The Mount of Olives was the place that King David came to weep in fear as his son Absalom descended upon him and his troops, but it is also the place where Jesus wept and prayed before he was arrested. Mount Moriah is better known as Temple Mount, which is the site where Abraham went to sacrifice his son and later where Solomon built the Temple. After the destruction of the second Temple by the Romans, the Muslim community built the Dome of the Rock, which is a place of lesser pilgrimage to this day. The third, farther off in the distance, is Mount Zion which was conquered by David and became the location for his palace. You may remember Zion from the diaspora writers who longed to go home (read Psalm 137).
The thing that impressed me about this day around the city, looking at many different sites, was that so much of what we believe happened in Jesus' day was built upon something else that was important that is part of Jewish scripture. And then there is a Muslim community layered on top of it that shares so many of the Judeo-Christian prophets and sees itself standing in a long line of monotheistic believers they call "People of the Book"
We also turned West to see the massive 30-feet high concrete walls with barbed wire on the top that separates the Palestinians settlements from the rest of Jerusalem. Not unlike Berlin, there are families that have been separated because of this wall. There are people living in these slums in desperate conditions who have waiting 30 years for reparations that were promised but have not come. Later, our professor, who himself is a Palestinian Christian, recounted to us stories about the time of occupation and what it was like for him and many others to lose their homes.
Can any people, so broken, achieve reconciliation, peace and justice?
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