Gethsemane

David's wife, Ahuva, has joined us today.  She is a teacher.  Schools are closed today, because this is the Jewish weekend.  Shabbat will begin this afternoon.

We have stopped now and we're on our way down to the Garden.

Where we have stopped, we have been approached by a large contingent of street peddlers.  We've been warned to keep our hands in our pockets here, because there are pickpockets all over.

We are standing now on the Mount of Olives, looking down at the Old City.  Beneath us is a large graveyard.  We can see the south steps of the Old City where we stood on Wednesday.  From here, we can see almost the entire Old City.

Down and to the left of us is the City of David and just a little bit of the original Jebusite city.  Among these ruins are the writings of Shebna.  He was a Gentile whose name appears in the Book of Isaiah as a palace official.  He is the one who was downgraded in rank because of misconduct.

In the Old City, we can clearly see the Dome of the Rock.  This is where the old Temple sat.  The Temple would have been the outstanding building of the area, visible from almost anywhere, and undoubtedly was a beautiful and gleaming building.  It would be something that would certainly have been very nice to have over your head at any time--a reminder of the presence of God.

There are Jewish tombs directly below us, all over the side of the mountain.

We are on the Garden path now.  We have just passed what are supposed to be the tombs of Haggai and Malachi.

I purchased a map from one of the vendors, and all of a sudden two of them closed in on me.  I'm quite sure that they were attempting to pick my pocket.  Fortunately, I had my hand on my wallet.

Becky is our hero today.  One of the peddlers grabbed some bills from Phil's shirt pocket, but she was fast enough to latch onto the man's wrist and hold him until one of the other men could retrieve the money.

We have passed some ossuaries--stone boxes containing the bones of early Christians--several to a box.  This is the first Christian burial found on the Mount of Olives.

We are now at a Catholic church,  Dominus Flevit.  This is supposed to be where Jesus wept while looking over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44).

This is a very small building.  Whether this is the real site, or not, there is certainly a perfect view of the Temple location from here.  This church faces west instead of east, because it is looking toward the Temple Mount.

In the church grounds we see another type of olive press, or gethsemane.  This one is a deep hole.  They would put the olives in it and put a heavy stone on top. After a week, or so, the olive oil would be pressed out and ready for collection.

The path we are taking down the Mount of Olives  to the Garden of Gethsemane is the traditional--emphasize "traditional"--route of the Triumphal Entry of Christ into Jerusalem.

We have passed a spot on the hill which is a 6th century tradition, supposedly where Jesus was betrayed by Judas.

We are entering a garden area inside the grounds of the Gethsemane Church.  David is pointing out to us some olive trees, which are very old.  According to the botanists, they are approximately 3,000 years.  With an olive tree, you can only tell the age by the roots.

Again, as we came in here, there were many vendors trying to sell us maps, etc.

The Garden of Gethsemane is so built up with buildings and walls and fences that you really can't even get an idea of what it was like in Jesus' day.  We have descended down the side of the Mount of Olives and are almost at the bottom of the Kidron Valley at this point.  The garden and events could have been anywhere along here.  The whole area would have been an olive grove in those days.

The windows of the church are not made of glass.  Instead, they are made of alabaster stone, which is a beautiful blue.  The stone is cut thinly and is translucent, so that it takes the place of glass.

The Kidron Valley used to be much deeper.  It has been filled in with debris.  The soldiers would have had to come down this hill, and they would have found Jesus.  The events happened at night.  It would have been quiet down here, but there would have been a lot of activity, and perhaps noise, up at the Temple, because of the Passover.

We have gone into the interior of the church.  The light is indeed coming through the stone, but it's extremely dark in here.  It is an interesting phenomena that on the inside of the church where the light is coming through the alabaster stone, it looks in many places orange and purple, but there is no blue.

There is a rock that is supposed to be where Jesus leaned while He prayed.  Very likely it is not.

We have moved to an older part of Gethsemane.  It is very quiet and peaceful here.  Of course, in Jesus' day there would not have been the noise of the highway, and so this is just a perfect place to get away to.  There is a light breeze--the scents of flowers.  It is just an extremely nice place.  It is easy to see why Jesus would have come here.

