Friday, April 24, 2009

We began the day on the Mount of Olives, where we took a group picture just before we began the trek down the hill toward the Kidron Valley, just as Jesus did on Palm Sunday. Along the way we saw an authentic grave site (cave) from the time of Jesus, with ossuaries (bone boxes) from the same period. We stopped at The Church of Tears, Dominus Flevit (“the Lord wept”), where Jesus wept over Jerusalem as he approached it on the donkey. He cried out, “how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Mt 23:37-38). We were able to take some great pictures from there, including one of the Dome of the Rock, framed in the window of the church with the cross superimposed over the dome.

We left that site and continued down the steep hill to the Garden of Gethsemane where we had a wonderful worship time and were able to move about the Garden and meditate and pray on our own. This was across the street from the popular, crowded Gethsemane with the Church of All Nations, but at the time of Jesus it was all one commercial olive grove. This garden is not accessible to the public but our Dr. Bob Anderson was able to get us entrée and the quiet and peacefulness there was an important part of our meaningful worship experience. We did then enter the “official” Garden of Gethsemane and into the Church of All Nations, designed in the first half of the 20th century by the Italian architect Pietro Barluzzi, who is responsible for a number of churches on holy sites in Israel. There is even a rock at the church against which Jesus is believed to have prayed before He was betrayed and arrested.

Upon leaving the Mount of Olives, we drove across town to Yad VaShem (“a memorial and a name” – Is 56:5), the Holocaust Museum and Memorial where all of us were deeply moved and shared Israel’s determination to never let that kind of thing happen again. It was and is incomprehensible to us that human beings were capable of such incredible hatred that would cause the murder of 6000 Jews, to say nothing of the myriad of others that were exterminated as well. It was an experience none of us will forget but will take with us whenever we are faced with the history that allowed it.

Lunch at a local kibbutz was terrific as has been the case from the very beginning, with most of us carrying on about having eaten too much.

The afternoon saw the culmination of all we’ve seen and done while we have been here in the Holy Land. We toured the Garden Tomb, next to the Hill of the Skull (believed to be Golgotha) where many believe Jesus was Crucified and then to a tomb in a beautiful garden where Jesus may have been buried for three days before He arose to seal our eternal life. Our time there ended with a beautiful worship service ending with a celebration of the Lord’s Supper to recommit ourselves to His service and all we have learned and determined to be now that we’ve walked where Jesus walked. What a thrill to celebrate the sacrament so near to where the Lord and his inner circle began the tradition!

Susie Parr writes that yesterday while “in Bethlehem I felt the oneness of Christ as we sang Christmas Carols in the cave where Jesus was born. A French Tour passed by, many smiled and joined in with the singing. Our world is truly connected by God.”

~ Clergy Comment ~

Today there were several emotional experiences for me personally. We were able to take some quiet time in the Garden of Gethsemane following Graig’s thoughtful reading of the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus in John 17, “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you” (17:20-21). What does it mean to “be one”? As we were celebrating the Lord’s Supper at the Garden Tomb, we heard the singing of other groups from adjoining areas, praising God the Father and Jesus Christ in different languages. What a powerful reminder of what it means to be the very Body of Christ – as we shared at the Table of the Living Lord. Thank you for your prayers! - Bruce