The Old City

We arrived in Jerusalem two days ago on Christmas Day. They are playing instrumental Christmas songs in the hotel restaurant as I write this, but generally you would not know it is Christmas here as most of the residents are Jewish and Muslim. It’s an odd transition after visiting Bethlehem and spending Christmas morning at the Church of the Nativity (even there, though, 90% of the residents are Muslim). However, we have had a great experience here.

There is a spot in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City where you can look out over most of the important religious sites of the city. Each spot seems to have been controlled by either the Islamic, Jewish, or Christian faiths at one time or another, destroyed by a conquering power, rebuilt, and controlled by one or the other of the major faiths here, so that many are hard to unravel. To walk the Via Delorosa, the Way of the Cross, is to have a multicultural experience starting in a Muslim school, into a Catholic monastery, through the Muslim Quarter into the Christian/Armenian Quarter, through an Ethiopian church to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which is shared by about five Christian traditions by decree of the Ottoman Empire. Then, you stand in line with pilgrims from all over the globe. We happened to be at the church while the priests were singing chants by candlelight and moving between all of the various chapels and significant locations in the church to pray and chant. It is a dark and old place, and the chanting of the priests made for a sober experience that you might have been able to have hundreds of years ago. I was deeply touched by the old Armenian women who entered Christ’s tomb with us on their knees, crying, praying and kissing the tomb. Perhaps, like Mecca, this was the one, late-in-life chance they had to visit the significant place in their faith?

Since then, we have visited other important sites, but again, like the other places we’ve been, perhaps the most touching experience was to meet and talk with a person. Today, we had tea with Sheikh Bukhari here in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. Our friend David was kind enough to share his friend, the Sheikh, with us. He lives in a house his family has lived in for 400 years on the Via Dolorosa. We talked a lot about his house, his family, the ancient artifacts of his family, and the city, but it is his relationship with a local rabbi that is most interesting and instructive. They travel together, invest in the youth together, invite people over for tea together, and organize local events together. They are together in their vision for how relationships and personal understanding might bring peace to this region.

After visiting with the Sheikh, we had lunch and rested and talked about all of this. Then, we went to the non-traditional Garden Tomb of Christ, and experienced what seemed more tangible to us, a simple tomb carved out of the rock in a garden just outside of the Old City.

Everywhere we have been, the sites have been incredible, but the things people are doing on a relational level have been truly inspiring and challenging.

Tomorrow we are going to see a few more sights before leaving for Jordan for a few days. We are hopeful that Sharon’s head cold will pass and that she will have more rest there.