Psalm 87: Loving what God loves

A reflection and testimony after a month in wartime Israel

Preached at Church of the Savior - Ambridge, PA on June 29, 2025

Feast of St. Peter & St. Paul

• Ezekiel 34:11–16
• Psalms 87
• II Timothy 4:1–8
• John 21:15–19

Chesed vShalom. Grace and peace to you in the name of Yeshua the Messiah.

A little more than a week ago, I was listening to the siren song of Iranian ballistic missiles in Tel Aviv. Happily, the sound of the saints worshiping God and praying was louder and more compelling.

Today we celebrate the Feast of Peter and Paul, the two Jewish believers who helped the Jesus movement grow from a Jewish sect centered in Jerusalem to a global movement still alive today.

Did you all see the video of the Jesus-shaped cloud over Manila, Philippines? It was filmed after Mass at their basilica. Why do Filipinos, whose ancestors worshipped spirits and created things, more than 5,000 miles from Jerusalem, think they saw the Jewish Messiah in the clouds? Because of the proclamation of Peter, Paul, and the other apostles. Because the apostles suffered and died for the truth that Jesus – Messiah and God – was crucified, dead, buried, and raised to life everlasting.

The Jesus movement has grown from 120 at Pentecost to 2.5 billion today, thanks in part to a fisherman and a Pharisee. Thanks in whole to the Holy Spirit.

Our readings today speak of God as the Good Shepherd of Israel, Jerusalem as God’s favorite spot on earth, Peter’s commissioning, and Paul passing the baton to Timothy.

All of these topics are compelling. I desired to write a rich sermon on one of these passages. But it became clear that I needed to share with you some testimonies of my time in Israel. We will reflect on the psalm along the way.

Psalm 87 opens

1 The LORD loves the foundation which he has laid upon the holy hills; *
the gates of Zion are dearer to him than all the dwellings of Jacob.
2 Very excellent things are spoken of you, *
O city of God.

Zion. It’s a word associated with Jerusalem since at least the time of David. Zion is used more than 150 times in the Hebrew Scriptures. ¹ Seventeen of the Psalms speak of Zion.²

Because the writers of Hebrews and Revelation use Zion to point to the heavenly sphere, Christians often spiritualize the use of Jerusalem and Zion, particularly in the Psalms.

But for me, Zion has tangibility.

Psalm 102 says,

But you, Adonai, are enthroned forever;

your renown will endure through all generations.

You will arise and take pity on Tziyon,

for the time has come to have mercy on her;

the time determined has come.

For your servants love her very stones;

they take pity even on her dust.

I can say I love her stones and her dust. We know from Revelation 21 that New Jerusalem will come down from heaven. But to where? I believe New Jerusalem will descend on the same geographical place as historical Jerusalem –- and beyond as the New Jerusalem described in Revelation will take up the whole area that we call the Middle East.³

I first went to Jerusalem in 2009, and I quickly fell in love with both the old and new city.

Psalm 132 (vv. 13–14) says, “For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his dwelling place: ‘This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it.’” I take the LORD at his word. He intends to dwell in Zion forever. I want to love what he loves. So I love Jerusalem.

This doesn’t mean the city is perfect. This doesn’t mean the people are perfect. It is the Holy City and the Holy Land because God called it that, not because the people are pious. The people are as unpious as the rest of us. They wrestle with the same things we do: hunger, lust, worry, greed, anxiety, pride. Jews, Christians, and Muslims, they are all human. And God loves them.

I traveled to Israel this May to visit CMJ colleagues, help where I could, and hopefully encourage those I met.

Encouragement looked like washing dishes the first few days so that others could rest or work on other tasks. My ministry in those early days was also listening to staff who are weary and stretched thin by war, lack, and overwork.

Then I was encouraged by testimonies from the Mercy Fund, the humanitarian aid arm of the Christ Church Jerusalem.

The Christ Church Jerusalem Mercy Fund

The Mercy Fund runs a legal aid desk in addition to offering financial, medical and food aid to Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Israel and the West Bank.

The legal aid desk now has eight lawyers. They are Jews and Arabs. Some are of Ethiopian descent. They are all followers of Jesus. They all are now counted as citizens of God’s Jerusalem, as Psalm 87 says.

The psalm mentions Philistia, that even Philistia will be considered as native to Jerusalem. Palestine, which was the name from the year 135 until 1948, of all of what we call Israel today, is a Latinized form of Philistia. The Arabs of the area have taken the name Palestinian. And here in this psalm, God says he will count these non-Israelites as natives of Jerusalem.

Madina⁴ is a Christian Arab lawyer. She told me that the counselors on the legal aid desk are determined not only to win the case but to find and solve the root problem that created the case.

She told of a Palestinian woman from Bethlehem who would come to the Mercy Fund for help renewing her driver’s license. She was married to a Jerusalem Arab, so she was able to reside in Jerusalem with him and their children. During one of these renewal appointments, Madina noticed a bruise on the client’s shoulder. When she asked her about it, the client revealed that her marriage had been abusive for 22 years. She hadn’t left him because her husband would threaten that he would make sure she could never return to Jerusalem and see her children. So she had endured.

