A Bus called Hope explores Old Jerusalem - on foot!

I feel we have been rushed through the Dormition Abbey. With its wonderful mosaics and reclining Virgin Mary, (see previous post and link to photos) it is for me a very beautiful place where I long to linger and reflect. But we have to move on yet again, there being so many places to visit in Old Jerusalem.

praying at the Tomb of David

Still on Mount Zion, we find ourselves in the Upper Room, commemorating the place where Jesus had his Last Supper with his disciples. Actually this room we are in was built more than a thousand years after the event it recalls, but we are told that the room actually used by Jesus would have been similar and tradition says that this would have been on Mount Zion. The room has fine carved capitals on its central pillars, with arches of a later date, and signifying the direction of Mecca there is a mihrab, added to the room when the Christians were evicted from the building by the Turks in 1524 and the room was adapted for use as a mosque. It continued thus until 1947 when the Israelis took over the complex and it was opened for all to visit.
Whilst in this room we recall two other events which tradition tells us took place on Mount Zion: the Resurrection visit by Jesus on Easter evening, to his frightened disciples, locked in an upper room for fear of the Jews, and the visitation of the Holy Spirit remembered by us at Pentecost.

Ladies side of the Western Wall

Directly below the Upper Room is the Tomb of David, a significant place of pilgrimage for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. Here for the first time on this pilgrimage, the ladies and the gents among us have to separate - the gents to the left, ladies to the right. We all have to cover our heads before entering, even our men folk, for whom prayer caps (Kippahs) are provided. In front of us on entering is the right hand side of this huge tomb, covered in velvet cloth with Torah scroll boxes on top. There is a lady kneeling at the foot of the altar, wailing softly and nodding her head vigorously over her Torah. The whole experience is a little incongruous, separated as we are by a flimsy screen from the men of our party, and disturbed by (male) workmen who are doing something to the fabric of the building behind the altar. Our guide even hands them some of their tools across the railings separating us from the altar and the wailing lady! It is quite hard to find much spirituality and awe in here with so many people around.

The Western Wall

There is some controversy as to the validity of the tomb. For the Jews this is a Holy Place second only in importance to that of the Western Wall in the Temple area which we are to go to next. In the New Testament Bethlehem is described as the "City of David", whilst the Old Testament says that David was buried in the city of David, now known as Mount Ophel, directly south of the Temple platform in Jerusalem. Archaeologists have failed to find a royal necropolis in either location.

At the Western Wall

Our final visit of the day is to the Western Wall and this is really some experience. Again we are separated by gender - ladies to the right, men to the left, with a see through fence between the two areas. This is the focal point of Jewish religious life and they pray here five times a day if they can. I was struck by the devotions of the young Jewish ladies, mildly amused by the sight of them at the Wall itself, some talking on their mobile phones! This whole area is controlled by the Muslims and any groups prayers, hymns or readings are forbidden so we are left to wonder around on our own and make whatever we want to of this area.

The Damascus Gate

We finally regroup and make our way back to the Damascus gate and our hotel through the crowded narrow streets of the Old Town. The whole place has come alive in the late afternoon. When we passed through here early this morning all the shops were shuttered up, quite unlike the vibrant scene which now greets us, with all the shops open, their various wares spilling out on the pavement, and the locals jostling each other to do their shopping. I clutch my bag tighter to me and we hurry by, anxious to get back to our hotel for some rest! It has been a day full of so many different experiences, at times colourful, spiritual, disturbing, worrying, and certainly both physically and emotionally exhausting. Tomorrow we leave Jerusalem on our way North, to follow Jesus' ministry around the shores of the Sea of Galilee…

shops and trading in Old Jerusalem

Ecumenism in Jerusalem

walking through Old Jerusalem

Just down the road from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre we find the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, and it is here that we all meet up again to celebrate Eucharist as a whole group. On the way out I pick up their leaflet, and learn that three different congregations worship here on a regular basis: The Arabic speaking congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL for short!), the German speaking congregation of the Evangelical church in Germany, (EKD), and the English speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Sometimes even the Danish Lutherans use this church. As the leaflet goes on to explain, the Christian community in Jerusalem "has always been multi-ethnic, diverse and multi-lingual. Here you will find Greeks and Armenians, Syrians, Coptic Christians from Egypt, Ethiopians, Maronites with Lebanese background, Orthodox Russians, Palestinians, and Hebrew Christians praying side by side."
Here we have a fine lesson of working together in fellowship and partnership, and the church is very clearly a vital part of the ecumenical Christian tradition in the city, from which many of us could learn a thing or two! There is much more information about the church and its ministry, its educational programme, its projects, resources and partners, on its website where there is also plenty of information about the real plight of the Palestinian Christians, which we really cannot discover in such a short pilgrimage visit.

