I did not know that during Jesus’ time, there had been many claiming to be the Messiah and each one was captured, tortured, and murdered in various horrific ways. The Romans were very good at death. It makes so much sense to me now that Jesus often told His followers to tell no one of the many miracles He performed…it seems very likely that Jesus knew that the empire was always close by.
We walked the Via Dolorosa, literally “way of sorrows”, the processional path through the Old City of Jerusalem commemorating Jesus’ walk from the Roman praetorium to the cross. This leads to the Holy Sepulchre, the church that contains and venerates the locations of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. [At the end of this post, I give Dr. Maguire’s more technical description of this site.]
Walking the Via Dolorosa is not a quiet, reflective pilgrimage. The Old City is dusty, smelly, dirty, with many shops along the sides of narrow walkways full of all kinds of Christian souvenirs ready to be sold to tourists. It really makes it feel cheap and touristy. The shop owners are loud and try their best to get your attention, ”You like this?! Only one dollar!” I could hear one shop owner yell out as we passed by. Our line kept shuffling along with our guides, one at the front and one at the back, doing their best to gather us under each station and talk with us a bit as we continued our procession. But it was loud, noisy, stinky, and simply hard to concentrate. The yelling of street merchants, the honking of scooter horns or other smallish motorized vehicles (which, by the way, do not move out of the way for you – you move – it’s not rude, just cultural), the overwhelming smells of cigarette smoke and rancid trash, and then a small boy showed me his middle finger like it was his trophy, as he peered at me, eyes smiling, from down a dark alley. It was then that I realized this was maybe not so different during Jesus’ time. He was mocked and spit at, yelled at, likely even cursed at as He made his way through the crowds to Golgotha. I am NOT comparing our procession to Jesus’ walk to the cross; simply making a connection to the ancient world as I reflect on how disturbed and uncomfortable I was walking the Via Dolorosa. All of this is happening under the stations of the cross every single day in the heat of the Old City.
Needless to say, by the time we reached the Holy Sepulchre, I was out of sorts, hot, tired, and disorientated. Our guides brought us into an open space that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Apparently an Ethiopian Christian church once stood in the space but had been mostly destroyed by some sort of natural disaster. The church still exists on paper – it is all very complicated actually. Every church here is vying for space so if the Ethiopians leave they will never get their church back so even though it is in ruins, they do not leave, and they cannot repair it without a “permit”, which they likely will never get because other Christian churches have more power. Like I said, it’s very complicated and I am no expert – only sharing what I remember being told about the area we found ourselves standing in at the top of the Via Dolorosa.
Side note: I cannot stress enough that it is important to understand that Israel is a very complicated place. Be skeptical of anyone who tries to lay out the political and/or religious landscape of this country as if it is simple and straightforward. I learned this very quickly as I began to experience just a small slice of life here as a pilgrim.
As we gathered into a circle around our guides, we were given instructions and information about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Then Rabbi Brad became very quiet, asking us to do the same, and he asked us what we were looking for (on this pilgrimage) and to share that with the group if we felt so moved. Many shared, it was a very moving time for us as a group. I did not share, as in fact, I had nothing to share – I just felt emotionally drained and frankly, numb, having been overwhelmed by the walk itself. I had not thought about this pilgrimage as a seeker, only as a pilgrim. I am not sure I will know what I found here for quite some time…there is so much to unpack about this experience. Just as the others, none of us came here empty-handed – we all brought with us years of a life lived which only widens even more those thin spaces we’ve built ourselves into over the years. The word ’embodiment’ keeps coming to mind but I do not have more words yet to put around it. What I have seen and experienced here in the Holy Land isn’t just about visiting places of veneration, seeing a monument or ruins, entering a 5th century church, viewing a shrine, climbing a mountain, or immersing in waters we read about from scripture. The people and places here are real and right now. The people I traveled with on this journey are real and right now. I took this journey very decidedly with the love of my life, Thomas, the light of my life, and we have been co-creating together. But even when you read a book someone else you love has read and recommended to you, what you experience and what they experience are unique and separate. Reading the pages of a good book, you begin to embody the words, maybe even becoming each character as they respond to their circumstances, with each chapter you begin to sink deeper and deeper into the geography of the places to which the book takes you, deeper and deeper into the story – co-creating between reader and author – it is all a co-creation and yet, all very personal – no one else can see and feel and touch it the way you do as you lift the words of the pages into your mind and heart as it flows through all of your senses…that is Israel for me…it is now in my mind and heart forever, tightly bound… and if it does begin to unravel for me, it will be a long, slow release, tethering my senses in and to and with smells, and tastes, and sights…
From ”Chronology of the Holy Land”, by Rev. Dr. Brian Maguire:
Via Dolorosa: ”way of sorrows”; the processional path through the Old City of Jerusalem commemorating Jesus’ walk from the Roman praetorium to the cross. The current Via Dolorosa, at least since the eighteenth century, includes nine devotional stations. There have been various other vias at other times. The current stations neatly coincide with Franciscan owned properties in Jerusalem. The current via presumes that the Antonia and not Herod’s former palace was the place of Jesus’ trial.
Holy Sepulchre/Anastasis: Church that contains and venerates the locations of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Originally constructed under Constantine on the site of a pagan temple to Aphrodite, the original church had an enormous basilica stretching far to the east of the current structure, an open courtyard that included Golgotha, and a rotunda surrounding the tomb of Jesus. This structure was severely damaged during the Persian invasion of 614. Subsequently repaired, the building was again largely destroyed by Hakim the Mad in 1009. Partially repaired by the Byzantines, Crusader architects rebuilt the church to its current plan. While inside the current walls of Jerusalem, the location would have stood just north of the city walls in the first third of the first century, straddling an abandoned quarry and Jewish cemetery. When new northern walls were constructed, the location fell within the city walls.
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