My dear friends, let us now turn to the second psalm of Terce, Psalm 120, and we shall see that this psalm also fits very well into the context of the beginning of our working day. The psalm starts with the big question, From where, from where shall come my help? It is the question of one who is leaving his home to go on a journey, or to go in downtown to his business office. And it says in verse one and two, I lift up my eyes to the mountains from where shall come my help. My help shall come to the Lord who made heaven and earth. The general meaning of these two verses could be, I think, better understood as soon as we take the first verse in a negative sense as a rhetorical question and we formulate the whole thing this way.

[01:18]

Should I lift up my eyes to the mountains for my help to come from them? No. My help shall come from the Lord, who made heaven and earth." We do this, we grasp immediately the attitude which dominates the entire psalm. It is an ascent, a lifting up of one's heart in trust to Yahweh as our help and our guardian or protector. Don't look up to the mountains for help. Why? Because the mountains will present to the eye the dimension of height. And as soon as you see them, the man you are, you will automatically look for the highest mountain, where the highest, most powerful God dwells, to give you the most powerful help. And before you know, you will be a climber and find yourself in the arrows world of competition.

[02:27]

With mountains here in the Somme are meant people of superior rank, superior power. The question of the psalmist could be put like this. Should I look around among the heights of this world for help, the VIPs? No. Yahweh is my help who made heaven and earth. The one who made heaven and that means the height of heights, as well as earth, and the earth is good mother, the patient, humble, long-suffering earth, this Jabi is simply beyond all these human dimensions. He is the lord of the highest heights as well as of the lowest valleys. He made them both, and that means that he is beyond

[03:33]

the errors world of competition that recognizes only the highest mountains, and dwells in a completely different dimension of the agape, that love that descends. Read in order to understand the real dimension, biblical dimension, of Yahweh's altitude. Read Psalm 112. Yahweh is above heaven and earth, looks down upon both. But as it is said in Psalm 137, 6, the Lord is high, yet he looks on the lowly, and the high ones he keeps at a distance. Compare Jarvis' reaction to the terrific effort of the climbers who wanted to build the Tower of Babel.

[04:37]

Jarvis says, when he sees what they are doing, let us descend to see what they are doing. No, this is irony, the irony of the one who is above heaven and earth and can only descend when he turns to a man-made skyscraper. What is high among men is low for him, and what is low among men is raised by him from the donkey. His dwelling place is Poverty Hill. The mountains of Bashan are mighty mountains. High-reached mountains are the mountains of Bashan. Why look with envy, you high-reached mountains, at the mountain where God has chosen to dwell—Mong Sai? It is there, on this little Mount Zion, that the Lord shall dwell for ever and ever.

[05:39]

These words of Psalm 67 give you the whole idea. The big, fat, high mountains of pagan Bashan look down in self-satisfied mockery on poverty here. Poor little Zion. But Jarvis' preference is precisely this poor little sign. Such a revolution of values is the heart and soul of Jarvis' plan of salvation. The first will be the last, and the last will be the first. This is the real difference between secular thinking and sacred thinking. The secular thinking has consistently been upset by Jarvis' thinking. Whenever there was competition between the older one and the younger one, from Cain and Abel over Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Ephraim and Manasseh, later Saul and David, down into the New Testament, the older son and the prodigal, the aristocrats of piety, the Pharisees, and the publicans, harlots, or Gentiles.

[06:55]

Jave has always chosen the underdog, provided the underdog did not consider himself an aristocrat. Although a rich man can be saved, provided he adjusts himself to the standards of a needle's eye. It is from the height of Yahweh's mercy, that help, that means understanding, compassionate, constructive, approving assistance, comes to man. God Yahweh is the protector, a guardian, the root, the Hebrew root, shomer, keeper. is the key word of the whole psalm, and is repeated six times in the verses that now follow. I'll read verse three and four. May he never allow you to stumble.

[07:56]

Let him sleep not, your God. No, he sleeps not nor slumbers. Israel's God. As you notice, there is a change between the first two verses and verse three. We change from the first to the second person. In other words, another person takes up the psalmist's profession of trust in Yahweh. Perhaps a priest, or maybe the family from whom the pilgrim is taking leave. The meaning is, yes, you are right. Jarveh is the help you need. Why? Because he alone is able to prevent your feet from stumbling. Your pilgrimage is not merely a physical journey. The best of cars would not suffice, because you are a pilgrim in the Spirit, in freedom, on your way to Jerusalem.

[09:01]

To help you in your spiritual endeavor, you need a helper who never falls asleep, who watches over you with his never-sleeping eye, and that is only the God of Israel, the God Emmanuel, God with us. And to us Christians it is the Word made flesh, who now sits at the right hand of God, always ready, always awake to intercede for us, as the epistle to the Hebrews puts it. The priest then on the family continues, verse 5 and 6 and 7 and 8. The Lord is your God and your shade. At your right hand he stands. By day the sun shall not smite you, nor the moon in the night. Jahweh will guard you from evil. He will guard your soul. Jahweh will guard your going and coming, both now and forever. When praying these verses, my dear friends, you cannot help feeling the guarding power of Jarvis surrounding the pilgrim from all sides in ever-growing intensity and totality of protection.

