Walking in the Footsteps

The wind whipped rain and hail on the small band of pilgrims. It was 5am, and the morning light was just breaking over the old city. This light, unlike the light of brighter mornings, was dark and depressing. The women walked with short steps, their heads wrapped up in scarves to protect against the biting wind. One of the men carried a cross.

This morning, for the first time in my lifetime, I participated in Walking the Way of the Cross. It's a custom that goes back to the middle ages, when pilgrims would get together and pray and carry a cross on Good Friday, retracing the traditional steps of Jesus. There are 14 stations, and each one remembers a moment of that day. The lucky few would do this in Jerusalem, where the stations are marked. Others would walk around their town center.

It was strange to me to be doing this. I've always had an uneasy relationship with Christ's Passion. I wish that I could articulate why. Maybe it's the violence. Remembering it comes so close to glorifying it - the violence, that is. Maybe it's the rejection, a deep seated fear that some day some one that I love will deny me or abandon me. Maybe it's the atonement, I continue to wrestle with the idea of Jesus as a sacrifice. I don't want to believe in a God that demands such violence in order to ransom us.

As I walked this path, wrestling with my own ideas, a voice came to me from the bottom pit of my soul. I remember that when I was a child a man in our choir would sing, with a deep baritone voice... Were you there, when they crucified my Lord... I remember as a child feeling such a deep sorrow that I would cry. Truthfully, that song still gets to me.

So here's where I am with this right now: God loves me (you/us) so much that he sent Jesus to teach me (you/us) what it really means to love. Deep, ground shaking, earth moving love. A love that calls me (you/us) to love so much that I (you/us) will actually give my (your/our) life for the lives of others. It's a love that risks everything, a love that crosses borders. Imagining the pain and sorrow, remembering those who suffer and mourn, pushing my body in the wind and the rain and the cold brought this sense of God's love to me in a deeply spiritual way.

Dome of the Ascension

We stayed with Jesus' passion throughout the day, as we made our way after breakfast to the Mount of Olives, on which is a very small mosque called the Dome of the Ascension. Inside was a small stone area in the middle. A footprint can clearly be seen in the box. Tradition has this (and two other places) to be the site where Jesus ascended into heaven.

Next we walked to the Garden of Gethsemane, where olive trees still stand that are over 1800 years old. The garden lies in front of the Church of All Nations, which commemorates the night in the Garden when Jesus prayed to take this cup from me. Another Barluzzi, this church is meant to be dark. I sat and listened to a Mass in Spanish for a while, and prayed for those who I carried with me in my heart.

Mary's Tomb was another fascinating place we visited. It lies in the Kidron Valley, and is the place where Eastern Christian traditions believe Jesus' mother (in Greek, she is called Theotokos or God-Bearer) to be buried. Many of the Eastern Christian churches have quite a high reverence for motherhood and women in general, the Marionites (for example) have been ordaining women to the Priesthood since the 4th century. While we were there we met an Armenian Apostolic Christian woman who urged us to remember that all Christians, regardless of sect or denomination, are one.

After lunch we went to Mount Sion to visit St. Peter in Gallicantu. This church commemorates Mark 14:22, when Peter denied Christ three times before the cock crowed twice. (in Latin, gallicantu means cock-crow). The church itself was constructed in 3 levels. On the first, it is a rather modern looking worship space, with a beautiful main altar and chairs that can be pushed around in different configurations.

On the second level is another worship space with three amazing frescoes: on the front left is an image of Peter denying Jesus, all the while looking at his face. The fresco in the middle shows Peter looking dejected in front of a large cave, he looks guilty and sad. The fresco on the right shows Peter being given the post-resurrection command to "feed my sheep". In a way, the three frescoes show the restoration (resurrection) of Peter as Christ's disciple, he is given a whole new life despite his mistakes and failings. Isn't that true for all of us as well?

The most fascinating level of this church is below the ground level, which houses what scholars believe the jail was that Jesus stayed in and was tortured. Father Kamal showed us the holes in the rock where prisoners would be chained and flogged. In this dark and foreboding place we read Psalm 88, and I was deeply moved.

On the way back to the college, we drove by the blood fields, where Judas is reported to have committed suicide after betraying Jesus. I wonder what Judas' mother would have to say about all of this? We never hear from her in the gospels.

All day it rained a cold rain. Which seemed appropriate, somehow for the remembrance of a Good Friday. And yet... Good Friday is never the end of the story.