Pilgrimage (17 page)

We walk into the church through an arched doorway and enter an altogether different world. These holy places have been gilded and polished and adorned by thousands of years of Christian devotion until I feel as though I can hardly move forward through the glittering clutter. The trappings of ornate religion seem to weigh me down: gleaming silver and bronze, embroidered tapestries, sputtering candles, cloying incense, priests in flowing robes, marble statues. To say that
it no longer resembles a place of execution or a graveyard is an understatement.

I wait in line to climb a short set of steps to where the cross supposedly stood, but once there, I can’t see past the gaudiness to imagine Christ’s passion. A man in a brown robe prods me and my fellow tourists to keep moving. I wait in line again to peer inside a square, stone monument, all that remains of the rocky hillside from which the borrowed tomb was hewn. Empty or not, it no longer resembles a tomb. I have to confess that since I don’t belong to the religious traditions represented in this church, I find it difficult to feel awe or amazement or any of the other emotions that I thought I would.

Our guide, a Jewish believer in Christ, agrees that it’s difficult to envision how Calvary and the empty tomb may have looked by touring this church. He offers to take us to a place where we can more easily picture what it may have looked like two thousand years ago. And so we leave and walk through the Old City’s claustrophobic streets again to the crowded Arab market. Within moments, we are jammed together with black-draped Muslim women and souvenir-sellers hawking their wares. The shopkeepers’ aggressive shouts sound angry: “Look! Buy! Buy! One shekel!”

“Keep walking. Don’t stop,” our guide says.

We’ve all been warned to be on guard against pickpockets, so I quicken my steps until at last we leave the Old City through the Damascus Gate. We are now in the Muslim section of modern Jerusalem, and though the streets are wider, they still overflow with people and traffic, shouting street vendors, and honking buses, all in a hurry. I want to escape the noise and congestion, but our guide halts us on a busy street corner.

“Here!” he says, gesturing to the hubbub all around us. “Here, in a very public place like this, outside the walls—this is where the Romans would crucify Christ. They would make a public spectacle of the condemned men, lifting them up to shame and ridicule in front of everyone passing by.” During a crowded pilgrimage festival like Passover the streets would have resembled Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

I can’t bear to think of Christ nailed to a cross on a street like this, naked and vulnerable, suffering and dying as people hurried past, uncaring, unconcerned, stopping only to mock Him. The words “He bore our shame” take on new meaning for me. I bow my head, feeling unworthy, overwhelmed by the love that compelled Him to die.

We continue to walk for another block or two up a small hill until we reach the entrance to a walled garden. This peaceful, tree-filled grove contains a first-century tomb in its original state and I find it much easier to visualize the biblical events here. Whether or not this is the authentic site doesn’t matter.

We walk to the rear of the garden to view the craggy, undeveloped cliff that is part of this hill and see that the weathered rocks bear the features of a skull. As we make our way to a secluded grove to celebrate Communion, I hear voices and singing. Groups of tourists from all over the world sit tucked in private grottos, celebrating Communion, as well. Their songs are in several languages—German, Korean, Italian, and others that I can’t identify. Some of the tunes are familiar even if the language isn’t, but I don’t need an interpreter to understand what is being said: “This is my body, broken for you; My blood, shed for you.” I sit in the private garden reserved for our group and can’t stop my tears as I partake of Christ’s body and blood, surrounded by the colorful babble of praise.

Afterward, we come at last to the unadorned tomb, dating from the time of Christ. It resembles a rugged cave, carved into the natural, rocky hillside. Beside the mouth of the tomb stands an enormous flat stone disc that can be rolled in front of the opening to seal it. The stone has been rolled away. The tomb is empty. This is what the women who came to the garden early that first Easter morning, the last day of the Passover festival, would have seen. The huge, round stone that once sealed the entrance had been rolled away. The narrow stone ledge inside held only the discarded grave cloths.

Passover consists of three separate feasts: the Feast of Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the Feast of Firstfruits. Since Jewish days are reckoned from sundown to sundown, Jesus ate the traditional Passover meal with His disciples, then was arrested, condemned, and crucified, all on the Feast of Passover. As soon as the sun set, another day and the second feast began, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Jesus was laid in the tomb at the start of that feast and the tomb’s opening was sealed shut with a heavy stone.

During this second feast, worshipers wave sheaves of wheat as they thank God for the gift of bread from the earth. They remember the manna that He provided in the wilderness, “bread” that was free and sufficient, satisfying all of their needs as they gathered it in faith. “I am the bread of life,” Jesus said. “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (John 12:24). I doubt if His disciples or His mother or any of the others would have recalled those words as they watched Him being buried in the tomb as the Feast of Unleavened Bread began.

It so happened that the Sabbath day also began at sundown on that Good Friday, and so instead of anointing Jesus’ body or mourning at His grave, His Jewish followers were required to return to their homes and rest from their labors. I imagine them huddling together, grieving, unable to do any work such as lighting a fire or cooking food or walking more than a very short distance. I imagine them waiting, feeling helpless. As helpless as I am to save myself. As helpless as I am to do anything to take away my own sins and reconnect with God. For the disciples, that long Sabbath must have been a day of sorrow and disaster. Once a kernel of wheat is buried underground it is invisible, and so they were unable to see—or imagine—the great harvest that God would soon bring. But as I look inside the empty tomb here in this garden and then emerge again into the sunlight, I am surrounded by evidence of that harvest as Christians from all over the world praise God in dozens of languages and share the body and blood of Christ.