[10:17]

like an umbrella who overshadows the right hand of the pilgrim, because the right hand is the one that works and fights. We are reminded here of the angel's message to Mary, the power from on high will overshadow you. No more beautiful expression could be found to characterize Jarvis' power from on high. It is not boasting, not glaring, not overwhelming. The power of God's love at our right hand is not a sword but a shadow. Humility. Compassion. If this power assists us, then the bright light of good fortune will not make us presumptuous, and in the night of misfortune the mild light of the moon will be there to console us. Totality is the word that describes the range of God's protection.

[11:19]

Jah will regard your soul. and soul means body and soul, our entire life, he will guard. Our going and coming, our leaving and our homecoming, beginning and end of life will be under the care of the Good Shepherd. The pilgrimage which has begun with the hostile surroundings of the world, Psalm 119, and has continued under the intimate personal protection of Jarveh in Psalm 120, now reaches its goal in Psalm 121. The pilgrim has arrived in Jerusalem, the city which represents the corporate ideal of Israel as God's holy people. The pilgrim finds himself now at home in the festive throng, where the peace he had longed for has become a communal reality.

[12:22]

First, his thoughts wander back to the moment when the call reached him to join the pilgrims on their voyage. I read it. I rejoiced when I heard them say, Let us go to Jarvis' house. Many of us, my dear friends, have a very lopsided picture of the temple in Jerusalem as just another one of those mighty structures which are intended to proclaim the heavenly majesty of the God who lives there and to overall those who come to venerate Him. Indeed, the word temple evokes a connotation radically different from the true spirit of the divine revelation which takes place in the Old and the New Testaments. The Old Testament idea of the temple is totally different from the pagan idea, which makes of the temple a sacred precinct strictly separated from our daily life. Religion, then, is something that has been taken out of our daily life, is reserved for holy days, takes place in a sacred sphere, and consists in the performance of certain rites which assure the welfare of man, beast, and vegetation.

[13:40]

It is this separation between religion and the daily life of man which the prophets of the Old Testament attack so mercilessly. Psalm 121 reflects the true spirit of the Old Testament. I rejoice when I heard them say, Let us go to Jabez's house. Joy is a man's answer to love, and love does not live in the splendor of palaces, but rather in the intimacy of the home. for the Jew to go to Jarveh's house is to go home, because the heart of the home is love, and the house of Jarveh is the place where his love, his tender mercies, Jarveh's faith are revealed to his children. The story of the beginning of this union between Jarveh and the home is told in Genesis 28. Jacob had left his father's house, partly out of fear of Esau's wrath, but mainly to found a home.

[14:45]

This was his task in the plan of salvation. Esau was a cunning hunter, but he, Jacob, was a simple man who loved to stay at home, as it is said in Genesis 25, 27. Now what happens to him, to Jacob, at the place where he finds himself, far from his father's home, completely destitute, protectly only by a few stones he had set up after sunset to protect his head from the wild animals during his sleep? In a dream he sees a ladder firmly put down from above upon the earth next to his head. That means a new dimension opens up to him, not the horizontal one of his journey from Beersheba to Haran, but a vertical one, from the place of his rest on the stone up to heaven, and messengers ascending and descending, and Jarvis standing over it.

[15:47]

And he reveals himself as the God of Abraham, your father. He says, I am with you. I shall protect you wherever you go in your exile. Jacob wakes up and realizes that here, at this forsaken place in all his loneliness, sadness, and helplessness, among a few stones he had put there to serve as a scanty protection, here at this place and not somewhere out there, Javeh is present, and he, Jacob, has been completely unaware of it. In astonishment, he exclaims, this is the house of Javeh, that means the place where God takes his abode, and this is the gate of heaven, that means where Jacob may enter heaven. Jacob takes the stone to erect it as a memorial. And up to this day, my dear friends, we listen to this story at each dedication of a new church of the house of God our Lord, or the anniversary of such a dedication.

[16:59]

And with it we read the story of our Lord's entering the house of Zacchaeus the Publican, another son of Abraham, a sinner, for the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. Luke 19, 1-10. God's house, in the Old as well as in the New Testament, is the abode of His mercy, of His descending love. And this is the reason why we rejoice when we are invited to go to the house of the Lord. Now let us read the next two verses of Psalm 121. And now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is built as a city, strongly compact. The pilgrims have reached Jerusalem. At the gates they stop, rooted on the spot, overcome by the impression of the holy city. And immediately they realize, in the external appearance of its buildings, the essential truth and message of Yerushalayim.

