Yesterday morning we awoke to a cold and rainy Jerusalem. Our guide told us that they haven’t had this type of cold and rain in four or five years. In the morning we had communion at Gordon’s Tomb, which claims to be the authentic location of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. Unfortunately, support for this location only goes back to the 1800s, the tomb in the garden is significantly older than the time of Jesus, and the skull shaped pattern on a rocky cliff overlooking the site was created by a quarry which probably didn’t exist during Jesus’ lifetime. All that said, this is the best place to go if you want to get a feel for what the garden tomb actually looked like, because it is still in a garden. The authentic site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is quite different.
From Gordon’s tomb, on a hill outside of Jerusalem’s Old City, we travelled to Bethlehem to visit the Shepherd’s Field and the Church of the Nativity. Shepherd’s Field is a nice location which was probably used by shepherds during Jesus’ lifetime. Today it is a park with a small church and a chapel constructed in a hillside cave. The Church of the Nativity marks the spot of Jesus birth and is about as authentic as you can get with these locations. The church itself is very unique. There was a place of worship at this location since the 1st century AD, but the location was destroyed by the Romans, who constructed a temple to Dionysius on the location. Constantine’s mother, Helen, destroyed that altar and built a church on the location again around 325. The mosaic floors and, maybe, original columns are still part of the church structure today.
After visiting these locations, and some shopping, we travelled back to Jerusalem. It was still very cold and stormy, but a few of us took a walk through the old city. We eventually found ourselves at the Western Wall, or “Wailing Wall,” the only portion of the ancient temple mount to which Jews have access. The bottom seven courses of the giant stones which make up the mount are Herodian, meaning Jesus would have seen and touched them in his lifetime.
Today, we woke up to a snow covered Jerusalem, which is a apparently a once-in-a-decade event. After some shenanigans with sliding buses, we left our driver in an icy parking lot and spent the day on foot. Our first stop was the House of Caiaphas. The house, now a church, overlooks the Kidron Valley. Archaeologists have uncovered 1st century steps coming from the Kidron Valley, near the Garden of Gethsemene, to the courtyard of this house. Near the house there is a prison, and below that a dungeon. After his arrest, Jesus was brought up the steps, and questioned and held in the prison/dungeon until he was taken to Pilate the next morning. This would have been where Peter famously denied knowing Jesus three times and also where Peter and John were later held after healing the lame man in Jerusalem.
Later in the morning the snow had let up and we continued walking to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Shared by at least three different Christian groups, who don’t always get along as well as we might like, the church is the authentic spot of Jesus death, burial and resurrection. It has been a holy place since the first century, and several attempts to destroy it have occurred over the years. Notably, the Romans under Hadrian obliterated the original tomb with hammers and chisels. Today the ancient church is decorated in all the glamour of the eastern tradition, but is free and open to anyone who is willing to wait in line. You can, as I did, touch the rocks of Golgotha and pray at the site of the garden tomb. We left the church walked the Via Dolorosa, albeit backwards, which is the path that Jesus carried his cross from the Roman Antonia Fortress to Golgotha. To be fair, we don’t know that this is the exact path, but it starts and ends in the correct places, and follows the best route considering the configuration of today’s streets.
In the evening, a number of us heading into the Old City hoping to catch the weekly celebration welcoming in the Sabbath at the Western Wall. Unfortunately, the cold and rain had forced the festivities into a series of underground tunnels. Just when we were about to leave, a group of about 50 Israeli soldiers came down to the wall, huddled together to say a prayer, and then, with arms linked, formed a large circle and began singing and dancing. Coming from a society where we don’t sing and dance publicly, it was nice to see this kind of celebration.
Standing in the dungeon where Jesus was held was a very moving experience for me. Many of the locations here are either covered with centuries of buildings, or commercialized, but the steps leading from the Kidron Valley to this prison put a very real face on that night so many years ago. These locations are taking what had been a series of loosely connected Bible stories and formulating them into a whole that not only makes sense, but is very real and tangible. I suppose it is a work of the Spirit that these locations are still preserved and accessible despite all the years and a variety of political rulers who were inclined to do away with them. It seems that the Holy Spirit is at work in the world protecting the legacy of Jesus Christ.
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