Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land (8 page)

The hymns we sing are familiar: “All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name”; “Psalm 23” (the Scottish version); “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty”; and “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus.” The military language of the last one, exhorting “ye soldiers of the cross,” gives me the kind of schoolgirl giggles that come from extreme discomfort. Why would we sing this song in this land — with its Crusader history?

After church comes rest time, and a few of us take a walk to the newest section of West Jerusalem. It's a largely commercial area built after 1948, when the nation of Israel was established. Office buildings, pedestrian malls, banks. We walk for about an hour and see many ultra-orthodox Jews, wearing black hats and prayer shawls, who never glance at us. We pass The Holy Bagel Bakery many times, until it becomes a reference point. Every time I see it, I'm happy to see it again. I want to stop and buy a holy bagel, but my companions keep walking. They are intent on scouting places for possible nightlife.

We return to the college courtyard just in time to set off again. This time the entire group of forty is going to see the model of the Second Temple, which is housed at the Holy Land Hotel. I realize too late that we'll be in an outdoor courtyard under the blazing sun, and I didn't bring my hat.

We pilgrims strike familiar stand-and-listen poses. Stephen begins his lecture by saying that 70 to 80 percent of Israeli Jews today are secular, meaning that they do not practice their religion. He goes on to talk about the model of the city, leaving my mind
where it has run aground. What if he were to say that 70 to 80 percent of Christians are secular? I would not comprehend. No, that's not true. I would comprehend. America is full of people who reduce the power of Christian faith to an obligatory church visit twice a year. Would they be considered secular Christians? But does that describe 70 to 80 percent? That statistic would tear the guts right out of Christianity. That statistic would make me weep with despair — and with a sense of my own inadequacy to respond.

So how is it different for Jews? Is it more acceptable to be secular if you're Jewish rather than Christian? That doesn't track. Are there secular Muslims, too? What does that mean? I thought certain words implied “sacred” — that is, if you combined them with “secular,” you would create an oxymoron. Yet Stephen just said that 70 to 80 percent of Israeli Jews are secular. Why aren't we all standing around with our mouths agape?

I've been having a conversation in my head, missing the stream of information. Stephen is gesturing to the model of Jerusalem, which spreads out like a prairie dog village. He points out the places where the city walls have been located during different times in history. The lecture lasts a full hour and a half.

After a supper of chicken and yellow rice, it's time for Evensong at the cathedral at Saint George's. Attendance is down to a handful, so few that we sit behind the pulpit in the divided wooden seats usually reserved for the choir. It is uncomfortable but intimate, and the cathedral glows with twilight.

The preacher is Nael, the assistant priest at St. George's, whom our group has been getting to know in courtyard conversations in the evenings. He gives the sermon on Acts 20:22: “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there.” What a fitting verse for a pilgrim! Nael's talk makes me feel a kinship with the apostle Paul, even though I'm not always a fan. Paul's writings are the ones most
often used to keep women out of leadership roles in church, so he and I have wrestled a few rounds. But here at last is something the apostle and I share. We both felt compelled to go to Jerusalem, not knowing what would happen to us there.

Nael talks about the two-thousand-year witness of Palestinian Christians and how it's changing. Christians are leaving, diminishing the worshiping communities. Someday Jerusalem may become a sort of spiritual Disneyland rather than a place of vibrant Christian faith. Nael urges us to look for the face of Christ in every person we meet. We don't know when we will encounter Christ. “Especially in this Holy Land,” he says. “Christ could be anywhere.”

After church, people gather for a glass of wine in the courtyard. What a delightful change from the coffee and cookies offered at my own church after worship. We chat with some of the people staying in other quarters at Saint George's. I meet Paul, a young priest from the United States, interning at Saint George's for one year. I also meet an older man who tells me he's a scientist who was imprisoned by the Israeli government for whistle-blowing related to nuclear weapons. He's gregarious and very comfortable telling his story. The two women across from him are from Sweden, here on the “Ecumenical Accompaniment Program” of the World Council of Churches, and they've just spent a few weeks in one of the Palestinian refugee camps. They're eager to speak to this local celebrity.

Charlie sits down to talk to Paul about his job at Saint George's, which is essentially Paul's seminary fieldwork, similar to what Charlie is doing in his Baptist church in South Carolina. After they compare notes about their duties, Charlie asks Paul, “What's it like to minister in the Holy Land? Isn't the devil ­really powerful?”

“Isn't he powerful everywhere?” answers Paul.

“No doubt,” says Charlie. “But here worst of all.”

Kyle joins the conversation, with a number of issues on the tip of his tongue. I feel a trifle irritated because I wanted to see where the devil talk would go.

Kyle says to Paul, “I'm curious about whether you use the Nicene Creed in your work here.”

“To some extent,” Paul reponds.

