We are allotted fifteen minutes. The men and women visit separate sections of the wall. The men get three-quarters, and the women get the last little piece, which is much more crowded. Even so, the women’s section seems quieter than the men’s. No theatrics. No wailing. No drums.
Jessica takes a quick picture of me and JoAnne together in front of the women clustered by the wall. Then, alone, I make my way to the wall itself. Two rows of white vinyl chairs face the stones, most of them occupied by women reading the Torah. Other women stand. Standing or sitting, they bend forward and bob gently as they speak softly to themselves, so the air is a gentle murmur. There is no empty space at the wall, yet no one is shoving. I smell lavender. A few women stand behind the ones praying, waiting for someone to leave. I get into a similar position. Before I’m quite expecting it, a space opens in front of me.
I am a Christian, a Protestant, unfamiliar with worshiping at a holy rock. I’m not sure how to do this. I hold a slip of paper that my Jewish friend Stephanie has given me to leave at the wall. I slip the paper into a crack, then pray for Stephanie, and for her prayer requests, which I have not read.
What next? I look to the side and see that women have their hands spread against the wall. I put my hands up and make contact with my palms. The stone is cool and rough-textured. My glance falls on my watch. The fifteen minutes are already more than half gone. Quick. I want to be in a more prayerful mood. Without meaning to, I lean my forehead against the cool stone. Without meaning to, I pray: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. It’s an Eastern Orthodox prayer that’s been memorized by Christians for centuries. The words are from Mark 10, the story of Blind Bartimaeus, whom Jesus healed. It’s called the Jesus Prayer.
Is it proper to pray the Jesus Prayer at the Western Wall? Ignoring that question, my heart repeats the prayer. And again. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I realize I’m leaking tears. Yes, I’m a sinner. I need mercy. I desire to offer my heart to the Lord, but it is imperfect. I’ve patched it with wax, but God can see right through. I offer up my imperfect, patched heart. I trust that I can be redeemed.
The tears do not stop, but my heart ceases to hammer. I feel a flood of forgiveness, a sense of peace. Yes, I am impatient and quick to judge. I pigeonhole other people’s beliefs and think mine are better. I get cranky and snappish in the heat. But Jesus sees past these sins. I turn my head and press my right cheek against the wall.
There is movement on my left as a young mother lifts her baby alongside the wall. The baby is maybe seven months old, dressed in a red jumper over an embroidered blouse. The mother spreads the little girl’s palms against the stone, then gently turns the head. The baby doesn’t protest, just rests her left cheek against the wall as if she’s done this before. Beneath a colorful head-wrap her eyes are dark brown and somber. An old soul. She looks at me, unblinking. Our faces are about twelve inches apart. My own eyes are curtained by tears, which I blink away because I want to see the baby clearly. The mother has put her own forehead against the wall on the other side of her child. I wonder who she is praying for. This baby? A husband? Other family members? With my eyes open, I pray with her.
Lord Jesus, heal their wounds and bless them, I pray. It doesn’t matter that I can’t name their wounds; they undoubtedly have some. It doesn’t matter that the mother wouldn’t pray to “Lord Jesus”; God undoubtedly loves both her and her child. The baby and I stay locked in each other’s gaze, with our heads against the wall for some time while the prayer circles through me.
Finally something shifts, and I notice my watch. I’m late. “Forgive me,” I whisper to the baby. My sister. Since I’ve prayed for her and with her, she has taken up residence in my heart. I peel myself away from the wall. I have to concentrate so that I don’t turn my back to the wall as I leave. I watch the mother and baby as I back away, feeling incredibly grateful to be here. Grateful that God is here. Oh, for this feeling in our church pews, this emptying of the self.
I stumble toward the tour group, deaf and dumb. My tears leak while Stephen talks on about the original Temple stones. He points out the famed Robinson’s Arch, and I finally raise my eyes to look at the wall from this more distant perspective. The original stones truly are gigantic and clean-edged. Higher up, the “newer” stones sprout trailing vines and grasses; pigeons fly about and perch on tiny ledges between the stones. The sight stokes my tears. The stones were so magnificently created, so precisely hewn, so conscientiously aligned.
