By  Jim and Judy Kutz

Stained glass window in the Al Aqsa mosque

Early this morning we went up to Jerusalem from Bethlehem.  There we saw many great wonders that we have heard about since childhood.  We saw the strong and ancient stones of walls, buildings, temples, churches, and holy places raised up through rich cultural designs and religious aspirations; layers of them laid down by one civilization after another, usually by violent conquest, and all of them occupiers of the land that native peoples called their home.  These natives go back to Jesus’ time, always hiding in the shadows, always dancing to the occupiers’ music, but always practicing their own heritage.  What a complex confusion it has turned out to be!  We couldn’t get away from droves of wandering, milling, meandering foreigners from the ends of the earth, all filling their eyes and flash cards insatiably.

Pools of Bethesda, Jerusalem

Would that all people come to Jerusalem the same way Jesus did when he was twelve years old for the Passover feast (Luke 2); full of masterful spiritual discernment and human wisdom, obviously and intentionally being about God’s business.  What if tourists and pilgrims were so?  Or the pray-ers in Al Aqsa mosque or in the Holy Sepulchre Church or at the Western Wall, all places we now visit to see if we might unravel the violence/God’s business puzzle of the present?  The question can stretch out starting in Jerusalem to the Knesset, the ISF(Israeli Security Force), the settlers, the West Bank and Gaza and to the end of the earth.  What if the high ideals and rhetoric of many nations actually ended up on the ground as justice?

What if we all cried over Jerusalem as Jesus did and ask longingly and lovingly, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace!” (Luke 19).

Of course we know the old, old story and the fact that Jesus’ life boiled down to the final word offered by Roman-occupied Jerusalem.  Even all that lonely, sweaty praying in Gethsemane didn’t stop the pain and death, nor the controversy over what that one death actually means for humanity.  But then many voices through human history, sometimes faintly faithful, sometimes fatally courageous, bear witness to God’s final word stamped on the world in the extreme paradox of cross/resurrection.

The paradox is still in play.  There is a blight under the dividing walls here, like ugly plastic bags blowing everywhere and no place at the caprice of a haughty wind.  But if anything, we’ve been reminded over and over again on this trip of the beautiful, brave hope of those who anchor their lives on resurrection, on unseen, but expected joyful future.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre and its unmoved ladder

Maybe that future was glimpsed through the painfully beautiful colored windows of the Al Aqsa mosque, reminding us that in spite of mindless, hard building material, the light will not be stopped.  There it was again at the deep Bethesda pools where a man waited 38 long years for someone to help him into the water when the angel disturbed it (John 5).  Jesus came and healed him within 38 seconds, at least that’s how one can imagine it.  Could there be such a surprising healing like that now?  God knows.   And again it was there in the amazing acoustics of St. Anne’s church that made us into a choir of professional angelic singers.  And so again, maybe even more powerfully, in the reflection time in our single hearts while sitting in a church pew, the still small voice adding to ours and others like us into people of faith/practice.

Now it’s down again from Jerusalem in the cool of the evening to Bethlehem, our last night in the Holy Land Hotel where we broke bread many times over the past week, and maybe remembering Jesus from time to time in the process and what Paul meant by, “…until he comes again” (1Cor. 11).