Next Year in Jerusalem A Christmas Meditation For the Church of Jesus Christ Incarcerated December 10, 2006 By Philip D. Ropp

L’shana ha’ba-ah b’Yerushalayim. "Next year in Jerusalem."  This is a Passover prayer that has sustained the Jewish people for two thousand years. In its historical context, it hearkens back to the social and religious trauma experienced by the Jews at the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 AD.  Dispersed throughout the world, subjected to the harshest realities of political, social and religious persecution, this simple phrase came to symbolize the hope, belief and ultimate trust in the deliverance and salvation of God.      Our Christian celebration of the birth of the Child Jesus at Christmas is also a time filled with hope for a future in which human suffering has been eliminated: Eliminated by a God that cares enough to become one of us so that he might offer Himself up to this human suffering. It is through this greatest of all acts of love that we become one with Him and so learn by this example how he expects us to relate to one another. And so Jesus tells us in John 15:13, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”       During the earliest centuries of the Church, there was a common Christian teaching called the “Harrowing of Hell.”  This tradition is related in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. It is the story of how Jesus, during the three days in the tomb after the crucifixion, entered into the realm of the underworld to rescue the souls of the dead. It is a story that illustrates that the Lord does indeed remember those in even the most hopeless of all human circumstances, and that death itself is not prison enough to keep God from finding and reaching out to those that belong to Him.      “I’ll be Home for Christmas” is a song of the season that we all grew up with. It was written by Walter Kent and became one of Bing Crosby’s biggest hits during the Christmas season of 1943.  During these darkest days of World War II, when families were separated by the stark reality of a war that seemed like it would never end, this song struck a heart-wrenching chord in the American psyche. To this day, it remains a holiday favorite because the themes of home and hearth, family and friends, love and sharing at Christmas form a timeless tradition that is precious to each of us.  To be separated at this special time of year creates a longing that is indescribable and a yearning to be free of whatever bonds may be keeping us from those that bring that special joy of love to our lives.  And so in our hearts each of us can relate that, “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.”      There is much that has been written about the symbolic meaning of Jerusalem in scripture.  There are commentaries six inches thick that ponder this question from every possible angle and in the most comprehensive of terms.  Yet in reality the meaning expressed in this image of the holy and eternal city of God is so utterly simple that it is amazing that so many so often miss the point.  It simply means “home.”  The impassioned cry of the Jewish people at Passover, “Next Year in Jerusalem,” is purely and simply an expression of the undying hope and heartfelt belief that the next time we celebrate, we will be at home and we will be together.      During this special time of the year there always seems to be so much to distract us from the “reason for the season.”  Tinsel and garland, song and revelry, food and football all have their place; yet in these darkest days of the year, we would do well to remember that it is at this time that God draws nearest to us in the person of the Christ child. It is a holy time of year that we can, perhaps, best benefit from through increased prayer and meditation. As God draws nearer to us, let us respond by drawing nearer to him. Like the apostle John, let us lay our head upon the breast of the Master and unburden ourselves of all the human cares that form the real shackles that bind us.  Let us do this in all sincerity and know he hears our prayer: “Next year in Jerusalem.”