From Vicar Linneman

August Newsletter
Vicar Tyler Linneman

Jerusalem
For my final newsletter, we’ll be talking about the city of Jerusalem. We’ve made several stops along the way of Jesus’ journey, and it is fitting to call it a journey. The life and ministry of Jesus was not simply a period of waiting around for the cross to eventually happen, but everything that he did and taught was leading him directly to the cross in Jerusalem, just as all the history of Israel had been leading to precisely that moment.

Now as we all know, the city of Jerusalem looms large over the Old Testament and New Testament narratives. Jerusalem takes its place of prominence when King David makes it his capital city, but Jerusalem’s history begins much before that, going all the way back to Abraham. See, the very same mountain that Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac on, Mount Moriah, is the mountain that the Temple would later be built on. And upon that mountain, with Abraham and Isaac, we see a prophetic spoiler of the biblical narrative. The promised son of the covenant, the one through whom the promise of salvation would come, was to die. He was to be sacrificed on that mountain for the sake of the world. But that death would not last, just as Isaac was spared and a ram sacrificed in his place, so also Christ’s death was not the final say.

On that very same mountain, generations later, the people of Israel would shout “crucify him!” pronouncing guilty the very Son of God and completing their rebellion. It was they that stood guilty before God; it was they that deserved to be hung upon that cross. But God, as with Isaac, appointed a sacrifice to be made in their place, his very own Son Jesus Christ, who bore their sin to the cross and buried it in the grave forever.

The name of Jerusalem in Hebrew means “City of Peace.” To the casual observer, this name seems awfully strange, given that Jerusalem has been the epicenter of wars upon wars for its entire history, even until today. Even today, if you visit, you will see a war-scared city whose people tell stories of the multitude of horrors and death that have visited the city over the centuries of its history. And yet, the name remains the “City of Peace.” But for us Christians, we understand this much differently.
Because Jerusalem truly is the city of peace. The earthly Jerusalem is where the Son of God made atonement for our sins, and gave us peace with God (Romans 5:1). That city was the city of the prophets and the kings, who proclaimed peace. Peace that did not exist in their time, but peace that would come and is now here in Jesus Christ.

​So in this last newsletter, we finish the journey just as Jesus finished the story. We finish with peace having been made with God through Jesus Christ. We finish with a city that stood not as the fulfillment of promises made, but stood as a promise of something greater. There is a New Jerusalem promised and won for us by Jesus Christ. When the old passes away and the new comes, we will be brought to this new home, the heavenly Jerusalem. And that Jerusalem, of which the earthly only points to, will truly be the City of Peace.