Madina explained to the Bethlehem woman that she could have Jerusalem residency based on her children, even if she divorced. She advised her to go to Bethlehem with her children while she worked out the residency. In the meantime, Israel began to offer permanent residency to Palestinians who had previously held temporary residency. The client would have to return to Jerusalem, though, to claim it. The woman was afraid to return to her abusive husband.

So the lawyer called the husband to explain the new opportunity and that his wife was coming home. But if he laid a hand on his wife, Madina would make sure the husband was arrested and imprisoned. He never struck his wife again. Madina secured permanent residency for the Bethlehem woman so she could stay in Jerusalem even if she divorced.

Amber⁵ is an American-Israeli woman married to a Jewish man. She is a Mercy Fund staff volunteer who runs a mobile medical service in the West Bank. A question had been burning in her heart and mind: “What does love look like?” She was struck by Jesus’ instruction in Acts 1 to go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. Judea and Samaria are known by much of the world as the West Bank today. She gets a lot of push back from Messianic Jews in Israel who are less inclined to minister among the Palestinians, especially in wartime. Amber reminds them that Jesus told us to love our enemies and challenges them with the question, “What are your plans to love your enemy? How will you love your enemy?”

Amber spoke of entering a Bedouin village and seeing a woman who was already trying to serve her community. So instead of going in with resources and eclipsing her work, Amber asked her, “How can we help you?” The Bedouin woman asked for help caring for the elderly in the village. Amber is now serving four villages and has expanded to offer dental care for children and adults.

Sara⁶ is the Mercy Fund project manager for humanitarian aid. She first came to the Mercy Fund 15 years ago as a client. Born in Bethlehem in an Arab Christian family, she said she felt love and compassion for the Jewish people since she was maybe 7 years old. She would see in the news that a Jew had been hurt in an attack, and she felt compassion. Her family thought she was crazy.

Sara went to Christ Church Jerusalem to find help for her and her daughter. She loves that she found at Christ Church an outlet for that Jesus-like compassion she feels for those in need. She now gets to minister to Jews and Arabs in Israel and in the Palestinian Territories. She started by offering hot meals in Bethlehem, something she still does once a week.

Her ministry is focused on the elderly at this time. She estimates that 80 percent of Bethlehem residents rely on the tourism industry, which is all but non-existent in wartime. Many aid agencies and government programs are focusing on feeding and providing for families with children. The elderly also sometimes give what little they have to children and grandchildren. So Sara, like Amber, makes sure the elderly are also cared for.

I traveled with Sara and Mercy Fund director Na’amah to two schools to deliver tablets. Both schools, one near Gaza and the other near Lebanon, had been deeply affected by the war with Hamas and Hezbollah. Both were struggling with students who had behavioral issues and were behind scholastically due to the stresses of the war. One school served Jewish religious children, and the other had a mixture of children from northern Israel.

And here was Sara from Bethlehem, a Palestinian Arab, ministering mercy to these Jewish students in need.

At the school in the south, after the principal told us of how some teachers and students were struggling with PTSD, I asked her, “How are you?” After trying to keep a brave face for a few seconds, she allowed herself a moment of vulnerability and tears. She accepted our offer of prayer. And Sara reached out and hugged this Jewish woman. A Palestinian Christian was comforting an Orthodox Jewish Israeli.

In Ephesians, Paul speaks of the One New Man, Jew and Gentile unified in Christ. Here was the one new human – Arab Sara, Jewish Na’amah, Tex-Mex me – ministering the love of Messiah to a Jewish Orthodox woman.

Suffering with the suffering

Our two New Testament readings as well as the prayer of the day allude to Peter and Paul’s martyrdom. In our epistle reading, Paul tells Timothy that his race is ending and that he will be poured out as an offering unto God. Earlier in that letter, Paul tells Timothy to “share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 2:3) and to “share in the suffering for the gospel by the power of God” (2 Tim 1:8).

As the director of the Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People here in the United States, one of my main exhortations to Christians in this season is to pay attention to the rising antisemitism and to find a way to step into the suffering of our Jewish neighbors. Jesus steps into our suffering to minister salvation to us. We are called to imitate our rabbi as we minister to those around us.

And that’s what the staff and volunteers of CMJ and Jews for Jesus and Chosen People Ministries and others did in Israel for 12 days. We suffered the missiles of Iran with the people of Israel. We got up out of bed and ran to the bomb shelter. We stopped in the middle of a meal and ran to the bomb shelter. We heard the boom-boom of air defense interceptors taking out missiles. And sometimes they were very close. And sometimes the window rattled that much louder. We’d see in the news which buildings were hit. How close to us would it be this time?

Why? Why stay and risk being bombed? So that Israeli down the street who has no bomb shelter of his own sees we are still with him night after night. So that couple walking their dog when the sirens rang found a safe place with us. So that two gay guys who were in Tel Aviv for the cancelled gay pride parade would find a bunch of Jewish Jesus followers singing and dancing in the bomb shelter while the sirens and booms rang outside. And the two gay guys sang and danced with us. May the Holy Spirit touch and transform their lives.