It is not hard sitting here to think of some of the thoughts that may have been on Jesus' mind.  Sitting in this place, knowing that His hour is come.  Knowing the terrible things that are about to happen to Him.  It's very easy to feel the mood.  Even as He was here, perhaps He saw the soldiers coming down the slope across from us with their lanterns--coming to take Him and led by Judas.

We are taking a few minutes here just to walk around the garden and pray.  I never realized before that when Jesus was taken, the Temple would have been within His sight, and no doubt gleaming, even at night.  It was here that Jesus came in obedience to the Father's will.  "To obey is better than sacrifice," and so it was the obedience that was more important even than the atonement He was about to make.

Ben Yehuda Street

We are on the street.  David called this an open air mall.  It looks to me more like a downtown street in Chicago.  It's all very modern here, but there are little shops all along the street, many with iron grates to pull across the doors.  Behind me, someone is blowing a shofar--to entice us into buying one, I think.

Everything is very expensive here, and the shopkeepers tend to not follow the exchange rate if you pay with dollars.  I finally went to an ATM and withdrew some cash in shekels in order to get a better rate.

We have just seen a street preacher here.  Snowy white hair and beard, standing in the middle of the street, calling Israel to repent, like we used to do in the old days in Chicago.  No one except us is paying any attention to him.

Maar Sharim Neighborhood

The men and boys here are dressed in the black garb we have seen elsewhere, except that here there are no exceptions.  The women wear scarves over their heads, or wigs, and long skirts.  The little children that we see may already have arranged marriages.  Nobody seems happy--that is perhaps the most noticeable thing.  I see nothing of joy, nothing to show the Glory of God, despite the fact that the people go to such lengths to please Him.  Truly the definition of religion holds here:  Man seeking God.  The fallacy of religiosity is evident.  The essence of the Gospel, in which we can rejoice, is that God seeks man, instead.

I saw a teen-aged girl walk into the neighborhood a few minutes after we did.  This girl had sold me a hamburger at a Burger King off of Ben Yehuda Street about an hour earlier.  Here she gave the appearance of trying to be invisible.

These are people who do not believe in the State of Israel, but they do believe in Jerusalem.  In their minds they are living in the City of Jerusalem, not in the State of Israel.

This is reminiscent to me of walking through slum areas in our own major cities.  The difference is that it is of their own making, because of the rigidity of their beliefs and practices.  It is not a place that I would want to live, and yet this is the only place they want to live.

The ghetto-like conditions show the results of taking legalism and separation to an extreme.  How wonderful it is that we are under Grace and not under Law! 

The Garden Tomb and Calvary

We are in an Arab section of the city.  There is a walled-in area ahead of us, with a sign that says Garden Tomb on the outside of the wall.

This site is known as Gordon's Calvary, after a British officer who suggested it might be the site of the crucifixion.  The property belongs to a British foundation which maintains it.  The gentleman describing its history is a former Anglican vicar who has come here as a volunteer.

We know from Scripture that Jesus was crucified on Golgotha, the Place of the Skull.  There is a rock outcropping here, which has a couple of small caves.  If you stretch your imagination, it could look a little like a skull.  This doesn't seem right to me.  There is no physical evidence to support this as the location.  We know that three crosses were set into the ground at Golgotha.  If holes had been dug in the rock to erect the crosses, it would seem reasonable to find evidence today.  The whole thing is only a couple of hundred square feet on the top.  It also seems unlikely that the Roman soldiers would want to work that hard, when there are other, less difficult places for executions.

In a moment we are going to descend a hundred feet or so to the traditional site of Jesus' tomb.  Somehow, it seems to me excessively fortuitous to think that the private tomb Joseph of Arimathea had prepared for himself was so close to the site of public execution.

The tomb is in a garden area just below Calvary.  There is a huge aqueduct beneath the property.  Two thousand years ago, there was probably a producing vineyard here, which does lend credence to its being owned by a rich businessman, such as Joseph.

David indicates that he thinks this grave is 4th century, rather than 1st, because it is not the same style as the one that we saw on the road several days ago, which was a true 1st century tomb.  This tomb is located in a large cave with an entrance you can walk through.  There is a track where the rolling stone would have been.  The stone is not here today.