Friday in Jerusalem

Even though I'll be in Jerusalem for over a week, I'll only have one Friday here. And after this Friday, I'm extremely grateful I had a chance to experience Friday in Jerusalem, which is certainly a religious extravaganza!

Friday is the Muslim prayer day, and Friday evening marks the beginning of the Jewish sabbath. Friday is also the day of the week that Jesus was executed, and so has particular significance for Christians as well, even though our day of worship is Sunday, the day of the Resurrection.

Unfortunately, due to tensions between Muslims and Jews, non-Muslims are not allowed on the Haram Ash-Sharif, the "Noble Sanctuary," on Fridays. Jews call this area the Temple Mount -- the top of the area where the Jewish Temple once stood until its destruction in 70 CE by the Romans. After Jerusalem came into Muslim hands in the 7th century CE, the Dome of the Rock (pictured at right) and al-Asqa mosques were built on what was formerly the Temple area. This was not just a case of the Muslims marking their conquest of the area; the Temple area was sacred to Muslims as well, since there is a story that Muhammad was transported to the Temple area in Jerusalem during a vision and from there, ascended into heaven, where he conversed with Moses and Jesus and other Jewish prophets, who confirmed the validity of his message. The Dome of the Rock marks the spot where Muhammad is believed to have ascended into heaven.

The tension around the Temple Mount/Haram Ash-Sharif comes from the fact that some Jews want to rebuild the Temple and think that that is in fact God's will for Jerusalem -- to see the Temple re-established as the center of Jewish worship in a Jewish state. Obviously, this large Muslim shrine sitting smack dab in the middle of where the Temple should be is considered a problem by Jews of this bent. After several outbreaks of violence against Muslims at prayer by Jews who want to rebuild the temple and thus destroy the Dome of the Rock, the Muslim community in Jerusalem decided to not allow non-Muslims on the Haram Ash-Sharif area on Fridays, the Muslim prayer day.

As a result of this troubled history, I was not able to attend Friday prayers at the Dome of the Rock, or even go to the Haram Ash-Sharif area to observe Friday prayers. So much for my "interfaith pilgrimage." But part of my "guiding question" for this trip was a question about the value of clear boundaries between traditions, spurred by my internal conflict over the issue of open communion in the Episcopal Church. If it's ok for Christians to restrict communion to only Christians, why shouldn't it be ok for Muslims to restrict attendance at Friday prayers to only Muslims? But more on this later, when I tell you about my actual visit to the Haram Ash-Sharif/Temple Mount, on Sunday morning.

I'd asked around when I arrived about doing the Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa, and was told that a group of Franciscan monks lead a public procession of the stations every Friday at 4 p.m. -- which seemed an odd time to me. I wondered why it was not at noon, the traditional hour of Jesus's crucifixion. When Friday arrived, I got my answer.

The Muslim call to prayer echoes from the loudspeakers every few hours throughout the Old City, and just before Friday noon prayers, the main time Muslims gather together at the mosque to worship and pray together, sure enough, the call to prayer came like clockwork. But afterwards, the broadcast continued -- with a very long spiel in Arabic over the loudspeakers. I couldn't tell what was being said, but I could only assume that perhaps the Friday khutba (sermon) at the mosque was being broadcast over the loudspeakers for the entire city to hear, whether you chose to attend Friday prayers or not. Although I don't know for sure that this was behind the later time for the Stations of the Cross, I can only imagine that it would be difficult to lead a public procession in the streets of Jerusalem in the middle of a very loud sermon being broadcast over loudspeakers.

I ventured out around 12:45 or 1 p.m. to get some lunch, and the place I wound up eating was right on El Wad (Hagai), one of the main thoroughfares of the Old City. Sometime after 1 p.m., I started to notice a steady stream of Muslim women in hijab (the headscarf) and Muslim men in taqiyah (the skullcap) all walking northwest down the street, away from the Haram Ash-Sharif area and towards the Damascus Gate, one of the exits from the Old City. "Ah," I thought. "The prayer service must have just let out." As I finished my lunch, I sat people-watching as this parade of Jerusalem's Muslim population went by. I was amazed by how long and continuous the stream of Muslims was -- I must have sat there for 30 minutes watching people walk by. There was virtually no one walking in the other direction, against the "flow of traffic," so to speak, except a few lost-looking tourists here and there, easily spotted by their shorts and backpacks, their water bottles and maps in hand, and slightly confused looks on their faces. Even though I didn't get to actually experience Friday prayers, I felt like I had gotten a slight flavor of the energy of it from this post-prayer parade.

