Some years ago, on a trip to England, I had the privilege of seeing the famous Mappa Mundi at Hereford Cathedral. It’s believed to be the world’s largest medieval map and is a rare extant example of its kind. But the Mappa Mundi is not known for its geographical accuracy. It’s unlike any map to which we’re accustomed, because the Mappa Mundi offers a view of the world shaped by a particular religious understanding. Places of importance to the medieval mindsight are represented through pictures, and certain places are given an outsized weight compared to others on the map. Religious sensibility carries greater weight than geography. The Mappa Mundi is both local and universal, even incarnational, we might say.
But perhaps the most peculiar feature of the Hereford Mappa Mundi is that the center of the world is not in Felicity, California, which in 1985 was designated by its own county supervisors as the center of the world. The center of the world according to the Hereford Mappa Mundi is Jerusalem. This shouldn’t be surprising for a medieval mindset, where for Christians the Church was the center of everything. Towns were built around their cathedrals, and the Church hierarchy wielded great power from its privileged place. In the medieval era, there was no such thing as a secular world as we know it. The Hereford Mappa Mundi knew nothing of the Americas or yet undiscovered lands. But the map’s creator had no doubt that the center of the universe, as he knew it, was in Jerusalem.
Perhaps the creator of the Mappa Mundi took a cue from St. Luke, for whom Jerusalem is unequivocally the center of the universe. In Luke’s Gospel, over the course of eight chapters, Jesus is born, grows into a man, and begins his ministry. He works miracles and teaches, and then in chapter nine, he sets his face towards Jerusalem. And it becomes clear that for Luke, just like the Mappa Mundi, the center of his theological world is Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was, of course, the center of centers for Jews, the destination of pilgrimage and the location of the holy Temple. It was to Jerusalem that Jesus and the Holy Family went for his dedication as a child and to keep the feasts, and from Jerusalem they returned home. But when Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem in chapter nine of Luke’s Gospel, he does so to move towards his passion, death, and resurrection. Jerusalem will give meaning to his life, as well as to the lives of those, like us, who will follow him.
Before they go to Jerusalem for Jesus’s final week, the disciples fail to understand who Jesus really is, and they have a skewed vision of discipleship. But once they are in Jerusalem and are witnesses to Jesus’s passion and death, Jerusalem will transform their lives and that of the known world. Forever after, Jerusalem will be the center of their lives, too.
There’s a gravitational pull towards Jerusalem that prevents the disciples from leaving even after Jesus has died and been raised from the dead. Is it fear or familiarity? Rather than return to Galilee, they’re left in Jerusalem, with their sadness and confusion. It’s in Jerusalem that Jesus appears to them. And it’s in Jerusalem that Jesus interprets the Scriptures to them. He tells them that from Jerusalem, repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name. In Jerusalem, they are to stay until clothed with power from on high. From Jerusalem, Jesus leads them out to Bethany, and then he ascends to the right hand of his Father. And to Jerusalem the disciples return once again with great joy, to worship in the Temple until they have received the Holy Spirit’s commission to go to the ends of the earth. And to the ends of the earth they will go, from Jerusalem.
But why Jerusalem? Why not Nazareth or Bethsaida or Bethlehem? Why Jerusalem? The answer is obvious and yet complex. It’s in Jerusalem where Jesus suffers, dies, is buried, and rises again. Only in Jerusalem can the disciples fully understand that their future is defined by Easter and Good Friday. Only in Jerusalem are they taught that to rise again with Christ they must die to their old selves. Only in Jerusalem, can they learn that to be first you must be last and to be exalted you must be humbled and to find one’s life you must first lose it. Only in Jerusalem can their narrow worldview begin to grow into a global vision of hope. Only in Jerusalem can they be fueled for a mission that will take them to the ends of the earth without diluting or distorting the Gospel.
Just a few years after I saw the Mappa Mundi in Hereford Cathedral, I went to Jerusalem myself. Like those earliest disciples, I felt a magnetic draw to that holy city. I got goosebumps as I walked the stones where Jesus trod. The holiness of the city was palpable. And yet, I also witnessed the disturbing irony of Jerusalem. I beheld violent tensions between three major world religions, and I was distressed by petty conflicts between Christian denominations fighting for their own piece of the holy sites. Aside from pious devotion, I saw little love in action. And it made me wonder, how such an irresistible draw to the center of so many religious worlds could fail to translate into an impetus of love from that place?
It’s as if many had found themselves drawn to Jerusalem as the center of their world but once there, they forgot that the story was not over. It’s as if many mistook being in Jerusalem for the end of the story. It’s as if they forgot exactly what we celebrate this evening on Ascension Day.
And what we celebrate is that the constant attraction and returning to Jerusalem was only part of the story. Jesus tells the disciples to return to Jerusalem and stay there, but only until they’re clothed with power from on high. But once they’re clothed in that power, they will be sent from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. From Jerusalem they must go, and to Jerusalem they might return, but in Jerusalem, they can’t stay forever.
The Mappa Mundi seems anachronistic in our own secular day when cathedrals are no longer the centers of towns, and the Church is hardly the center of the world. And it might reek of presumption and hubris to put Jerusalem at the center of the world, especially when it has proved to be a city of seething religious divisions and violence rather than peace. But what if we put the Church—our own symbolic Jerusalem—at the center of the maps of our lives? What if the entirety of our lives—our work, our play, our study, our social action—revolved around our Christian faith? What if we let the Church become the Jerusalem of our lives, just as it was for those earliest disciples?
In coming here this evening, in all the busyness of our lives, on a weekday even, we have given some witness to the power of Jerusalem. There’s some magnetic force drawing our lives to this church, where we offer all that we are and have to God. In the Mass we are blessed by Christ’s presence in Bread and Wine just as Jesus blessed his disciples as he ascended into heaven. We come to worship constantly in this place until we are clothed with power from on high. And then with great joy, we are sent from this little Jerusalem into the world. We can’t stay here. We must ultimately go from here.
Putting Jerusalem at the center of our lives paradoxically protects us from the arrogance of complacent power, crude authority, and tribalism. In Jerusalem, we learn that we must die before rising to new life in Christ. In Jerusalem, we learn that love is stronger than death. In Jerusalem, we learn that we must live not unto self alone but unto the One who died and rose again for us. Without Jerusalem, all evangelism and mission will be flawed because they will be pompous and harmful and will exhibit nothing of Christ’s self-emptying witness. We need Jerusalem.
So, to and from Jerusalem we must come and go, time and again. It’s here, in our own little Jerusalem, the center of our spiritual world, that we are fed and fueled for ministry. And it’s only from here that we can be sent with courage, authenticity, and hope to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Ascension Day
May 9, 2024