O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! —A Prayer for Peace

Just about a week ago, my hen, Buttercup, hatched out a brood of chicks.^[1] Buttercup is a loving and attentive mother who does everything in her small power to provide for and defend her offspring. Observing her interact with her hatchlings reminded me of Jesus’ words of lament over Jerusalem:

O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
You who kill the prophets
and stone those who are sent to you.
How often I have longed to gather
your children together
as a hen gathers her chicks
under her wings—
but you would not! (Luke 13:34)

Watching Buttercup attend to her young inspired me to make the following video, in which Jesus’ words about Jerusalem’s sad fate are juxtaposed with images of Buttercup caring for her young. In the background is heard the song “Jerusalem” recorded by Jerusalem Perspective’s music and arts journalist Dan Cloutier.

In his warnings to Jerusalem, Jesus expressed particular concern for the most vulnerable members of society, repeatedly mentioning mothers and small children:

Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me;
weep for yourselves and for your children.
For the time will come when you will say,
“Blessed are the childless women,
the wombs that never bore
and the breasts that never nursed!” (Luke 23:28-29)

[For] they will dash you [i.e., personified Jerusalem—JNT] to the ground,
you and the children within your walls. (Luke 19:44)

In violent conflicts it is usually the defenseless and the innocent who bear the brunt of the suffering. It is all too easy to become numb to the suffering of others who are trapped in distant war zones, but Jesus was attuned to the plight of his people and remains especially attentive to those who are caught up in the collateral damage of political struggles. For me, the vulnerability of Buttercup’s chicks, and her loving concern for them, awakened my heart to the cares of mothers in refugee camps and internment facilities and other inhumane places of hopelessness. Human life, like that of Buttercup’s little chicks, is so precious and fragile. As Jesus was concerned for the mothers and infants of Jerusalem, so he remains concerned for the welfare of us all today.

Jesus’ warnings to Jerusalem against a violent uprising against the Roman Empire could not stem the tide of nationalistic fervor that broke out in the first century C.E., and sadly his predictions of Jerusalem’s destruction proved all too true. While the catastrophe Jesus desired to avert came upon first-century Jerusalem, we can take a lesson from history and pursue the ways of peace, building a more hopeful world in which all people are bound together by neighborly love. In such a world, mothers and fathers would not need to fear for the safety of their children, for all children and all people would be cared for as if they were our own flesh and blood. That is my prayer of peace for Jerusalem and for all of us.

Dan Cloutier has kindly agreed to allow Jerusalem Perspective visitors to purchase digital downloads of his song “Jerusalem,” off his 2006 album Bottles and Seeds, from the JP Bookstore. There, visitors can also purchase his song “Jeremiah,” from the same album, which was featured in the recently published “Character Profile: False Prophets in the Gospels.” Audio downloads of Dan’s songs are free for Friends of Jerusalem Perspective. Sales of items from the JP Bookstore support JP’s mission to understand Jesus’ teachings in the context of first-century Judaism.

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Notes

1. As many Jerusalem Perspective readers are aware, I am a life-long chicken lover. My love for chickens has even spilled over into my Gospel research. See my “Chickens and the Cultural Context of the Gospels,” Jerusalem Perspective (2014): [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/12933/]. I have also written a series of fictional short stories about the chickens in my flock and the life lessons they teach. Anyone who is interested can read or listen to the first story, “Greedy Anne,” on my Reading Corner blog: https://readingcorner.blog/2025/05/30/greedy-anne/. ↩