After lunch, I visited St. Anne's Church near the Lion's Gate, just a few steps away from where I'm staying at the Ecce Homo Convent. St. Anne's is a 12th century church built by the Crusaders, but I went to see the archeological excavations they have on site of some pools believed to be the site where Jesus healed a paralytic (see John 5:1-15). However, it was the church, and not the archeological site, that had the most impact on me.

I wandered in to the church almost as an afterthought; I'd come really just to see the archeological site since it was a "biblical site," a place mentioned in the Gospels. I'd never heard of St. Anne's Church, and who cares about some Crusader church anyway -- that's a part of Christian history I'd rather forget. But as it turned out, the church was an amazing oasis of beauty and sound in the middle of the city. I had no idea before visiting St. Anne's that it is known for its acoustics, and pilgrims make special trips just to sing in the nave there.

I wandered in to the church, which was rather simple overall, nothing extremely striking visually, and found my way to the chapel where the Reserved Sacrament (bread and wine left over from Communion) was kept. I decided to sit there for a while with the Sacrament, where Christ's presence is believed to reside. I sat for a while, then knelt, and finally went face-down into a full prostration, something I had never done before but had seen my colleagues do at ordinations and on Good Friday services. Something about that posture of utter humility -- laying completely flat on one's face before the glory of God -- had always struck me and I had always felt drawn to do it myself, but I never had -- not even in private prayer in my own home.

As I lay there on my face, my eyes closed, my nose touching the rugs that were spread out in this area and smelling the musty smell of wool, my hands stretched out above me and my running shoes baring into the floor behind me, suddenly I heard a voice. A crystal clear, angelic voice, letting out the first few notes of a chant that echoed and rang throughout the church. Then a whole host of other voices joined hers, producing a beautiful chorus that rose and fell, bouncing off the rafters and wafting down to envelop me in a palpable caress. It was the tour group that I'd seen outside at the archeological site, I realized, whose tour guide was pointing and lecturing loudly in German. I'd been irritated and annoyed at their presence, standing all huddled around the main observation point and making it impossible for me to get there to read the informational signs and see the view. I'd mentally written them off as more irreverent tourists, but now, they were bringing me some of the sweetest religious music I'd ever heard.

They sang for a long time, and I lay there in a position of humble adoration of God, listening to them and allowing their prayers to become my own. Although I could not understand what they were saying because they were singing in German, I recognized some familiar tunes in the mix -- Amazing Grace, and some songs from Taizé, including "Bless the Lord, My Soul." When I knew the songs, I started to sing along in English, but always stopped myself, feeling led instead to allow myself to experience the music from the outside rather than to try to join in and participate. After nearly an hour spent in that sacred place, I felt I was in a perfect state of spiritual preparation for the Stations of the Cross, which were scheduled to begin in about 20 minutes.

I left St. Anne's and walked down the road to the area near the convent where the Stations begin. The first Station of the Cross, where Jesus was condemned to die by Pilate, is now enclosed within an elementary school for Arab children. As the group began to gather to await the start of the stations, the kids were leaving after school had let out for the day. There was something interesting about standing in front of classroom doors with Winnie the Pooh on them and watching kids walk out of school with their backpacks, dodging groups of pilgrims and monks and nuns and priests as they just tried to make their way to the exit of their school. But this wasn't an entirely unusual occurrence for them, I realized, since this spectacle happened every Friday afternoon. They were probably used to seeing all the religious people gathering in their courtyard as they left school for the weekend.

The atmosphere before the stations started was less than spiritual. A bunch of opportunists were walking throughout the crowds, selling brochures on the Via Dolorosa for "One dollar, one dollar! Five shekels, five shekels! One euro, one euro!"One particular man with a very gruff voice kept approaching people and guessing their language based on their appearance. "Chinese, one dollar!" He shouted in English at a group of Asians, who walked on by, ignoring him. (If they were Chinese, perhaps they didn't speak English, and they might not have even been Chinese!) "Deutsch, one euro! Deutsch, one euro!" he yelled at a bunch of blonde tourists with backpacks. When he got to me, he started to yell, "English, one --" but I held up my pamphlet, showing him I already had one, which I had purchased from a boy on the street who was standing there at the entrance to one of the churches, handing them out like an usher handing out programs for a service, and then said, "Five shekels" after I'd already taken one.

