The Gospel in All These Ruins

I was absolutely sure I wanted to walk through Hezekiah’s tunnel. I was also absolutely sure that I would never forget what I would see today. For some reason going to places where people are buried doesn’t really do it for me. I don’t understand the draw of seeing bones (or more likely a box or memorial) of someone who lived a long time go and did really great things. What I am most drawn to is places that have significance for what happened there. Places like Golgotha and Hezekiah’s tunnel. My imagination runs wild and I imagine the people. I imagine who they were and what they were thinking. I try to place myself in the same situations and it is absolutely incredible how real everything becomes to me.

Yet, one of the major questions I found myself asking all of today was, so what? So what if I just saw an ancient house that was burned? So what if I just encountered what might be David’s palace? What’s the point? If it is merely to enjoy a great experience fueled by imagination I would find this trip though entertaining a bit pointless. I can get imagination-laden experiences anywhere. If I wanted to see ruins and different cultures I could go places other than Jerusalem and enjoy them more. The issue is I want to become a pastor. It was apparent to me that if I was going to be talking about all these places and people and events in the Bible I should know them as well as I can. But, I do not think that visiting ruins will help me preach well if it does not connect from my notebook to my thoughts.

As I wrestled with this question and asked Aubrey, my professor, I realized something standing on the City of David and reading the psalms inspired by it such as Psalm 121. The “hills” are not just a metaphor and “Mount Zion” is not just a name. These are real people using real places to form word pictures to talk with God. It blows my mind that in Psalm 121:1-2 it says, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” And I was looking around the City of David at all of the hills, the same hills the psalmist was writing about. You look around Jerusalem and everyone around her wants to kill her. She is in the way. She is small. And God has promised to bless her? Where are you God? The Psalmist’s confidence is in Yahweh, the Creator God. All of a sudden this whole trip was centered on one thing, “How do you make the text relevant to the people reading it?” How do you convey what the writer was feeling and thinking? Aubrey mentioned this in class and I was taken aback by how obvious the statement was. The writers of the Bible were not thinking about other people when they were writing. Isaiah did not wonder what his writing would sound like to an American college student or a German theologian.

Besides looking at the context of the Scriptures and placing myself in the shoes of the writers, I answered the question of so what, like this: Each of these places and each of these stories points to the meta-narrative of Christ redeeming all things. I saw the Gospel in City of David when I imagined the psalmist’s passion when he wrote Psalm 121. I saw the Gospel in the Siloam pool when I imagined Jesus healing a man. I saw the Gospel when I imagined Jesus commenting on the eighteen who died under the tower in Siloam explaining how the world works (Luke 13:4-5). Bad things do not just happen to bad people. Bad things just happen. It is the Gospel that reconciles man to God and the Gospel that makes these places relevant to our souls. If the Gospel did not shine through these places they would be just that, places. They would be ruins that tell us about history but do not affect our history. So far, seeing Hezekiah’s tunnel, the City of David, the pool at Siloam, the ruins of the broad wall, and the burnt house, among other things have pushed me to understand the Gospel. I want to see everything through that lens. Granted I do not want to stretch what I am seeing to fit my preconceived notions, but seeing glimmers of Christ and redemption in all these things have made me smile and thank God for a salvation as great as this.