Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land (20 page)

Stephen is saying more about tears — how they cleanse, how
they bring redemption, how they make us whole. It is all so true, so evident in this setting where both glory and unrest rage. As the apostle Paul says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).

“We'll go inside now,” Stephen tells us. “You'll see the window that frames a view of the Old City. Jesus cried over Jerusalem, and don't we understand why! There is no peace here. Even now. This city needs a prophet for peace!” Stephen's great passion for this place — and for peace — is obvious. “We can only look forward to the New Jerusalem,” he says, “where every tear will be wiped away.”

Our pilgrim group solemnly enters Dominus Flevit. Because it's configured in the shape of a teardrop, the chapel has a tall, curved exterior and a small, circular interior. The only ornamentation is the panoramic window, which overlooks Jerusalem. The glinting gold of the Dome of the Rock caps the scene.

Was it just one week ago that we toured the Temple Mount and I pondered whether my heart was
sin-cere
? That question has aged; the answer has deepened in the intervening days. I'm seeing that my vocation as a religious leader has formed a kind of cover over my spiritual life. I have given my whole heart to ministry. But have I given my whole heart to God? They are different things.

Framing the panoramic window is a black iron grille that superimposes a communion chalice over Jerusalem, as if the city itself is being lifted up for blessing. How fitting. Jesus was willing to be lifted up in sacrifice as a blessing on all humanity, including the very people and place that would kill him. The image helps me connect ideas that have hung in the background of this pilgrimage: blessing and judgment. I've had such naïve notions of these things, thinking of them as opposites: Blessing is positive, and judgment — in the sense that it's a euphemism for condemnation — is negative. If God blesses us, then we win the lottery, or at least live cancer-free, and end up in heaven. If God judges us, then we flounder to pay our rent, or contract a disease, and end up in eternal torment.

But Jesus' tears over Jerusalem hold blessing and judgment together. He wants to bless, but instead must judge the corruption he sees. Both words, “blessing” and “judgment,” describe the dynamic between God and humans. Instead of being opposites, blessing and judgment are inside out from each other. Each is pushing us closer to truth, closer to God. The purpose of divine blessing is to lead the blessed one toward God's presence, toward growth and peace. The purpose of divine judgment is to lead the judged one toward God's presence, toward repentance and renewal.

Jesus is judging Jerusalem with his words, but not because he seeks its destruction; rather, he judges it to provide an opportunity for change. I can only imagine what grief he felt as he looked at Jerusalem. How his heart must have broken over this city. I am an alien here — let's be honest — and yet this city and its lack of peace fill me with sorrow. Jesus spent three years of his life teaching these people, healing them, telling them about the kingdom. For what? He had to wonder.

As a religious leader, I know how crushing it is to cast a vision and wonder if it ever catches. I've poured my heart into my work only, at times, to fail — at least in my own mind. But I don't mean to compare myself to Jesus. My vision for ministry, my hopes, my investment in results — these are all twisted around my personality. My tears easily become self-centered rather than holy.

But Jesus was radically different. Not only the manner of his death but his whole life was a sacrifice. Perhaps these days of pilgrimage, following Jesus from Bethlehem to Nazareth to Jerusalem, have given me new eyes. Did Jesus have to be born at all, laid beside a teenaged mother in a rock manger? Did he have to spend long days repeating his message about the kingdom, only to be misunderstood and ignored? Did he have to spend himself curing broken people? Did he have to be hungry and tired with no place to lay his head? Of course not. So why did he do it? Why did he suffer all the frailties of flesh, of emotion, of broken hopes?

The panorama of the ancient city gives weighted meaning to
Jesus' words. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” These are reprimand, but aren't they also lament? And a lament is like singing the blues. You don't bother to sing them unless you believe something better is coming. A lament assumes that God is still present.

Timing is the problem, of course. We don't know when lament will become joy. When Jesus was here, he didn't know, either — not if we take his humanity seriously. When will the blues become a happy tune? Scripture gives us pieces of the vision: The world will be peaceful and just, and the lion will lie down with the lamb. All families will live in their own homes, underneath their own vines and fig trees, drawing water from their own wells (Micah 4:3-4; Isaiah 65:20-25). This will be the kingdom of God. This is what we're waiting for. “Thy kingdom come,” we pray.

