Ruminations on Israel: INTIMACY

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Down to two cards in my backpack pocket...and the one I pulled for Thursday the 30th was 'Intimacy'.  

Jerusalem, day two.

We began by walking through the Lion Gate and taking a quick right turn to what used to be the location of the Pool of Bethesda.

It's interesting...the ruins there are not the remnants of the Pool of Bethesda but of a church that was built early in the Christian period.  There is another church adjacent to the site, St Anne's...because someone decided this was where Mary's mother was born?  Not sure how they got that, since Mary was from Nazareth, but whatever.  That church should have been destroyed as well in the post-Crusades wave, but, well, for some reason the Muslims liked it and used it as a school.  So it's still there.  And it's beautiful, with legendary acoustics.  Every group that comes in is allowed to go to the front of the church and sing two songs.  I wondered who Rita would ask to lead the singing...she'd asked several of the ladies with us to do worship at different times.  But when it was our turn, we all went up to the front, and Rita began singing 'Defender' and we joined in.

Facepalm.  Of course.

And I didn't get ANY pictures...I was in the moment again.  But other folks got video.  When we left the church, Tisha went to Rita and showed her the recording she'd gotten.  'I've never seen the light do that!' she exclaimed.  'I waited and took more video and look..it's still there!'

I didn't see the video, but suddenly some of the folks in the group came up to me and said, 'You were in a pool of light!  It was awesome!  God was highlighting you!'

I hadn't noticed any light.

And I didn't get to watch the video...I just never really got the chance.  But part of me didn't want to see it...I figured I'd see something that explained it and I didn't want an explanation, lol.  Alba, one of the others in our group, asked me what my word for the day was.  I told her, and she looked at me with wide eyes. 'In-to-me-see!' she said.  'God has got His eye on you!'

Something for me to ponder, for sure.

Our next stop was the site that folks believe could have been Caiphas' house, the first place Jesus was taken for his trial before the Sanhedrin....and the place where Peter denied he knew Jesus.   This was my 'Disposable Camera' shot of the day...

If this was really Caiphas' house, then that was the courtyard.... (notice, if you can,  the teeny iron rooster on top of the pillar).  The folks who had arrested Jesus made a fire in the middle there, and sat around, waiting to see what would happen.  Peter joined them...and was outed by a servant.  He denied it.
Two more folks also pegged him as being one of Jesus's disciples.  Peter, no doubt sweating bullets,  denied it each time.  After the third time...

Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed.  The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter.  Then Peter remembered the word the Lord has spoken to him... Lk 22:61


What  Luke doesn't mention is that Jesus had been inside the house; they had to have been leading him out to take him to Pilate for him to look straight at Peter, .  And Jesus turned and looked straight at Peter.  He didn't have any chance to see where Peter was; it was breaking dawn.  Jesus knew right where Peter was.  In the midst of his own stress, he knew...and cared...and thought about...and LOOKED AT Peter.  That, my friends, is the intimacy level we have with Jesus.  He knows where we are, individually, on so many levels.  And he still looks at us, right at each of us at that moment when we've let him down. He still connects.  In to me, see.

Selah.

We got back on the bus, and, you know, there are folks all over who are selling stuff; our driver/tour guide team had a friend who made jewelry whom they let peddle his wares on the bus.  And, yeah, I bought a necklace, but the guy told our bus driver something that no one had thought of.  See, it was the last week of Ramadan while we were there, and the next day was the final day of the holiday.  The guy reported that the streets would be full of Muslims celebrating the last day...and the whole east side of the city would be inaccessible to tour buses.  We were going to do the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Palm Sunday route on Friday, but, well, all of that was on the east side.  So there was a hasty consultation and the plans were changed; instead of doing that on Friday, we headed over to the east side of the city...at noon...to see those sites while we could.

I did, of course, get the picture of the Temple Mount from the Mount of Olives, you've all seen that.  But maybe you haven't seen a picture of the road they call 'Palm Sunday Road', because it's where Jesus rode on the donkey while all the folks waved palm branches and celebrated.

The road runs through a cemetery, which I'm pretty sure wasn't there then, but it was surprisingly steep.  And I imagine it has been graded somewhat for an actual road; it may have been even steeper in the first century.  The Garden of Gethsemane is down the hill considerably; I had always thought it was well up the hill, maybe even near the top.  But it isn't.

