Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus: My Sabbatical in Israel

Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus

My Sabbatical in Israel

The Rev. Daniel W. Kreller

Published by Daniel W. Kreller at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Daniel W. Kreller

Table of Contents

Foreword

January 1, 2008

January 2, 2008

January 3, 2008

January 4, 2008

January 5, 2008

January 6, 2008

January 7, 2008

January 8, 2008

January 9, 2008

January 10, 2008

January 11, 2008

January 12, 2008

January 13, 2008

January 14, 2008

January 15, 2008

January 16, 2008

January 17, 2008

January 18, 2008

January 19, 2008

January 20, 2008

January 21, 2008

January 22, 2008

January 23, 2008

January 24, 2008

January 25, 2008

January 26, 2008

January 27, 2008

January 28, 2008

Cover art

About the author

Foreword

I would like to thank the parish of St. Bartholomew’s for funding a sabbatical in January 2008 to celebrate my 30th anniversary of ordination. Though the Sabbatical year occurs every seventh year, this was my very first sabbatical. I finally had gotten to a place where I was ready and eager to travel to the land of Jesus’ life and ministry, a place I had only dreamed of visiting. It was the death of so many beloved parishioners over 24 years - 165 that I had buried in that span of time - that finally motivated me to go. I needed to get away and cease my labors.

The command to keep the Sabbath occurs as the 4th command in the Ten Commandments. There it refers to the seventh day of the week and is kept by resting from one’s labors. But that is just the beginning of the notion of Sabbath, for every seventh year is the Sabbatical year, and every fiftieth year the Jubilee year (7 times 7 years plus one). All in all the Sabbath laws are well worth learning and observing for in them one will find a key to personal well being and the foundations for a more just, equitable, and peaceful society, not to mention a way to live in harmony with the natural world.

At first one may think the Sabbath is burdensome since one must refrain from so many activities that seem to give our life its purpose. But this refraining proves to be a form of restraint that allows for receiving things (and people) as they are with out any desire to fix or change them. It allows for the otherness of things as one of my former professors, Diogenes Allen, defined love in his book by that title. Or, it allows for us to receive another as thou, as Martin Buber expressed it in his book, I and Thou. This too is love and it takes us far beyond purpose into the realm of meaning.

I trust the reader will see in these 28 journal entries my love for this land and its people. No doubt you will also discover that I could not maintain the Sabbath mindset throughout for I do comment on things and people I would like to fix or change given a chance. But when I was in the Sabbath mindset I merely took in all that I saw and heard and at the end of the day digested it as best I could. Thus the format of this journal is to write first about what I did and where I went each day and then to record a few of the thoughts that occurred to me throughout the day.

I spent most of every day alone but was never lonely. I was too engaged to be so. And of course, I had the company of the Spirit within me. Thus, you will note my references to praying in tongues as I walked from site to site or sat for a time at various locations. For those readers who are unfamiliar with tongues it is a prayer language manifest by the Spirit. I think of it as the lazy man’s form of meditation for it requires no effort other than moving one’s tongue and allowing the Spirit to pray through one’s voice (or under one’s breath). It can be sustained as long as one’s strength endures and the effect of it is to bring one to peace. That I found invaluable in this land where everywhere there are signs asking that we pray for peace and there is very little of it to be found.

*****

January 1, 2008

I am in Jerusalem staying at Saint Andrew’s Guest House. Saint Andrew’s was built after World War I by the Presbyterians of Scotland to honor their soldiers who died in the Palestinian Campaign. It is nicely situated and about a fifteen-minute walk from the Wailing Wall. I went and prayed. I cried and cried. I touched the wall with my hands and forehead and said over and over, My Lord and my God. I prayed in tongues as others around me prayed in Hebrew.

On the plane ride over, men gathered for prayer in the aisle by the bathrooms in the afternoon and morning. They put on their phylacteries. For the life of me it looks like too much work. I felt relieved I wasn’t a Jew, or at least an Orthodox one.

I must rest. I haven’t slept since Saturday night. It is only 5 PM here but I will try to sleep. I opened to Psalm 119: 135-136. Make your face shine upon your servant and teach me your statutes. My eyes shed streams of tears because people do not keep your law. That seems to be what it is about here. Keeping the Law. All the observant are drawn to this place, but it hasn’t brought peace.

On the plane I met an Orthodox woman my age. She looked much older. She was married at sixteen and a half years of age and had seven children and now grandchildren. Jerusalem is a special place she told me. The look in her eyes though was weary and worn. In front of her were a young Hasid and his wife. He was studying Shemitah, the laws concerning agriculture in the sabbatical year. (This is the sabbatical year in Israel and there is quite a bit of controversy among the farmers how these laws should be kept, if at all.) With euphoria he told another passenger he feels purposeful doing this work that has value for this world and the next. I wondered just how the sabbatical laws applied to the next world.

Tomorrow I am determined to visit the Coenaculum as it is called, the Upper Room, the site of the Passover Jesus had with his disciples, his resurrection appearance on the day of his resurrection and the week following, and Pentecost. I want a break from all of this observance of the Law. I want to see the place of the New Commandment, Love one another as I have loved you (John 15: 12), and the place of his appearance when he said, Peace be with you…Receive the Holy Spirit. (John 20: 21f.) Where has law upon law gotten us? I can see why Saint Paul was of that mind and rejoiced that Christ was the end (through fulfillment) of the Law

*****

January 2, 2008

It is my fifty seventh birthday today. I decided to celebrate it by following John’s narrative in his gospel from Jesus’ last supper with his disciples to the breathing out of the Holy Spirit on the day of his resurrection. So, I started out in the Upper Room, the Coenaculum, at about 8 A.M.