The kingdom will come in God's time, which is not time at all, but eternity. The great eternity will be ushered in by the Blessed One, who comes in the name of the Lord. We will wave palm branches once again for Jesus, the Lord of time. Meanwhile, we are trapped in time, in a world creaking under divine judgment, a world aching for blessing. Yet blessing hovers at the edges because God is present.

As we sit in the Dominus Flevit chapel, someone begins to sing “Jesus, Remember Me.” It's a Taize chant that repeats the words of the thief on the cross: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). The rest of us take up the melody, repeating the words until it's time for us to get up and leave, to make way for other pilgrims.

We leave the chapel that is shaped like a tear and walk a short way to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed and wept again. The ground is dusty in this garden. Gnarled olive trees are roped off. It's said that the roots of these ancient trees go back two thousand years, to the time of Jesus. Olive trees can live a long time, and these have been well-tended. We go as
close as we can to look at the great knobby roots. We pass two enormous round stones, one lying flat and the other upright, propped against it. Both stones are as wide across as a person and as thick as a mattress.

Kyle comments, “The word ‘gethsemane' is Hebrew for olive press.” I imagine the crushing weight of the stone, the friction of grinding until the olives give up their oil, their golden life-blood.

There is one more church to visit on this hill overlooking Jerusalem: the Church of All Nations (sometimes called the Church of the Rock of the Agony). It's a large, modern church with windows of purple glass. Inside, the colored light tinges the air with sorrow. Up front is the rock where Jesus prayed on the night that he wrestled in prayer. “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). This is the spot where Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. I want to go up to the rock and kiss it. I feel a mother's urge to kiss away pain, a lover's urge to show passion, a pilgrim's urge to express devotion.

But I can't get closer to the rock because a Catholic group is celebrating the Eucharist. The priest is ornately robed in red vestments that drip with solemnity. The Catholic tradition knows how to commemorate Jesus as a man of sorrows, which I respect. There are times when we need a crucifix rather than an empty cross, when we feel alone in grief and need to remember that Jesus, too, was a body acquainted with sorrow. I think about my own lifetime of tears, not to dwell on them but to multiply them by every human who has ever lived. What a flood of tears! For the first time I realize how Jesus stood in that flood like a rock, how the river of tears broke around him.

Jesus was no stranger to pain. He showed us how to pray through pain, trusting in God during the most desperate moments. This is what prayer is for. Prayer is not for asking God for new toys, or fine weather, or a winning game. Prayer is for pouring out our heart and having our hope restored.

The people are singing the “Hosanna” now. I think of the questions I've wrestled with on this pilgrimage, questions I haven't yet wrestled to the ground. Why must we travel through places of pain? Although I can't say I have the answer, the question no longer seems pressing. I'm beginning to understand that pain is part of the human experience, part of the price we pay for being created in the image of God with the ability to choose, in a world where other people make choices, too.

The red-robed priest lifts up the host. This act no longer reminds me of the differences between Catholic and Protestant, but of Jesus' willingness to pay even this price for us: before even the Crucifixion, he paid the price of incarnation, of entering a broken world where every choice will somehow lead to pain.

The Via Dolorosa, Old Jerusalem

CHAPTER 19

The Stations of the Cross

I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

R
EVELATION 21:2

I
T'S PITCH-BLACK WHEN
the travel alarm goes off. I groan. “Here's another reason Presbyterians don't do the Stations of the Cross,” I say to JoAnne in the darkness. “It's too dang early.”

“Wanna skip it?” she asks.

“Don't tempt me!”

“Get thee behind me, Satan?” JoAnne replies. “Or is that what Charlie would say?”

We both laugh, which helps us get out of bed.

The fact is that no Holy Land pilgrimage would be complete without walking the Stations of the Cross along the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows. This is the route Jesus walked from his condemnation to his crucifixion. For thousands of y
e
ars, believers have been retracing these steps and reading Scripture along the way, at various “stations.” Does it matter if it's the exact route Jesus took or if every station is in the biblical account? This is a time-honored tradition. If I managed the rest of it — kneeling,
lighting candles, praying at rocks — certainly I can manage to walk a pilgrim path through the streets of Jerusalem.