Ashley and Jessica notice my tears and move toward me. Kyle puts an arm around my shoulders. I am grateful that I don’t need to explain my tears because I could not. My fellow pilgrims comfort me.
The group moves to the Southern Wall, where there are piles of rubble, colossal rocks which fell during the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and have remained untouched. But excavation has exposed stone-lined holes, mikvaot, that were used for ritual baths for Temple purification. Some of the holes have steps leading down, like whirlpool baths, although they have long been dry. When we’re given a few minutes to explore, I step into one of the holes and wish it had a little water. I could use a foot-soak, a few moments to help me digest my new emotional connections to this Holy Land’s walls and stones and rubble.
Ashley sits next to me and says, “I felt absolutely nothing at the wall, but you were crying.”
“Wailing, actually,” I answer. “You could say I was convicted of my sin.”
She nods sympathetically. “I know what you mean. Sometimes I feel that way, too. But today I just felt cold.”
JoAnne comes by with sprigs of lavender she plucked from the ruins. Before we even have time to inhale their scent, someone hurries us along.
“The Byzantine period,” Stephen is saying, and I glance at someone else’s notes to jot down the dates: 324-638. I also record these details: “Excavations from this era. Christian pilgrimage. Notable pilgrim Egeria whose journal 381 to 384 details Byzantine ritual.” Stephen reminds us of the Psalms of Ascent, or Pilgrim Psalms: 120–134. I make a mental note to reread them, maybe to plan a sermon series on them. And just like that, I’ve slipped from my pilgrim self into my cerebral professional self.
Stephen begins another lecture, this one addressing a question: Why doesn’t the New Testament mention the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE? To get at that, he lists the dates when the Gospels were written: Mark is earliest, written in 65, Matthew in 75, Luke in —
A bar mitzvah procession interrupts him, although he continues, unfazed. Men in prayer shawls are blowing the shofar and beating drums, their fringes swinging. It sounds loud and festive. It sounds like a party. It sounds like more fun than learning distant dates. I prowl to the edge of the group and peer at the parade, but cannot spot the guest of honor. I wonder what it’s like to be a Jewish boy under noisy escort to his bar mitzvah at the Western Wall.
When the lecture is finally over, we are free to explore the remains of the Second Temple, the Herodian Temple. There is a section of original steps, and I sit down on them. The stones are deeply worn, and the edges are crumbled.
“How many centuries would it take to wear stone like this?” I ask Kyle, as he takes a seat beside me.
“Many,” he says. “Or else the sextons were grossly negligent.”
Kyle and his Anglican humor. I lay my palms flat against the dirty stone. Did Jesus’ feet touch these very steps? It’s not the kind of question I would normally ask, yet it seems unavoidable. A thrill goes through my palms and into my fingertips.
According to Luke 2, the Temple was where Jesus’ parents, Mary and Joseph, encountered Simeon and Anna, who were the first people to recognize that this infant boy was the Messiah. I’ve always pictured that story taking place on the Temple steps. Could this be the exact place where the Messiah was first recognized? The possibility is humbling. Do I deserve to be here?
I don’t recognize the presence of the Messiah now. I don’t look for Christ in the faces around
me. I gaze at my fellow pilgrims and feel raw and weary, and thirstier than ever. I want to feel the presence of Jesus right now, here, on these very steps. But I cannot command it. Part of me wishes I could, but part of me is glad that I cannot.
At that moment Brian decides to film our group descending the steps together. The cameramen calculate spacing and angles. It feels staged — because it is: we are going from nowhere to nowhere for the sake of the video. All the people who are not in the documentary are asked to stand aside. They do so, but make wisecracks as we pass by.
Finally, we have filmed enough, learned enough, and prayed enough. We trek a ways to have lunch at a Lutheran hospice: pita and hummus, cucumbers and tomato, rice and some kind of meat stew. How I wish they’d bring a pitcher of beer, to cool my feverish emotions. Instead, we drink many pitchers of water.