Dormition Abbey - mosaic of Virgin and Child 

It is certainly now time for lunch. Our mornings start early, in an attempt to steal a march on the other coach parties! Without any break, the mornings seem long and many of us are noticeably wilting every day by lunchtime.
Today we walk into the Armenian quarter for our restaurant. As usual the appetisers are fantastic, but the veggie options for main course tend to be unreliable. Today the veggie option is dire - a huge plate of pasta with a very tasteless tomato sauce. I cannot eat it, and even my usually hungry companions are not tempted to take it off me!

Dormition Abbey Basilica

Dormition Abbey Bell tower

Suitably fed and watered, we are off again, this time to Mount Zion and the Dormition Abbey (Dormitio Sanctae Mariae: the falling asleep of St Mary), where legend has it that the Virgin Mary spent her last days. However the House of Mary in Ephesus and the Tomb of St Mary in Gethsemane also make this claim. There is a life size statue of the reclining Mary downstairs in the crypt, made from cherry wood and ivory, marking the place where she is supposed to have died. Some were venerating this edifice, but I have to confess that I felt totally unmoved by it. What struck me was the beauty of the mosaics, on the floor and in the six side chapels, in the main body of the church.The circular floor mosaic represents the spreading of the Word, through space and time and is really very special.
Sadly we are hurried away all too soon as there is still plenty to see today…We are off to the Upper Room, The Tomb of David, and the Wailing Wall.

A Bus called Hope: Our Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

Some people call the Gospel of Thomas the Fifth Gospel. For others the Fifth Gospel is the Holy Land. Father Bargil Pixner (1921-2002), who was a Benedictine monk in Jerusalem’s Dormition Abbey, wrote in his book With Jesus Through Galilee According to the Fifth Gospel (Corazin Publishing 1992): “Five gospels record the life of Jesus. Four you will find in books and one you will find in the land they call holy. Read the fifth gospel and the world of the four will open to you.”

The River Jordan

As we gathered together at Heathrow Airport in the early afternoon at the start of our pilgrimage to the Holy Land, we had very little idea of what to expect. We were to return home just over a week later with our spiritual lives changed for ever. Pixner was right. Our exploration of Jerusalem and Galilee was inspirational and transformative in so many ways. From now on the Holy Bible would come to life for us as never before. We could now read and listen to the scriptures with new insight. We had been there. We had walked the very shores that Jesus had known, dipped our toes in the river in which he was baptised and touched the very ground upon which he had walked all those many years ago. The experience was going to be thrilling and life changing.

The Damascus Gate Jerusalem

We had already met many of our fellow pilgrims at a briefing a few weeks earlier, when we had been told what to expect in terms of climate, food, accommodation and so on; the practical stuff. But the spiritual stuff would come later from our own personal experiences. The security at the airport was second to none – we were warned to allow plenty of time for this, as we would be quizzed as to why we were going, who we were going with and so on. As we were going to Israel we had to pass through two levels of security, one more than normal. The flight was a good one and we met our guide at Tel Aviv Airport from where a coach took us to Jerusalem where we were to stay for four nights.

The floodlit Damascus Gate was our first sighting of the Old Jerusalem and the sight was truly awesome. But we were all very tired, we had lost two hours on the flight across and we were glad that we would simply have supper and an early night before starting the pilgrimage in earnest in the morning. Tomorrow was going to be an extremely busy day with many sights on the agenda…

A Bus called Hope

I didn’t mention that there were nearly 128 of us on the pilgrimage. That sounds far too many! But it all worked very well because we were split between three coaches, each with our own local guide. In addition each group had its own priest who led that coach throughout the tour, and other ministers “floated” between the coaches, so to speak. And in keeping with the recent new mission introduced by Southwark Bishop Christopher the groups were called Faith, Hope and Love.
I was on the bus called Hope!

To be continued...