Jerusalem Day 2

Psalm 122

A Song of Ascents. Of David.
I was glad when they said to me,
   ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’
Our feet are standing
   within your gates, O Jerusalem. 

Jerusalem—built as a city
   that is bound firmly together.
To it the tribes go up,
   the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel,
   to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
For there the thrones for judgement were set up,
   the thrones of the house of David.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
   ‘May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls,
   and security within your towers.’
For the sake of my relatives and friends
   I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
   I will seek your good.

After leaving the school, we headed back to our apartment, changed into "modest dress" (skirt below the knees, elbows and shoulders covered, and a scarf for holy sites), and headed back to the Old City.

First stop: the Wailing Wall (also known as the Western Wall).  This is the last wall standing of the Second Temple after the Romans sacked it around 70 CE.  It's not actually one of the walls of the temple, but a retaining wall around the temple grounds.  Still, it's a wall made of stones that were actually standing where they are today at the time of Jesus, and long before him, so it's pretty impressive. 

After running the gamut of merchants offering to sell you everything but their firstborn for a very good price, you have to go though a security checkpoint to get into the wall area.  There, they have divided gates: women go to one side; men go to the other.  I noticed that the men's side was MUCH larger and less crowded.  We women all had to jostle around each other for space.  We did it peacefully, though.  As in the psalm above, we were all there praying for peace, whether in the city of Jersusalem itself, or in our own lives.  When I got my turn, I pulled out the envelope of prayers that people had given or sent me from the States.  For each of you who sent a prayer, I took the folded up paper and held it to my lips, praying, "Oh Lord, hear our prayer," and placing it into a crevice in the wall.  I had more than ten prayers, so it became a sort of ritual and chant.  Then, I placed my hand on all of them and began to pray for God to hear all of these prayers.  As I did, I felt a sort of swirly feeling in my head, and I reeled forward just a little.  Nothing dramatic, but it was special.  I ran my hands all over the wall, connecting with thousands of years' worth of prayers in this very spot.  Then, as is tradition, I backed away from the wall.  (You aren't supposed to turn your back on it, but I only managed to walk backwards for a little before I had to turn.)  You can see the prayers I put in here.  In the larger picture, you can see all the crevices with little light-colored things in them -- those are all prayers!

I've heard that a team comes through every night and collects the prayers by vacuum (not very romantic), and then burns them as a holy offering (which sort of makes up for the vacuuming).  So, all of us who put in a prayer today can be assured that, right now, they are going up to God as a burnt offering.

We weren't quite sure what to do next, and spent about an hour wandering through markets and small streets.  The Old City is almost entirely pedestrian, and there are hundreds of nooks and crannies in which to get lost and purchase many trinkets.  A man named Abraham worked really hard to convince us to let him be our tour guide tomorrow, and we almost agreed, but then, when he quoted the price, our sanity returned.  Besides, we realized we were right next to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and it was time to return to our devotional tour.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is purported to be the site of Jesus' tomb.  It goes deep into the carved-out rock of Jerusalem and has small chapels every which way within it.  The first thing you see when you go in is the Rock of Unction, where Jesus' body was laid after he died, and where the women covered his body with oils and spices to prepare it for burial.  People bring rags of oil to rub on this stone, and they will often kiss it and rub things like rosaries on it.  I felt the oily surface myself, and was surprised at how it stayed with me through the day.

We didn't have a guide, so I had to guess on what a lot of the chapels were about.  I did read in a brochure that the chapel is shared by five sects.  The Greek Orthodox, Catholics, and Armenians each have a major section, and the Syrian and Coptic Orthodox churches have smaller chapels.  I'm not totally sure which is which, except that I'm pretty positive that the gold mosaic murals with Greek lettering were the Greek Orthodox's.  So beautiful!

In the center was Jesus' tomb, a squareish box under a dome, with a smaller dome sticking out of the box.  (See picture, since my description is terrible.)  It was absolutely covered in lamps and candles, and I watched as an Orthodox (not sure which kind) priest lit several of the lamps.  After a long wait in line, I was able to enter the tomb, which was heavily decorated with gold and more lamps.  There was a stone slab in the back room that I believe was to be the stone under which (?) Jesus' body was laid.  (Not sure how that works given that the story was that he was in a cave with a big round stone in front, but maybe there's an explanation I didn't get.)  I placed my hand on it and felt a strange sense of nothing.  Then, I heard a voice in my head, "Why are you looking for the living among the dead?  He is not here; he is risen."  So, that explained the nothingness.  It felt like a lovely homage, but not especially holy.  I wore my headscarf nonetheless.

By the time all this was done, it was very late and we were quite hungry, so we met up with Coretta and had another lovely meal.  So far, I'm eating really well in Israel.  Thanks be to God!