There is one part of the olive grove in what is called Gethsemane that has trees that are over 2,000 years old.  Amazing.  Is this really the grove where Jesus prayed?   It looks very likely as...the olive trees are still there.   Luke 21:37 tells us, regarding what we now call Holy Week, between the triumphal entry and the last supper, that  

Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives.'  The next chapter, after the Seder meal had been eaten and Judas had left to take care of his urgent business,  we find Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him.  On reaching the place, he said to them, 'Pray that you will not fall into temptation.'  He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed,  (22:39-41). 

 Here's a thought... I believe Jesus went to the same spot every night so that Judas would know where to find him.  How easily he could have just ...gone somewhere else...and avoided the whole ordeal.  But he deliberately went to the place he had established, a place that was far away from houses and folks who could hear the commotion.  It was his choice.

We were in the garden, and the Church of All Nations there, for a good bit.  And they were beginning to close it down when we left, because of Ramadan.  Our friendly necklace craftsman had given us good advice.

We went to an open air mall just outside the Jaffa Gate for lunch; some folks went into the old city there for some shopping but as I was cash-strapped I just walked around the mall.   People watching was interesting; there was a bit of shade and it didn't hurt me to walk a few laps around.  But I was glad when the time was up and the group headed out.

We had an appointment at the Garden Tomb in the late afternoon, that was....interesting.  They provide their own guides, so Tisha was not telling us the details there.  We had a very, very sweet lady who took us around the property...she would have been perfect had we been first graders.  I am not complaining; there were some interesting things she told us.  Her style was just dramatically different from our regular guide.  One of the things she told us is that Jesus was likely crucified at the bottom of the hill, not the top.  There was a pretty major ancient road that ran  right by the bottom of this hill, and the Romans were known for putting their crucifixions right along the public roads, so as to be a deterrent to anyone considering defying the government.  So, yes, it would make good sense for the crucifixion to have happened at the bottom of the hill.

Now, here's where I get a little skeptical. There is a lot of conflicting opinion about where Golgotha and the tomb were.  We didn't have time to go to the other site, so I can't speak for it.  But I wonder how well preserved these things could be after all this time.  Here's the proposed site for Golgotha:

You can sort of see the skull-like features; there apparently was something sort of like a nose but it eroded away within the last 100 years or so.  And there's a bus station at the base of the cliff that has landfilled it in considerably.  Could this be the Place of the Skull?  Or could this be a place that was kind of chiseled out by  opportunistic locals to take advantage of the pilgrims of the middle ages?  I honestly don't know.  John tells us that

At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid.  Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.  (John 19:41-42).

I will be honest, I had never caught that before...that the tomb was near to Golgotha.  We know from other scriptures (Lk 23:50-54, Mark 15: 42  46, Matthew 27:57 - 60) that Joseph of Arimathea was responsible for putting the body of Jesus in a new tomb; Matthew states that it was Joseph's own tomb.  So I had just more or less figured it was some distance from Golgotha. What coincidence would put Joseph's new tomb handy to the crucifixion?  But...John says it was.  And there is  a winepress  (or maybe it was an olive press?) near the maybe-Golgotha hill, indicating that there was likely once a vineyard or garden in that place.

And then, someone discovered a tomb that had been cut out of the side of the hill.

Has that been there 2000 years?  Or did someone excavate that 900 years ago and sell tickets to the same gullible folks who took home shards of wood that they believed were splinters of the cross, along with other and even some truly bizarre purported relics?  Again...I don't know.  But...there is a hill with the semblance of a skull along a busy thoroughfare near a garden with a tomb.  If it's faked, it was done very well.

And you know, even if it is faked, the real thing probably didn't look so very different. And maybe it does't matter whether I was at the real site or 12 miles from the real site which might be overgrown and overlooked and anonymous.  I was in Jerusalem.  I was really close.

God sees me where I am.

We had a communion service in a corner of the garden before we left; it was simple and powerful.  And we got to keep our little wooden communion cups.

Mine is going to become a Christmas ornament; a yearly reminder of time spent contemplating the  culmination of Jesus' life.