Finally, the circus atmosphere faded away as the Franciscans gathered and started the stations, with a booming, "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti," to which the crowds responded, "Amen!"

One of the brothers was carrying a wireless speaker, which was connected to the microphones that the other brothers were using to read the stations at each stop. Each station was read in Italian, then in English, then in Spanish, each brother passing the microphone down to another for the translation into the next language. It was quite a sight to see this crowd of people from all over the world walking together the Way of the Cross, re-tracing Jesus's steps in the actual city where he was crucified.

The stations were created in the 15th century as a substitute "pilgrimage" experience for those who could not afford to travel to Jerusalem and visit the actual sites of Jesus's crucifixion, death, and resurrection, but eventually it became a prominent practice within Jerusalem as well, to re-trace Jesus's steps from his condemnation to his crucifixion. Although the stations are not all specifically associated with historical events, if the area where Pilate's governor's palace once stood is correct (where the Arab school and the Ecce Homo convent now are), and if the place of the crucifixion at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is correct, then the path between the two would be roughly accurate in terms of the path Jesus walked, carrying the cross -- even though the locations of the streets are different now than they would have been in Jesus's time.

After the 7th Station, there was a bit of a traffic jam at an intersection in the Old City, as a group carrying a cross and singing loudly in Spanish proceeded in the opposite direction that we had been traveling. I thought the Via Dolorosa continued in the direction they were coming from, but when I got to that intersection, there was a man there waving everyone on in the same direction as the cross procession was going. Somewhere along the way, I lost the Franciscans and wound up inadvertently joining this other group, which was a group of Spanish-speaking people with some priests dressed in albs and red stoles (as opposed to our group, led by the Franciscan monks in their brown habits). The group stopped in front of the Church of the Redeemer, near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and recited some things and read some Gospel passages in Spanish. Although I couldn't follow all of it, despite the class I took in pastoral Spanish last fall, I was able to recite the Lord's Prayer in Spanish with them at the end of the station. (Thanks, John Solomon, for making us say the Lord's Prayer at the end of so many of our Spanish classes!)

As the group moved on toward the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, I moved ahead of them to try to catch up with the Franciscans, having realized once the group came to a stop and was speaking only in Spanish that this was not the group I started with! Inside the Holy Sepulcher, I realized that the Franciscan group was up top, on the hill of Calvary, doing the stations of Jesus's crucifixion and death up there. As they came down the staircase, I joined them, and followed them to the site of Jesus's tomb for the final two stations, "Jesus is laid in the tomb," and "Jesus is raised from the dead." As I stood with that group of pilgrims before the site of Jesus's tomb and heard the Franciscan brother read in a heavily-accented English, "Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here, he is risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where they have laid him," tears filled my eyes and I felt a shiver run through me.

"Come and see the place where they have laid him" -- a phrase I had heard so many times on Easter Sunday morning, as the pastor read the Gospel passage about the Resurrection -- and now I was standing at the actual place where they laid him. Now the invitation was real and literal, "Come and see the place where they have laid him."

So I did. I waited in the long line of pilgrims gathered behind police barricades around the side of the tomb area, waiting for their turn to go in and see the place where they have laid him. As I walked around the outside of the structure built around the tomb and saw people praying and leaving candles along the railings on the outside of the tomb, I felt a sense of excitement, anticipation, and joy, realizing and recognizing that, unlike the other tombs I'd visited on this trip so far, this tomb was empty! Jesus was not here! The spot was sacred for the fact that he had once died and laid here, but his body was not here. We gather around an empty tomb, and that makes all the difference. I was reminded once again of the reason that I find my spiritual home in Christianity, of the thing that distinguishes Christianity from all other religions to me -- the Resurrection.

