Today was a day of rest. All 40 pastors on this trip split up into different groups to visit different English speaking churches. I went to a Lutheran church. The pastor was from Iowa. It was strange after hearing strong middle eastern accents at location after location to hear a guy from Iowa speak. The church was inside the walls of the Old City and this was my first time inside the gates. We went through the Jaffa Gate to get there. To be inside the Old City thrilled me more than anything. After church a group of us got in line to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (pictured above). As with other places we have visited, this is a church built over a holy site. This particular site was the burial tomb of Jesus. I was at the burial site of Jesus. I knelt in the tomb and prayed... in the burial place of Jesus. The place he was laid after his crucifixion. The place where three days later he was raised from the dead and was alive again. I was at THAT site. Can I just say that words cannot express nor contain the sheer weight of such a moment? Really. Unbelievable.
It seemed a shame to move on to what was next. I went to the marketplace around the holy sites. I wanted to get somethings to bring home. I ended up haggling with a bedouin over some items I wanted. I played the haggling game well, I thought. Ignore the initial price, refuse to name your top dollar, and then walk away. As predicted, he came after me and kept saying, "Tell you how much you pay. Maximum dollars. Tell me!" I refused three or four times, walked away one more time, and offered him about 30 percent of what he quoted initially. He said, "I have to eat. You have to feed your family, I have to feed my family. Really, tell me your maximum price." I told him I was going to find something in my price range since he wasn't interested in my offer. Finally, after 20 minutes of it, he accepted it. At the end he said, "What do you do for a living? You a business man? Because you making me poor!" And I wondered how much lower I could have gone.
After that a few of us went up on the ramparts, the walkway around the walls the city. We walked for about a mile up and down the ramparts and then eventually made our way out of the Zion Gate and back to our hotel.
After dinner we had a presentation by an Arab Christian who is from Bethlehem which is now in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank. He gave us a personal, political, and theological perspective on this issues we read and hear about in Israel. In a word, it is complex. Arabs (those who speak Arabic and claim to be Arab) and Jews (those of biological descent and/or theological conviction to Judaism) each have arguments for what is best here. The basic question seems to be whether to have a "one state" (nation no longer Israel, but Palestine) or "two state" (separate state of Israel and Palestinians state is West Bank and Gaza Strip) solution. Other possibilities are out there, but they were variations of one of those choices it seemed. Land, politics, faith, and genealogy all converge on these issues. Believe it or not, we did not solve the Arab-Jewish conflict tonight. Maybe tomorrow night. It is complex.
Big day tomorrow as we finally get the guided tour of the Old City. We will be following the footsteps of Jesus to the cross, burial, and resurrection. Off to bed for now.
Shalom
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