The Heart of the City: Reflections on the Entrance of Our Lord into Jerusalem

​​The Heart of the City
Reflections on the Entrance of Our Lord into Jerusalem
2025

Jerusalem.
“Foundation of peace,” as it might be rendered. Or, if you will: “Cornerstone of peace.”
Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was already a very ancient city on the day of the triumphal entry of God’s Anointed, the Shepherd of Israel: David the King.

Jerusalem was already a very ancient city when King David - psalmist, musician, and warrior David - danced in its streets with all his vigor before the Ark of the Covenant which he brought to rest there.

Jerusalem was already a very ancient city when the prophet King David fled across the brook Kidron and up the Mount of Olives to escape his own son, the fratricide and usurper Absalom who repaid clemency with treason.

Jerusalem was already a very ancient city when David son of Jesse son of Judah passed the crown to his son Solomon, the chosen heir.

Jerusalem was an ancient city. A walled city. A hilltop fortress. A city founded not by God’s elect. A city founded, rather, by the sons of Cain in the tradition of Cain. A city founded on bloodshed and aggression and oppression and exploitation… Founded on pride, on self-will, on the will to power. Founded on fear. Founded on delusion, on mendacity and fraud, on corruption and lust…

Jerusalem was, over the centuries, a city ever obstinate and unrestrained in its evil ways, impervious to God’s commandments and obdurately deaf to His countless entreaties and exhortations and warnings. A city of perdition.

Can you imagine such a city?

Jerusalem was a city not founded by God’s elect, but reclaimed by God’s elect on the day of the triumphal entry of God’s Anointed, the Shepherd of Israel: David the King. A city recovered from the powers of darkness. A city reoriented. Repurposed. A city redeemed.

Jerusalem was now the epicenter of the inauguration of God’s Kingdom here on Earth. The capital of that Kingdom. The seat of government of God’s Holy Wisdom. The hub of the administration of righteousness and peace and justice and equity.

Jerusalem was now a city of unwavering faithfulness. A city of wholehearted devotion to the Glory of God. The consecrated city. The city of right worship, of true glorification of the one true God.

Jerusalem was the city where Solomon would build the Temple where God would establish His name forever. To Jerusalem, David gathered the riches of the region. To Jerusalem, the twelve tribes of Israel brought freewill offerings: gold and silver and bronze and iron, cedar and cypress, onyx and marble and precious stones all in abundance, to which David added his own great treasure. And for these gifts, David prayed before the congregation in these words:

Blessed art Thou, O LORD, God of our father Israel!
Everything in heaven and on earth is Thine!
Wealth and honor come from Thee!
Everything comes from Thee, and we have given Thee only what comes from Thy hand!
Thine own of Thine own, we offer unto Thee!
We give Thee thanks and praise Thy glorious name!

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory and the splendor… now and ever and unto ages of ages.
1 Chron 29

David himself prayed in these words at the commencement of the building of the Temple.

Jerusalem would now and forever be the city of that Temple.
And in the Temple, the Holy of Holies.
And in the Holy of Holies, the Ark.
And in the Ark, the Law.
And on the Ark, the Seat of Mercy.
God’s dwelling place among Men.
The very centre of the universe: Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was now a city of splendor. A city of fabulous prosperity and wealth streaming in from every corner of the earth. A city lavishly blessed.

Jerusalem was a luminous city, its streets and its edifices all built of that famous pale limestone, almost white, as though to suggest “almost pure,” and opulently adorned in silver and gold and gemstones… A city that glistened like a jewel under the fierce Levantine sun. Yes, a shining city on a hill.

Can you imagine such a city?

Was there ever another city of such promise of righteousness and peace and justice and equity?
Was there ever another city of such promise, such hope, such possibility…
Unrealized?

Jerusalem was a city that found its way… and then soon lost it.

Jerusalem was a vacillating city. An on-again-off-again city. A city lurching to-and-fro. A city of endless internecine struggle. A riven city. A city on two hilltops, really, and a city of two alternating faces: a face of faithfulness and a face of apostasy.

Jerusalem was a city that turned its back on the LORD of Hosts and strayed after strange gods and descended into all lawlessness and corruption and depravity and delusion, pride and vainglory and lust, murder and theft and bribery and fraud. A city that perverted justice, that condemned the righteous and acquitted the wicked, that renounced hospitality, that neglected the widow and the orphan, that exploited the sojourner. A city of monstrosities, worse than those sons of Cain who had gone before. A city that even sacrificed its children to Moloch.

Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
How many times did you tear down those abominable shrines of the idols, the Baalim and the Asherim… only to rebuild them yet again?
How many times did you cleanse and restore the Temple… only to defile and desecrate it yet again?
How many times did you rediscover the commandments of the LORD your God… only to cast them aside yet again?
How many times, in distress, did you cry to the LORD your God, and how many times did you put your trust in princes in whom there is no salvation?
How many times, O Jerusalem, did the LORD your God call to you, send His Word to you? And how many times did you imprison the prophets? How many times did you kill the prophets?
How many times, O Jerusalem, were you besieged?
How many times did the LORD your God deliver you from your enemies, and how many other times did He deliver you into their hand?
How many times, O Jerusalem, were you breached and pillaged and ravaged and afflicted?
How many times did the LORD your God beckon you and warn you and chasten you and save you… and beckon and warn and chasten…?

Can you imagine such a city?

