Holy Week : Jerusalem Remembered

I spent Holy Week 2013 in Jerusalem. These are my reflections of that time, first published in Parish Connections (June 2013), the magazine of St James' King Street, Sydney. The experience is much in mind during this year's Holy Week.

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” - Henry David Thoreau

At the end of March Julianne and I made a series of journeys over four weeks, from Ethiopia – including the ‘New Jerusalem’ of Lalibela, to Jerusalem itself for Holy Week, followed by two weeks in and around Istanbul, Selcuk, Ephesus, Priene, Miletus, Didyma and Sirince.  Julianne had previously been visiting Anglican Board of Mission partners and projects in South Sudan, and after I joined her made further visits in Gambella, Addis Ababa, Jerusalem and Gaza.

Arriving in Jerusalem at 4:00am on Palm Sunday morning and being dropped off at the wrong accommodation, had Julianne and me feeling like two apostles furtively searching in the early hours for a donkey on that first Palm Sunday, as we wearily trundled our bags over cobbled paths looking for the Guest House at St Georges’ Cathedral.

While in Jerusalem, I heard one of the diocesan staff describing visitors to the city as ‘tourist-pilgrims’, and wondered about both the convergence of these two types of traveller, and also about their differences.  I thought of myself primarily as a pilgrim, wanting to connect with and to pray at places of significance to people of faith.  But inevitably a westerner is seen as a tourist, and by implication someone who has dollars, shekels, birr, or Turkish lira to spend at market stalls.

I never quite got used to having my bags carried (surely pilgrims should carry their own), but through the pride in his work of the smartly uniformed hotel porter in Addis Ababa, I came to recognise the importance for him of doing a good job, and with dignity to receive a tip for service.  The hotel shuttle bus driver asked if I could find work for him in Australia, as he wanted better economic opportunities.

The evident devotion of Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia, stopping at the church door to kiss the entrance, gave me a renewed appreciation of the deacon’s kiss of the gospel book, and kiss of the altar by the priest in our own religious culture.  Devotion is more far-reaching than anything words alone can convey; the engagement and fervour of sign and silence was as prayerful as I have ever seen.  There were other connections to be made with our familiar religious and spiritual culture too.  The sound from the minaret of the call to prayer, became a kind of inter-religious daily office, when at times with no psalter to hand, the mosque prayers prompted a praying of remembered verses, Benedictus or Magnificat, and prayers for the inhabitants of the place and any known needs.

Public prayer was much in evidence.  In a large square near the Damascus Gate, in front of what had become our convenient local cafe, several hundred Muslim men gathered for prayer.  Words are inadequate to describe the silence, and the unified movement of the posture changes.  If silence can be heard, this was such a moment.  The large number of heavily armed police surrounding the worshippers created a charged atmosphere in the square.  We learned from the Palestinian cafe owner that Muslim men gather in public places to pray, as Israeli authorities have banned men under fifty years old from praying in Mosques.  The scene reminded me of Dom Sebastian Moore’s book subtitle words; here powerfully, people were praying “as if it Mattered”.

The Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer in the Diocese of Jerusalem uniquely contains the phrase, “...giving him to be born in Bethlehem to share our common life, and here in Jerusalem to die upon the cross”.  I had never felt a great desire to go to the Holy Land, but being present for Holy Week and the Easter Triduum in what is called there, the land of the Holy One was a deeply-felt gift.  It was a great joy to join with Jerusalem diocesan clergy in the renewal of ordination vows at the Chrism Mass with the bishop, and I was mindful that in a diocese comprising Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, not all clergy were to able to be present.  The hospitality of the dean, Fr Hosam Naoum, inviting Julianne and me to be among those to have our feet washed by the bishop at the Maundy Thursday Eucharist, and the walk to Gethsemane after the stripping of the altar, were wonderful inclusions.

Joining hundreds of people along the Via Dolorosa on Good Friday, with prayers being led in many different languages, was I imagine, a once in a lifetime experience.  Though for me, the quiet and simplicity of St Anne’s Church, and of St Helen’s chapel deep in the crypt of Holy Sepulchre Church were places away from the crowds where it was easy to pray.

The guide on our visit to Priene, Miletus, and Didyma, on showing us the ruins of the Temple of Athena, observed that civilizations and religions come and go, and that the rich have always liked to build monuments (to themselves).  I liked the unromanticised perspective of this retired university archaeologist’s comment that wars, changing economic fortunes and earthquakes, are the constant and certain threads running through this history.  Not a few buildings and remains we saw had successively been temples, churches, mosques, and sometimes now museums.

It was potentially overwhelming to stand in a place of such formative Christian history as the Church of Mary at Ephesus, and try to piece together what I knew of doctrinal controversies and the resulting councils there.  The third-century hymn came more readily to mind and lips as I found myself singing Sub tuum praesidium, ‘We fly to your patronage, O holy Mother of God’, as I walked around the ruins of the church where the 431 Council affirmed Mary’s title was rightly Theotokos, God-bearer.

Similarly, standing at the place believed to be the tomb of St John the Apostle, and looking at the hills near Ephesus, I wondered about the recollections of this gospel’s writer, wishing I had a copy with me to read.  My curiosity at the time is now better guided through reading Dorothy Lee’s recent book, Hallowed in Truth and Love: Spirituality in the Johannine Literature.

There is certainly a close association between tastes and the experience of places.  My supply of Ethiopian coffee won’t last forever, but meanwhile prompts memories of poverty and hardship for many people there - whether young boys already becoming skilled at pursuing tourists in the hope of selling cheap souvenirs, or more distressingly, the sight of prematurely aged and bent women carrying large loads of firewood branches tied to their backs, from the steep hills above Addis Ababa to sell in the city.

The sad thing about Turkish coffee is that it is too expensive for many of the locals to drink.  With high unemployment, every day many men sit drinking at tea houses; sometimes talking, sometimes in silences that seem to last for ever, sometimes playing board games.  Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk’s character in the novel Snow, describing a depressing picture of “poor jobless, luckless, hopeless, motionless creatures in every town ... these poor brothers of mine” sometimes seemed not too far from the reality.

My Palestinian breakfast of pita, hummus, and Arabic coffee in the warm sun at St George’s Guest House, was only a short walk away from the daily realities of the complex social and political relationships existing in Jerusalem, evident more obviously in the bustle of the markets than within the respective Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Armenian Quarters of the old city.

In an introduction to the cathedral liturgy book, some words from Bishop Suheil Dawani of Jerusalem give me hope:

“All Christians must come here first and foremost as pilgrims...  [Pilgrims] come here to seek prayerfully the decisions God wants them to make.  And God will always surprise us.  God has not finished with our Church yet.”

I had not gone on these travels with either agenda or outcomes planned, and I hope had visited more as pilgrim than tourist.  I learned in these places where variously beauty, fragile peace, poverty, hardship and perseverance are found, to see my accustomed environment of opportunity, relative wealth, religious and political freedom, in a newly valued perspective.  Perhaps more importantly, in the midst of many hardships I saw people whose faith, hope and joy was deeply sustaining.

A reflection by Julianne Stewart on her visit to Gaza can be found at www.abmission.org