of that more profound sense of vulnerability that we are each tempted to avoid. It stirs up our longing to be confronted with something genuinely awe-inspiring.

In the wildness of Advent, we find the promise of what we have longed for: a God who will come and restore all things, an uncontrollable God who comes like snow. Advent calls us to put down the manmade slush and prepare for the coming blizzard. Doing so might help us see where this new reality already intrudes.