Can you imagine a city that has lost its religion? That has despised and discarded its heritage?
Can you imagine a city that worships power apart from goodness? That severs peace from justice and justice from truth and truth from love?
Can you imagine a city that strives for prosperity without equity? For consumption without contentment? For security without purpose?
Can you imagine a city that would silence the Word of God and amplify a cacophony of false prophets: prophets of complacency, apologists for power and privilege, prophets of self-empowerment and self-improvement, prophets of the techno-saviour, prophets for hire, prophets for views and clicks and “likes”… ?
Can you imagine a city that would sacrifice its own children? To the Moloch of war, of national glory, of political or mercantile imperative? To the Moloch of hedonism? To the Moloch of so-called compassion, inverted compassion, eradication of pain instead of communion in suffering… following the mantras of “patient autonomy” or “the right to die” or “reproductive freedom” or so-called “affirmative care”?

Can you imagine such a city?

And so, Jerusalem convulsed and careened across the centuries in its struggle with God.
Jerusalem was a city whose song was a song of anguish and penitence and plea and praise, a song of deliverance and relief and exultation and thanksgiving, and a song of distress and desperation and desolation and devastation and lamentation and weariness and woe… The song of Jerusalem was a song of God’s longing and His longsuffering and His jealousy and His wrath and His loyalty and His tenderness, a song of God’s judgment and God’s mercy, His condemnation and His salvation… The song of Jerusalem was the song of a remnant of a still-flickering hope…

Jerusalem was a city that never quite lost its faith in a promise. Jerusalem, ancient city, as it logged yet another millennium, was a city waiting. A city suspended in expectation. When everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong…

Expectation of what, exactly? Expectation of whom? A hero. A saviour of some kind. Someone who would somehow, at long last, set things right. A son of David. An heir of David. Another Anointed One. Another shepherd king…

A millennium on from the day of David’s triumphal entry, Jerusalem was a haunted city. A city haunted by all of the glory and all of the shame of the memory of its past and the memory of its future. A city caught fast in the jaws of fate: “How can history possibly go on like this? How can history possibly change?”

Today, O Jerusalem, today He comes to you.

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
Righteous and having salvation is he,
Humble and mounted on an ass,
On a colt, the foal of an ass.
Zech 9:9

Today, the children of the light waive the palms of victory.
We who were blind and have received our sight,
we who were leprous and are now cleansed,
we who were lame and maimed and paralyzed and now walk,
we who have just witnessed the raising of Lazarus from the grave!
Today, we march in the triumphal procession.
Today, we sing: Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!

Today, we cast off our cloaks, the garments of the shame of Father Adam and Mother Eve: we strew them in the roadway and trample them underfoot because today we have no more cause for shame. Today, we are robed in His light.

Today, He who sits enthroned upon the cherumim, He who makes the clouds his chariot, He who rides on the wings of the wind… Today He comes mounted on the colt of an ass. And what a model of faithful witness in the world is that small, humble colt of an ass who serves quietly and simply as asked, as required, obediently, hardly comprehending the full import of what he is about on this day. Yet, he bears the Word in the world.
The colt of an ass bears the Word who bears the heart of God into the heart of the city which is the heart of the cosmos.

And in the heart of the city which is the heart of the cosmos, the heart of God is an aching heart crying out:

Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
How many times? Over centuries and millennia!
How many times would I have gathered your children to myself?
Your sons. Your daughters.
Even as a mother hen gathers her brood under her wings.
But you would not!

Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
You who kill the prophets!
Receive today one final prophet, and more than a prophet!
Matt 23:27

Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
You with your unquenchable thirst for blood.
Drink this blood, if you dare!
For the life is in the blood, and it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.
Lev 17:11

Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
Your king is coming to you.
Your king, the Anointed, which is to say, the Messiah, which is to say, the Christ.
And His coming is at once God’s judgment and God’s mercy, condemnation and salvation, in a single stroke.

God’s judgment, because He knew that this is what you would do - “Away with Him! Away with Him! Crucify Him!” He knew that this is just what you would do. He knew the darkness of your heart. And yet He comes to you anyway.

And God’s mercy, because He knew that this is what you would do - “His blood be on us and on our children!” He knew that this is just what you would do. He knew the darkness of your heart. And He comes to you precisely for that reason.

Condemnation, because if you were not a city of crucifiers, then how is it that your Messiah is crucified?
And salvation, because in that crucifixion is the eternal life of the world.

Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
Your king is coming to you today.
And His name is Wonderful Counselor, Almighty God.
He is one with the Everlasting Father: He is in the Father and the Father is in Him.
He is the Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of His government of righteousness and peace and justice and equity, there will be no end from this time forth and forevermore.
Isa 9:6-7
John 10:30, 14:10-11

Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
Your king is coming to you today.
He is that rock.
That rock of salvation.
That rock gushing forth the spring of living water when His side is pierced.
That rock of offense, the stumbling block.
That stone which the builders rejected.
The true cornerstone of peace.

This hour, brothers and sisters, children of the light, we will process in the street, waiving the palms of victory, singing: “Hosannah in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” Our faithful witness in the heart of this city is at once God’s judgment and God’s mercy, condemnation and salvation in a single stroke. By our faithful witness on these streets, we reclaim and redeem this city from the powers of darkness. By the faithful witness of our life in this city, His kingdom extends to this city in this age from the throne of David in Jerusalem, as His government of righteousness and peace and justice and equity increases without end.

O Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace, Son of David, Almighty God!
Establish your throne forever in Jerusalem, my heart.
Restore and cleanse your holy Temple, my heart.
Rebuke the hypocrisy which lurks in this Temple, my heart.
Overturn the tables and drive out the avarice and greed and deceit from this Temple, my heart.
Establish your name and your dwelling place, and forever increase your government of righteousness and peace and justice and equity in my heart.

For, in the words of your ancestor according to the flesh and your servant according to the Spirit, Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory and the splendor now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.