“Baptists don't do creeds,” Charlie says.

“More's the pity,” Kyle says. “The Nicene is such a foundational creed. People think it's unifying, but it's actually quite divisive.”

“How do you mean?” asks Charlie. I notice that he is always willing to listen to Kyle.

“It was written in 381 to read ‘the Spirit proceeds from the Father.' But in about 1000, the West added ‘and the Son,' which pretty much destroys any chance at ecumenical dialogue. Do you see? So Paul, here you are in the middle of all these faiths, and I want to know: What's your opinion?”

Before Paul can answer, he's called away.

“This is exactly why we don't do creeds,” Charlie says. “They're nothing but trouble.”

For once I can understand Charlie's perspective, even though I'm a word person and the Reformed tradition is full of creeds. Words can be a tool or a weapon, even when they're ancient. They're never really dead. A few words have the power to enliven or to enrage, the power to build a bridge or to fortify a wall.

Back in our simple dorm room, JoAnne shuts the window so that the Muslim midnight call to prayer won't wake us up, as it did the previous night. There's a minaret just outside. Even though the room is a little too warm with the window closed, I agree. Tonight I want to sleep more than I want to pray.

The Dome of the Rock, Old Jerusalem

CHAPTER 7

Sin-cere

Lord, my heart is not proud.

P
SALM 131:1
(NIV)

O
N THE BUS
waiting to go to the Wailing Wall, I realize that yesterday was September 11, the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. At home in Washington, D.C., that date would have been significant; here it slipped past me. I feel disconnected from my normal life. Maybe my transformation into a pilgrim has been too successful.

It's perplexing, because in other ways I feel like a pilgrim failure. I have good intentions. I want to open myself like a pilgrim. I pray to become whatever God wills. But I get in my own way. Instead of confronting the Holy, I confront myself. I have so many limits, from physical to intellectual. Being in the sun exhausts me. I need caffeine. I need a nap. I need time alone. I'm unable to think past certain thoughts. Maybe that's always been the case, only now I'm aware of the logjam. I can feel the pilgrimage pulling me to jump over this pile-up to somewhere new. But to where? It's threatening to think something new. I've known Jesus every day of my life, to my great comfort. Do I dare change that?

Sitting on the bus, I want to sigh and sigh and sigh — as if to expel these tumbling thoughts and so rid myself of discomfort.
Yet I know I'll breathe in something else, something threatening, or wonderful, or both at the same time. What's more, I can't avoid it: I must take in a next breath. Can I trust the Spirit to be in that breath, too?

In last night's sermon, Nael talked about looking for the face of Christ in each person. I take his words seriously because he lives as a Palestinian Christian in a city literally divided by religion. If he can discover Christ in the faces of Muslims and Jews and atheists, maybe I can, too. Even as I'm pondering this, another interpretation occurs to me, a kind of flip side. Perhaps my face can reflect Christ. Perhaps mine can be the face of Christ.

I'm getting a sense — almost a physical sense — of inner divinity unlike anything I've ever felt before. In what way can I house Christ? I've experienced, in lovemaking, a sense of bodily holiness, but this is different. It's not relational, it's more integral to my own self, my own body-occupying self. Simply writing these thoughts in my journal feels threatening. My Calvinist background has taught me I'm unworthy. The phrase “inner divinity” seems heretical. But I let it stand.

Religion is bound up with bodies. That's not a new concept to me, but I'm seeing new implications. Aren't bodies how religion becomes violent? Violence may begin as an emotion, but it's expressed through bodies. Not only through breath and words, but blows! And isn't love the same — beginning in emotion, expressed through bodies. Yes, both sides of spiritual passion — violence and love — are bound up in our very human flesh. Is this a fuller meaning of incarnation than what I've yet grasped?

I feel a new appreciation gestating in me. I'm experiencing, rather than simply understanding, the essential unity of the spiritual and physical realities. We are not just souls housed in bodies. All of creation truly is shot through with the presence of God. Yet I was taught that this truth borders on heresy. No wonder we Calvinists walk through life blind to the Spirit that lurks everywhere.

The bus pulls up to the Dumb Gate. As we unload, I say to
JoAnne, “I'm struck dumb. What a perfect name! Do you know why it's called the Dumb Gate?”

“Not ‘Dumb,' ” she replies. “ ‘Dung.' As in poop.”

“Poop?” I repeat.

Kyle laughs. “All those animals — remember? For Temple sacrifice. This gate leads to the town dump.”

“Oh,” JoAnne says, like she's just putting things together. “Gehenna.”

“Right you are,” says Kyle. “Oh hell.”

I don't say anything. I'm busy thinking how truly dumb I've been. For all my years of Bible studies, it has never occurred to me just how much dung the Temple would have had to deal with. Funny. The whole point of sacrifice is to make one clean. Yet the process is anything but sanitary.