After lunch we move to a circle of comfortable chairs. Turkish coffee and cake are available. I take a small ceramic cup filled with hot liquid, heavy with grounds. It is very sweet at the same time that it is bitter. Across from me, Charlie leans back and half-closes his eyes. He looks like a contented cat as he says, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” His face is pink, whether from sun or emotion or both. My heart softens. Could his be the face of Christ?
While we sip our coffee, our chaplain lectures about living stone. He describes cave theology, which says that two of the three salvific events of Christianity took place in rock caves at night: the Nativity and the Resurrection. The third event took place on a rock: the Crucifixion. He goes on to say that Jerusalem bedrock is necessary, not only in a symbolic way, but also in a physical way, because it supports the weight of so many buildings made of stone. He lists some of the weighty buildings, which are everywhere in Jerusalem. Weight. I remember the atheist Tercier, whom we met yesterday. What weight he must feel all around him — the weight of history! I wish I could talk to Tercier again and ask him about the weight that religion lays on his shoulders. I, too, have felt the weight of religious history, of doctrinal fights. But the people around me are not killing each other. Maybe that is why I can still believe.
The chaplain is done talking. I’m loath to get out of my comfortable chair, but we have one more stop, the Christian site. Then we will have seen “the three major holy sites of the three Abrahamic faiths in one city in one day,” just as the itinerary promised. I remember how inspiring that sounded before we embarked.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Old Jerusalem
CHAPTER 9
Stone Cold
Come to him, a living stone . . . let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood.
1 PETER 2:4-5
WE WALK ACROSS Jerusalem to the church constructed over the tomb of Jesus. The church was built in the fourth century by Constantine, the emperor who converted to Christianity and ushered in the age of Christendom. Shortly after his conversion, Constantine sent his devout mother, Helena, to establish shrines at the major holy sites. This spot was one of her big discoveries, the actual bedrock of Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified.
“That Helena,” Kyle says. “What a nose for relics.”
The Orthodox call it the Church of the Resurrection. The Catholics share the building, but they call it the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. What you choose to call it depends on what you want to emphasize: resurrection or grave. Which name shall I call it? It occurs to me that the Presbyterians would have solved the dilemma by simply assigning it a number: “First Presbyterian Church of Jerusalem.”
The story goes that the Christian communities in Jerusalem are unable to trust each other with the keys of their church building, so the keys are held by a Muslim. Imagine all the ways you could preach that: “Way to fail, Christians!” Or, “Christians united by a Muslim — proof that God is greater than any one belief system!” Or, “Religion is the worst wedge between brothers. It’s pure poison!”
“The devil is never still,” says Charlie. “Especially here.”
The church is a maze of chapels and levels. We begin upstairs in a chapel built over the rock where Jesus was crucified. The room is hushed. There is a chest-high altar made of white marble that reminds me of a fireplace mantel. At the base of the altar is a hole, which, we are told, reaches to the bedrock of Golgotha. We watch people get on their hands and knees and reach, as if to light a fire in a fireplace. They’re putting a hand through the hole to touch the rock.
We wait our turn. One by one, each pilgrim kneels, crawls a few steps, reaches his or her hand down, then backs out. Some people linger; others hurry. Afterward, a few stop to wipe their eyes, while others look glazed.
When it’s my turn, I find it awkward and humbling to go down on all fours. There’s a picture of Jesus at eye level when you’re on your hands and knees. The picture is covered with glass, and there are smudges where people have kissed or touched the glass. I have an instant aversion, yet when I see Jesus’ face, tears spring to my eyes and I kiss the glass, too. I must be a pilgrim. It is quite curious because the picture is nothing special. The Jesus of that picture looks like a million historically incorrect Sunday school pictures: his hair too straight and light, his nose too aquiline, his skin too pale. Intellectually, I reject the likeness; yet my eyes well up as I study it. Whatever Jesus looked like, this is where he died.