[18:06]

To understand the meaning of this word, it might be helpful to remember an old saying of the Jewish wise men that Sem, Hashem, the son of Noah and forefather of the Semites, envisioned the idea of peace and of the home, the Salem part of Jerusalem, in Genesis 9.27, while the Heru part comes from Abraham. means God foresees. You must read Genesis 22, 14. And the essential meaning of Yerushalem is peace, the universal welfare and harmony of all the nations, and Providence, or God's foresight, the element of faith. God's plan is really the union of the two, the perfect all-round welfare of the whole of mankind,

[19:09]

flourishing under God's eye, or a vision of God which incorporates itself or is realized in the welfare, material and spiritual of all nations. This would be the essential idea of the house of God, widened from the particular circle of the family to the entire human race. Now this meaning manifests itself to the eye of the pilgrims when they see the holy city in its concrete layout. Jerusalem is built. It is not a product of nature. Man has built it, which means according to a plan, the source of which is the divine wisdom. Confer Book of Wisdom 9.8. The city, then, is a manifestation of God's plan of salvation. Building the city is an act of faith. Abraham, the father of our faith, looked for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God, Hebrews 11.10. And therefore, all united in itself, as the Hebrew text says.

[20:17]

Jerusalem is a reflection here on earth of the oneness of God, and therefore it has a significance which transcends this passing age and points to the future, new Jerusalem, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, Hebrews 12.22, descending out of heaven from God, Apocalypse 21.10. Although built by human hands, Jerusalem is a sign of God's eternal wisdom and of the divine love which descends from above. An old Jewish word says, The heart of the world is the Holy Land. The heart of the Holy Land is Jerusalem. The heart of Jerusalem is the Temple. The heart of the Temple is the Holy of Holies. And one may add that the Holy of Holies, the Debir, is the shrine for God's Word, the Torah. The song continues, then, verse four and five.

[21:18]

It is there that the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, for Israel's law it is, there to praise Javeh's name. There were set the thrones of judgment of the house of David. That means all Jerusalem is centered on the Temple as the place where the Ark with the Scroll of the Law is placed. Here, my dear friends, we are at the very heart of the Old Testament religion. As it is said in Psalm 21, Jarveh is enthroned upon the praises of Israel, and Israel's praise is essentially the observance of God's will as manifested in the Torah. The tribes of Jahweh do not go to the temple to adore an image filled with magic power. The name of Jahweh, it is me, can only be praised by doing His will in the daily life, not by filling oneself with the supernatural power through the intoxication of religious pomp.

[22:22]

For this reason, the thrones of judgment are mentioned as part of Jerusalem, and the Hebrew text makes it even stronger by using the word, they are set in that direction instead of there. The seats of judgment, the house of David, represent the royal, or we would say the civil, power. In Israel, the king is not a god, and the judges are not gods. They represent and apply the Torah of Jareh to the people. The seats of the judges are not independent thrones. They are set in the direction or around the footstool of God's presence, the ark with the word. And you remember that the Apocalypse keeps the same order of things. Now this entire Psalm 121 wants to show Jerusalem as the place where human welfare is centered around God's plan for us, Jerusalem. And it is vital for us to realize this because it has decisive bearing on our present and future.

[23:30]

We suffer from the fact that we have lost the center. This is the reason for the growing disintegration of our public life. It is the reason Why, the United Nations are not united, and our cities are not, and they show it, and we know it. The name of Jehovah is not praised there. Jesus anguished cried, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you which kill the prophets and stone those that are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! and the other, if you had only known at least in this your day the things which serve your peace, but now they are hid from your eyes. This cry is directed also to us, my friends. It is the voice of the same God who through the Old as well as through the New Testament courts Jerusalem.

[24:32]

So the song ends with a prayer for unity and peace. It says, For the peace of Jerusalem, pray, peace be to your home. May peace reign in your walls, in your palaces, peace. For love of my brethren and friends, I say peace upon you. For love of the house of the Lord, I will ask for your good. My dear friends, we start a terse with the bitter memory of the lack of peace and the poisoning power of lies and war and hatred in the world. We end with a prayer for the peace of Jerusalem and for all those who live there, not so much geographically but spiritually, for all our brothers and friends, for all men. The peace of Jerusalem, that means the peace which flows from the divine love into our human life, which makes us beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into sickles, that we may not learn war anymore. This peace will come to us for the love of the house of Jahweh, and this means—let us repeat it again—that what we call religion is not any more to gods who live in the sacred precincts of the divine palace, the temple, but of Jahweh who descends into the poorest of homes, the place where we live our everyday lives.

[25:54]

Let us realize, then, what it means that the Word of God has become man in Jesus Christ, who spoke of himself as the new Jacob when he prophesied, Hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. He later said to the Jews, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. And he spoke of the temple of his body. If we grasp this message and recognize that it reveals God's eternal love for us, that these are God's thoughts of peace, then we will build Jerusalem. and our entire life, our daily life, workday or feast day, will be lived in the service of this Yahweh who takes His abode in the home of man.

[26:45]

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