That first Easter Sunday two thousand years ago happened to fall on the third feast day of the Passover festival, the Feast of Firstfruits. On this day, worshipers brought the very first sheaves of grain from their fields and offered them as sacrifices to God. The full harvest was still weeks away, but they would give God the first and best of their grain in faith, trusting that He would provide more. The Feast of Firstfruits is always celebrated on a Sunday, regardless of which day Passover and Unleavened Bread happen to fall. Since Passover is decided by the phases of the moon, the three feasts rarely occur on three consecutive days. But in God’s perfect timing, in the year that Christ was crucified, they did. Such precision helps me trust His timing in my own life. This was a sign of God’s
providence, the sign of Jonah: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40).

The fact that Jesus was raised to life on the Feast of Firstfruits is God’s promise to us that we’ll also share in His resurrection. The apostle Paul saw the significance when he wrote: “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him” (1 Corinthians 15:22–23). This decaying world around me isn’t all that there is. Christ promised a new heaven and a new earth where our resurrected bodies will never suffer pain or sorrow or death. But for now, I live in this world as His new creation. “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:4).

I’m reluctant to leave the garden and reenter the world, but that’s exactly what we are supposed to do. “Don’t cling to me,” Jesus told the women that Easter Sunday. “Go and tell the others” (see John 20:17). The minute I step outside the garden walls and see cars and buses and people streaming by, I am hurled back from the past and into the present. I’m standing smack-dab in the middle of the Muslim section of Jerusalem, confronted with the realization that these hurrying, rushing people don’t know Christ. They don’t know His love, His forgiveness. The truth hits me hard.

An hour ago, before I envisioned Jesus hanging in shame on a street like this, before I partook of His body and blood, before I walked into the sunlight after viewing the dark, empty tomb, I saw these people and thought of pickpockets and
terrorists, strangers from a foreign culture who practice a foreign religion. Now, if only for a brief moment, I see them as God does. They are dearly loved. Loved so much that Christ suffered and bled and died for them.

If only they knew.

I doubt that they’ll discover the truth by visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and watching the Christian tourists and listening to the chanted rituals. I doubt if they would grasp it even after a visit to the garden tomb.

If only they knew.

If only I loved as He does. If only there was less of me and more of Christ.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

John 3:16–17

A N
EW
P
RAYER
FOR
THE
J
OURNEY

My loving Savior and Lord,

I remember the Walk of Sorrows that You walked for me, and I praise You for Your unfathomable love. You created the universe in love, created us for loving fellowship with You, and then demonstrated Your love at Calvary. I confess that I feel unworthy of it. Jesus, the punishment You faced should have been mine—punishment for my pride, for choosing my own will instead of Yours, for failing to love others as You love them. Thank You for taking my place. Thank You for Your glorious resurrection and the promise that we will share in it one day. Thank You for the new brothers and sisters You have given me from every tribe and nation and language. Forgive me for denying Your power and goodness every time I give in to worry and fear; for forgetting that as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are Your ways above mine. I pray for the faith to offer up my plans, my will, to Yours. Help me to submit to Your pruning in my life so that I will bear fruit for Your glory. May my best prayer always be, “Not my will but Thine be done.”

Amen

8
The Judean Countryside

Sing to the Lord, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples.

Psalm 96:2–3

W
hen I’ve read of people in Scripture walking from town to town, I never imagined how much territory they went through or how hilly the terrain was. I have a newfound respect for their physical fitness! On our journey from Jerusalem to the Mediterranean coast, we’re traveling through the region known as Judea in Jesus’ day. The hills are green with trees and crops, dotted with rocks and villages. In between the hills, the open country flourishes with orchards and vineyards.

We leave the main highway to stop at the fortress of Latrun, a genuine military fort used as recently as the Six-Day War
in 1967. Its limestone walls bear wounds from cannonballs, artillery, and machine-gun fire. I should be used to climbing Israel’s many hills by now, but I’m still breathless when I reach the fort from the parking lot. The view is worth it, though. The main road from the coastal plain to Jerusalem stretches below us in clear view, making Israel’s approaching enemies clearly visible, too. Like a game of “king of the hill,” the imposing stone structure stands ready, hands on hips, as if daring someone to attack.

The broad green Valley of Aijalon lies below me, sprinkled with fields and vineyards and wrapped in the surrounding mountains’ embrace. I am continually surprised by Israel’s diverse beauty—and history. This is the famous valley where God caused the sun to stand still in the middle of the day so Joshua could defeat his enemies. “There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a man. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel!” (Joshua 10:14).

Today the Fortress of Latrun is the site of a war memorial for the Israeli Defense Forces, a place where families and fellow soldiers come to honor loved ones who died in battle. The broad plaza surrounding the fort serves as an outdoor tank museum with more than one hundred armored vehicles of various makes and models on display. Our guide’s descriptions of their firepower fascinate the men in our tour group, but I grow bored. I turn to gaze at the view of the Valley of Aijalon. The sun sits low in the winter sky, but I try to imagine it rising to its zenith—and then staying there for a full day. That’s what the Bible says happened as Israel battled her enemies here, laying claim to the Promised Land. But a few weeks earlier, Joshua, the commander-in-chief of Israel’s army, had made a terrible mistake.

After resounding victories at Jericho and at Ai, Joshua met with a delegation of foreigners who came to him seeking a peace treaty. He knew that God had forbidden him to make treaties with the people of the land but these men persisted. “We have come from a distant country,” they said. “We aren’t your enemies.” They looked bedraggled and road-weary, their bread dry and moldy, their sandals worn out, as if they had journeyed many miles. Joshua believed their sad story and without praying or consulting God, he signed a peace treaty with them, swearing an oath before God to be their allies. Surprise! It had all been a trick—the moldy bread, the secondhand shoes. The men hadn’t traveled far at all, only from Gibeon, one of the Canaanite cities slated for destruction. Joshua had foolishly compromised with the enemy and now he was stuck with a treaty God had forbidden him to make.