The line for entrance to the tomb was moving right along, when suddenly it was halted due to a procession of Orthodox monks coming through to chant and sing and pray at the tomb. The Franciscan Catholic monks had come through just 30 minutes before, and had moved on to a chapel beside the tomb area, where an organ was now playing loudly, drowning out the sounds of the Orthodox chant. Many different sects of Christianity share this most sacred site, but unfortunately they don't really share it. Instead, they co-exist, each doing their own liturgies, not worshipping together. I had a similar feeling to the one I'd felt at the Mosque of the Ascension on Thursday morning: a sense of gladness at seeing the different Christian communities in one place together, but a sense of sadness that they felt they could not worship together as they commemorated the death of their Savior on that Friday in Jerusalem so many years ago. I remembered Jesus's prayer for his followers in the Garden of Gethsemane: "…that they may be one, as we [Jesus and the Father] are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me" (John 17:22-23). I thought of all the songs we sing in church about being "one body in Christ." And I looked at the competing liturgies around me, sighing and mourning that we as the Christian community have not lived out Jesus's prayer that we all be one, and in that way, that we are not witnessing to the world in the way that Jesus prayed we would.

Finally, it was my turn to enter the tomb. I walked in, placed my hand on the shelf where Jesus's body once lay, and knelt in silent prayer. "Ok, come on, let's go," barked the monk in charge of regulating traffic, hurrying me and the three or four other pilgrims out so the next set of five or so could go in. I sighed, wishing for something like the silence and quiet and calm that I'd found at the tomb of Baha'u'llah in 'Akko. How do they expect anyone to have a religious experience on a timetable?

The Stone of Anointing, with Franciscan monks praying at it

Surprisingly, one of the most powerful parts of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for me was one of the least historically verifiable spots. The "stone of anointing," which commemorates where Jesus's body was laid after being taken down from the cross and where it was anointed for burial before being placed in the tomb, is right at the entrance to the Holy Sepulcher, and was only placed there in the 19th century. But when I knelt there and placed my hand on it, I realized that the stone was covered in anointing oil -- rich, smooth, fragrant oil, which soaked into my fingertips. I rubbed it on my hands and made the sign of the cross on my forehead with it, and the smell of the oil stayed with me for the rest of the day, transporting me back to this sanctuary of holiness. Whether or not this was the actual spot where Jesus's body was laid for anointing, the memorial to it that has been created was very moving to me.

Jews gathering to pray at the Western Wall

After exploring all the chapels and levels of the Holy Sepulcher complex and spending time in silent meditation and prayer there for around an hour and a half, I left the Christian Quarter of the Old City and made my way to the Jewish Quarter and joined the throngs of Jews headed to the Western Wall to pray to usher in Shabbat. As I walked past historic synagogues and tons of shops tightly closed up for the Sabbath, I saw a group of Jewish schoolboys pouring out of a building (maybe another synagogue?) and singing and clapping joyously, galloping and jumping down the stairs to the courtyard and forming a circle, dancing and clapping together as they prepared to go to the Wall. I went on ahead of them, and as I entered the Western Wall plaza, I was aware of the fact that I was one of about only five women total in the sea of people there who was wearing pants. Women in long skirts and head scarfs surrounded me, pushing strollers, talking with one another, carrying their prayer books, rocking slowly back and forth while reciting their prayers. I walked down to the Wall on the women's side (which was about one-third of the Wall, while the men's section took up two-thirds of it) and walked through crowds of Jewish women, some singing joyfully in a group, some gossiping and socializing, some praying individually and silently.

After sitting and watching the festivities for a long while, a man approached me and asked where I was from, and if I wanted to get a drink with him "after." So prayer time at the Wall is apparently a time to pick up women??? I decided to make my exit, discreetly, after this encounter, disappearing into the crowds so he wouldn't see me again.

I walked down El Wad (Hagai) back toward the convent, and stopped for dinner at a restaurant just a few doors down from the place I'd had lunch earlier that day. From that spot, I watched a different parade -- this one of Jews in yarmulkes and Russian-looking fur hats and broad-rimmed hats, dressed mostly in black, the Orthodox men with their long curls hanging down their faces -- as they all walked toward the Western Wall, and later, after dark, as they all walked back out toward the Damascus Gate exit of the Old City, walking the exact same path the Muslims had walked earlier, after noonday prayers.

Just another Friday in Jerusalem.