I don’t have time for all these feelings; people are waiting. I feel like a child in a Touch and See Room, where you lift the flap and reach in blind, trying to identify shell or wood or antler by touch, ready to be either delighted or repulsed. I reach my hand through the hole. The bedrock of Golgotha is both jagged and polished under my fingertips. Touching it is both comforting and unsettling. I gasp and withdraw my hand. Backing out of the fireplace/altar is even more awkward than crawling in.
Perhaps this is what pilgrimage is all about: being invited into the appropriate posture of humility; being invited to confront these essential, complicated feelings; being invited to feel gratitude, even if you can’t say precisely what you’re grateful for.
I notice that Ashley’s face is tear-streaked. As our eyes meet, she says, “He died for me!” and begins to cry again. I put my arm around her shaking shoulders. I know she and I could talk theology all day, parsing that simple sentence. But also at this moment I understand her tears without having to explain them. I, too, have a sense of remorse mixed with gratitude.
As the group slowly regathers, Stephen prepares us for the next stop, downstairs, where there is a place for devotion, a granite slab referred to as the Stone of Anointing. Tradition holds that the body of Jesus was laid here when it was taken from the cross. Stephen says that people pray at the stone, or kiss it, or leave offerings.
The stone is exactly the size you would expect, the size of a man stretched out. Over the slab, eight ornate oil lamps hang on heavy chains. There are people kneeling at the stone. I wait my turn, then kneel and put both hands on the pink-toned marble. I imagine Jesus’ body lying on that stone, bloodied and pierced. The stone is cold, and I begin to weep. A deep sense of unworthiness makes me feel hot. I am beginning to tire of feeling unworthy, yet it’s my automatic response, a response in both body and mind. I lean forward and lay my forehead on the cool stone. Almost automatically I begin an endless loop of the Jesus Prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I want to loop through it until I wear out the words, or at least understand them, but others are waiting. I’m sure that others feel unworthy, too. I will relinquish my spot at the mercy seat.
We descend another flight of stairs and visit another chapel. This one was established by the Armenians, the first people to become officially Christian in 301, pre-Constantine. The Armenians are proud of this heritage. Lower still, in a great cave of bedrock, is a chapel to Saint Helena, Constantine’s mother.
In the stone walls leading to these two deepest chapels, the Crusaders have carved crosses. There are so many crosses you would be hard-pressed to find room to squeeze another one in. There are Crusad
er crosses all over this church. I had noticed them in the pillars beside the entrance doors when we came in. In fact, those stone pillars are so deeply etched that they appear to be made of wood. As I trace one of the crosses with my fingertips, I imagine the fervent knights leaning on their knife blades. Gouging stone seems like a strange way to express devotion. Are these crosses adornment or defilement? Or an ancient form of graffiti?
The period of the Crusades, a thousand years ago, was a dark one in Christian history. Religious conviction propelled soldiers from Western Europe to push east to the Holy Land, which they wanted to wrest from the infidels, the Muslims. The Crusaders forced their beliefs on both Muslims and Jews by forcibly baptizing them. They killed those who refused. The Crusaders were soldiers of the cross, taking their very name from crux (Latin for “cross”). Their purpose was to reclaim Jerusalem, the place where Jesus was crucified, to open it to Christian pilgrims.
I’m sure it pains Jesus to know the bloodshed that was done in his name. As a pilgrim, it pains me to have any part at all in this history. Yet I feel the power of pilgrimage, of people making this journey for the sake of their beliefs. There’s an inherent power in a pious purpose. My fingers cannot stay away from one of the crosses etched in stone. I wonder about the Crusader who carved it. What did he believe? What drove him? I feel the primitive beauty of the simple lines. Was it a mammoth effort to carve these lines, or was this Crusader so overcome with religious fervor upon reaching this sacred place that it was a trifling thing for him to press the point of his knife blade into solid stone?
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Charlie says as I linger over the crosses.
“I can’t decide if they are or not,” I answer. “Do they defile the wall or adorn it?”
“Blood atonement isn’t pretty,” Charlie says. “But thank the Lord for it!”
Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land Page 7
