And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
- from "Jerusalem," by William Blake
"Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." - Exodus 3.5
With the slightest encouragement, my dad will hold forth on his thesis that there is no sacred ground for New Testament Christianity. (He'll do it without the slightest encouragement, as a matter of fact, but that's a blog for another day.) Dad, a fierce and unreconstructed late-modern Baptist, argues that because the Holy Spirit indwells each believer and forms us into one great believer-priesthood we ARE holy ground. (But I wouldn't suggest toting your skim-milk-low-fat-double-whip-frappa-lappa-no-mo-mocha-mundo into any auditorium where he's serving as the pastor. Also, put on a tie.)
It's not that I disagree; I don't. That's a lot of what we see in the Book of Acts and in Paul's epistles as visionary leaders attempted to wean a young, Jewish church away from a doomed temple and sets of sacred practices that chained the new faith to unsustainable externals. And anyway, a lot of the biggies - like the empty tomb, for instance - are of doubtful provenance and disputed authenticity. I mean, if you're a poor Bedouin and European crusaders swagger into town waving broadswords and money and demand to see where St. Thaddeus blew his nose ten centuries back, you're going to come up with something.
And, as I prepare for my trip to Israel, I'm also challenged by G. K. Chesterton's remark in "On Sightseeing" that if a mob throngs to see a monument, "there is something of the same mystery or majesty in the mob as in the monument." Each member of this gang is, according to Chesterton, "a marvelous and impressive work of God" so that "the sightseer might almost as well travel to see the sightseers as to see the sights." (Dad would've like Chesterton. Well, some things about Chesterton.)
And yet. . .and yet. Something in me wants a place. At least since Bethlehem (and really since Eden) places matter.
For C. S. Lewis it is this fact that cements the claims of the Christian story. "It happens," he declares in "Myth Became Fact," "at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences." And somehow going there puts one in touch with the "happening" of our faith.
But there's more. The insistence on place in the original Christian story challenges us to insist on place in our own living of it.
N. T. Wright has pointed out that William Blake begins his little poem "Jerusalem" (a set piece from the much longer "Milton, A Poem") with four stirring questions, the answer to each of which is a rather disappointing "no." Despite a medieval legend which has Joseph of Arimathea taking his nephew Jesus (supposition the first) on a business trip for his tin trading concern (supposition the second) to Britain (supposition the third), Jesus' feet almost certainly did not in ancient times walk upon England's mountains green or any of the rest of it. More to the point, Bishop Wright maintains, Jesus' visit to a figurative English Jerusalem might more predictably have ended in a cursing than in any special blessing given the way Our Lord generally treated the real Jerusalem. Wright caps his close reading of the poem by arguing that the "dark Satanic mills" in question are not factories that offend Blake's green sensibilities but the God-factories of the religio-commercial complex that in his day meant the Church of England and in ours probably means megachurches, which would doubtless draw the same fire Christ lavished on the temple.
But assuming Wright is correct, look what Blake does: There is a Jerusalem worth having and one yet to be built. (Jesus, I believe, agrees. Otherwise why weep over the sorry mess the real one had made of its mission?) Blake goes on to declare himself a warrior for the establishment, right spank down in the middle of his own Victorian England, of the true Jerusalem, the Kingdom of God come among us. Somehow Blake's vision of the spiritual reality behind the failed simulacrum of the original Jerusalem sustained him in the fight for the spiritual reality behind the failed simulacrum of the Jerusalem of his own day.
Places, Jerusalem tells us, matter, and because they matter they can be abused, but because they matter they must be sought, and because there is no single sacred ground in our faith, we can indeed build Jerusalem anywhere.
But we might do a better job of it, or at least be a little more inspired, if we look backward to the original thing. At least, that's what I'm hoping.