From there I walked across the Kidron Valley to the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives. It was about a thirty- minute walk at a leisurely pace, stopping to take in the sights.

In the Garden I visited the Church of the Nations reputed to be the place of his agony. In front of the altar is a large outcrop of rock where Jesus prayed to have this cup removed, if possible. How many have prayed such a prayer, I wonder, and have gotten the same response? It was not removed and he like the rest of us must accept God’s will for us and drink it.

Leaving Gethsemene I walked back to the Old City and entered at the wall through the Lion’s Gate, so called because of the lion’s carved into its façade. The narrow road, one of the few that admits vehicular traffic in the Old City passes by Saint Anne’s Church to the right and the precincts of the Temple Mount to the left. Soon enough I came upon the neighborhood where the Antonia Fortress, built by Herod the Great, used to stand at the northwestern end of the Temple precincts. It was here, according to one tradition, that the High Priest brought Jesus to be tried by Pilate. So it is here that the Via Delarosa, the Way of the Cross, begins. I stopped to see the Church of the Flagellation where Jesus was stripped and beaten and crowned with thorns. Further down the street I saw the Pavement where Pilate condemned him to death.

Where the Via Delarosa takes a jog to the south, I went north instead through the Muslim Quarter and out the Damascus Gate, the northern gate in the Old City wall. A short walk north of the gate is Golgatha and the Garden Tomb discovered in the 19th century and favored by Protestants as the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial.

After seeing the Garden Tomb, I retraced my steps and proceeded once again along the Via Delarosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Golgatha and the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea in which Jesus was buried. The Roman emperor Constantine built the original portions of the church in the early 4th century A.D. so the tradition that this is the site of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection is very longstanding. The church is in the Christian Quarter of the Old City and within the present walls. In Jesus’ day this area was outside the city walls.

Leaving the Holy Sepulchre I walked south towards Mount Zion and the Upper Room. On my way I stopped at the Citadel of David located on the western edge of the wall by the Jaffa Gate. The name is a misnomer since the towers and ruins are remnants of a magnificent palace fortress built by Herod the Great, the Judean King at the time of Jesus’ birth. It would be here that the Magi came to inquire of the birth of the King of the Jews as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel.

Proceeding through the Armenian Quarter I arrived at the Coenaculum again. At this hour the Tomb of David was open so I went in to see it. It is now a synagogue on the ground floor of the building that houses the Upper Room directly above. It is highly unlikely that it is the actual tomb of David but strikingly symbolic that he should be buried beneath the place where Jesus, the Messiah Son of David, appeared to his disciples in his risen glory. Yes, it was a good birthday to begin and end in this place where Jesus breathed out the life giving Holy Spirit upon the disciples, marking their spiritual birth. First comes the physical birth, Saint Paul says, and then the spiritual. My physical birth came in 1951, my spiritual birth in 1986 when I too received the baptism in the Spirit.

My chief impression of this day is how radical Jesus’ message is. When you enter the compound that is the Coenaculum, it is surrounded by the Yeshiva and Synagogue of the Diaspora (Sephardic). They have the Ten Commandments posted at the entrance and the exit of the Upper Room so the visitor cannot help but feel they are asserting Moses over Christ and insinuating that Jesus is a false messiah. I could see how they might think that. At the Last Supper Jesus reduced the commandments to one, love one another as I have loved you. And at the same time he promised his disciples an intimacy with the Father and himself through the Spirit that was unparalled. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all I have heard from the Father I have made known to you. (John 15:15) Yes, from what I have seen of the devout Jews and Muslims thus far, they seem very much the servants of the master whether they are observing the commandments and rituals of the Torah or the Quran. They are scrupulous and seem, on the whole, to delight in observance as I suppose any servant who believes he is serving a great, or the greatest master, takes pride and joy in his position. Along with that goes a tendency to look down on other servants in the household whom they deem less worthy.

Yet, they do not seem to feel free and joyous, like those who live in the liberty of knowing they are children of the Heavenly Father. Jesus’ message is truly liberating. He cleanses us. He attaches us to the vine. We bear fruit. If not, he prunes us so that we bear more fruit. Who is serving whom here? Jesus makes that plain by what he did at the supper when he washed his disciples feet. You call me teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then your Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. (John 13: 13-14) He inverts the position of servant and master. He overturns it. He serves us and we become like masters - free men. But at the same time he invites us to follow his example and love one another in the same way, freely choosing to serve others as though they were our masters. Not that we have followed that invitation to liberty as children and joy in serving. That is apparent when you go to the Holy Sepulchre and other sites where the various denominations vie for position and supremacy.

The Coenaculum is different since it is a spare room controlled by the Israelis. It has a minimum of decoration and a fraction of the visitors compared to other sites. There is also no evidence of the veneration of Mary there though right next door is a basilica much larger and grander than the building that houses the Upper Room that is said to be the site where Mary died, that is fell asleep. Thus, it is named the Church of the Dormition. In its crypt is a life-sized figure of Mary in repose at her death. Her tomb is a cave turned into a chapel in Gethsemene shared by several denominations and it is replete with lamps and icons and all the trappings of veneration.

What I sense is this. Slaves and children are roughly