II.  WEEPING OVER JERUSALEM “And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it...”  (Luke 19:41)         Jerusalem is considered the holy city of the present world. In our time Jews, Christians and Moslems claim holy sites there. It was the holy city, at least for Jews, in the time of Jesus. Its golden temple dome was a landmark for as far as you could see. This story has Jesus approaching the city, probably from the direction of the Mount of Olives with its broad overlook of the area.         What Jesus saw and felt caused him to weep. There are such moments.          I tried to remember exactly what caused Jesus to weep. I found these words of explanation:   “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:42 - 44)         I had to pause for a moment, look away from the smoking ruins shown on the TV screen in our motel room, look out over the city of Los Angeles. I remembered reading the same text back in the 1960’s during the Watt's riots when we lived there. In those terrifying days the city was on fire and smoke was in the air. Streets were filled with running people. Troops marched to enforce a curfew. People of faith flocked to churches while others stayed in their homes behind locked doors, or else fled the city. We heard gunshots in the night from our home. When I left my home to catch a plane I was taken miles out of the way around the smoking ruins to the airport. “Would today that you knew the things that make far peace! But now they are hid from your eyes.”         There were lots of guesses made. There were people rounded up to be punished for mob behavior. Blame was passed around. Poverty in the midst of plenty. Employment for whites but not blacks. Racism. Segregation. Police brutality. Lots of explanations from various experts. Lots of signs that told people that this was bound to happen. “For the days will come...” as we should have seen, but we did not know the things that made for peace that were hid from our eyes. So a major neighborhood of our city burned.         Los Angeles is a major city, but New York might be considered the major city of the world. It was unthinkable that it could be seriously attacked by enemies, crumbling buildings to the ground along with scores of men, women and children.         As Jesus wept over Jerusalem, so we weep over New York City.         That’s a first response, soon followed by anger and bitterness and calls for retribution and acts of deterrence. The stories of individuals dashed and destroyed, often in moments of horror, stir up smoldering embers of emotion within us. We all know people who knew and loved people on those planes and in those buildings. The impulses to help, give, pray, share are abundant. But first we grieve as Jesus grieved. He wept, we weep.         But if we are like Jesus we wonder what it is that can bring on such action. We wish we knew what could have prevented this, what makes for peace. What is so much of a wrong in the eyes of some people that they are filled with hatred toward the institutions of wealth in the city, and power in the Pentagon? In time we may begin to suspect that we are seen as arrogant with our wealth and militarism and exploitation of the natural world. We may suspect that resentment has been building and “you did not know the time of your visitation.”         It’s one thing when American and allied bombers by the thousands rained terror at night over civilian cities in Germany during World War II, utterly destroying 80% of some cities, along with thousands of men, women and children. Or, when the same is done, in the name of ending a war, to many thousands of citizens in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were oceans away from those terrors. But it’s another thing when it’s our city.         In fact, we probably haven’t wept over the destructions of Jerusalem. Hardly any Americans wept over Hiroshima or Dresden or Baghdad. I guess it’s natural to weep over your own cities and not the cities of others. And that may be what is hid from our eyes. That suffering doesn’t matter until it happens to us. That peace won’t come until we weep over every nation’s cities. God bless the world! Art Morgan, September 11, 2001