Sunday: a full day of Christianity

Shalom again, finally I am getting caught up on this ting, just to fall behind the day that I do not have internet in a few days.

Today was Sunday in Jerusalem, and we had a variety of options for church if we wished. I chose the 8 AM service at an Episcopal church, about a half hour from the hotel, since the Anglican service, much closer, was late enough that I probably would have had to leave early. I really wanted communion, so it needed to be an Anglican Church, among my options. Nobody else was interested in going to an 8 o'clock service, so Professor Arnold went with me, which I appreciated since I never would have found it on my own, and I would not have liked walking that far on my own through Jerusalem. Because it was the earliest service, it was also the smallest service. There were perhaps 12 or 13 people there, and there was no music. Most of the times that you would normally sing a song, we did not, but we did sing about a song and a half throughout the service. It is interesting to go to a service with very little music, especially the day after going to synagogue where everything was music. One thing I noticed today was how close you can feel to God in just silence together or going through the liturgy together, without music. It is an experience that might be good to try at Grace once, just to show how worship comes in many shapes and sizes, including lack of music. When we did sing, it was during the offering and right after communion, both times without any music accompanying us. The priest impressed me, and he was one of the best Anglican or Episcopal priests at preaching that I have seen. He really got into the reading of the Gospel as well as the sermon, and the sermon was very good. He spoke about how we need to proclaim Jesus, since you tell any other good news. He also spoke about how he sees Muslims stopping and praying, without shame, in Jerusalem, and said that we should be like that. It was very good. When time came for communion, he had us all come up and stand in a circle around the altar as he served us, which was a very nice way of doing it, and we sang "Open my eyes that I may see." I am very glad that I went, and it is amazing to know that I had communion in the city (well, expanded city) in which Jesus did the Last Supper.

After church, Prof. Arnold and I wandered the Old City a bit, through most of quarters, and back up to the Western Wall. I was able to see a little better what was happening at the wall, since the crowds were significantly smaller. It was a cool way to take in the city, with someone who knows what things are, yet not in a huge group. Surprisingly, we didn't get dragged into any shops as we walked through market places.

we had to be on the bus by 10:30, and we went to hear a speaker and look through ancient remains. The speaker went for over an hour, and he got cut off by our tour guide who told him that we really needed to go into the next part. This speaker was...well...boring. He basically told me things that I already know, explaining the history of the Temple. It wouldn't be so bad except that we have heard this many many times in Jerusalem, since every speaker feel the need to retell the common Bible stories. It just makes me want to stand up and say, "We know already, give us something new or deeper or at least make it interesting like the guy yesterday!!" This guy talked way longer than any of us imagined, and he was hard to listen to after a while. He was very much on the side of Judaism in the conflict (not necessarily armed conflict but any conflict) to a fault. He didn't seem to have any tolerance at all, to the point that when the Muslim call for prayer rang out over the city, he kept interrupting his sentences to say "just be quiet." Obviously the person could not hear him, because they were using a speaker from a mosque somewhere, but it still bothered me. When we finally got through him and heard what we were doing, however, it was quite exciting. Apparently, the Muslims dug a gate from the temple mount and just threw the dirt away about 5 years ago. Currently, no excavations are allowed up there. What these people are doing is taking the piles of dirt and slowly sifting through them trying to find ancient artifacts. There are problems, they don't know exactly where each thing came from, but they still find some significant items. We were actually sifting through the rocks and dirt to find any ancient artifacts, and we found some pretty cool ones. Our table found some metal, bones, lots of pottery, and many mosaic stones. Some others found significant pieces of pottery and even coins.

The rest of the day was devoted to Christianity. I cannot make a record here of everywhere we went, mainly because we went to so many churches that it would be utterly impossible. We started on the Mount of Olives and walked down visiting churches, such as ones devoted to Mary or various parts of Holy Week. We did visit the Garden of Gethsemane, which was pretty cool. It was beautiful. I spent most of this walk answering questions for Jacob (who is 7). That boy can ask some very tough questions, and did so throughout most of the day. Among them were...what is a Methodist? What do you do on an altar? Why do we care where Jesus walked to die? etc etc etc. In short...very normal 7 year old questions. I was speaking to his mom who said that perhaps part of the steps to pass to become a pastor should be to sit in a room with a 7-year-old for 3-4 hours. It actually might not be a bad idea, because you have to figure out how to explain things simply...it is even more difficult if that little child is Jewish so everything has to be explained. It was fun though.

eventually, we walked down the Via Dolorosa. Each of us in our class had to give a presentation on site, and the Via Dolorosa was mine. The presentation was supposed to be 20 minutes. It think mine's start and end were about an hour from each other. It was an interesting presentation, though. As I was giving the introduction to the whole site, the Muslim call to prayer started, very close to us. They do pray 5 times a day. So they would chant for a few seconds then I would talk for 20 seconds and get stopped mid-sentence as they started again. This happened about 5 or 6 times before nobody could stop laughing because it was so funny. Then we realized that I can talk over the call to prayer and everybody could hear me. I am still wondering if this means I have a big mouth. Eventually, we started down the Via Dolorosa, and we stopped at each site so i could explain what happened there, traditionally. This is what took so long, the walking down the streets to the places. One interesting thing was that we were following a group of pilgrims singing in Latin the entire time, so we could see what I was talking about. When we arrived at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which has the last few sites inside, I finished up outside. When we went inside, it was pretty cool, but mainly to see the different traditions lined up beside one another. In one step you can move from Catholic to Greek Orthodox. When we got to the tomb, I really wanted to go in, because it is just cool to go in a place that is traditionally Jesus' tomb. We got in line, and they closed the gate right in front of us and told us that they were closing. So, we had to leave, but some of us will be going back tomorrow.

It was pretty cool to do a presentation on the site that I was talking about. I could point and say...right there is the spot where people congregate to remember Jesus being condemned to death. There is where they remember Jesus getting stripped of his clothes. It is like the ultimate visual aid, and you cannot get it any other way. I did not think it would be that neat, but it was. It was also just fun, because I like to speak.

That was most of my day, and I apologize for the very long entry, but so much happened that I could not cut anything more out. Tonight, I did at least manage to have some semblance of a social life, by going out to dinner with 9 other people. That was kind of fun, though I am not used to doing anything like that since I typically don't do much except homework, classes, church, meetings, homework, and homework. It was fun to go out, and I am glad that I have winter term when I can do it, especially since I am doing it in Jerusalem.

laila tov chaverim, good night friends.