Mount of Olives and Bethlehem (Saturday, June 20th)

We were on our bus this morning by 6:45 again and on our way to the Mount of Olives by 7:00. There is a place at the top were you can sit and look out over all of Jerusalem. It was very beautiful early in the morning when the shadows etch out every detail of the city.

After a review of what we have learned so far and a preparation for the day, we began our decent down the mountain. The first site we stopped at was a church called Dominus Flevit which commemorates were Jesus stopped on his way into the city for the last time and wept for his people who had rejected him. From there we continued on down the mountain to the Church of Nations which is the traditional site of the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus took his disciples to pray and where he was arrested by the Roman guards. It is probably the most beautiful church I have ever been in and in the Garden outside there are Olive trees that are some where around 1500 years old. Our teacher pointed out a few things about this account that I had never considered before. One was that there were thousands of people who flooded Jerusalem at Passover time from all over the world. Were did all of these people stay? There were no Holiday Inns in Jerusalem at that time. Many of them were probably invited by the people of Jerusalem into their homes but that wouldn't have covered it. So a lot of them most likely brought tents and camped out near the city on the Mount of Olives. Which means the Garden of Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives was maybe not quite as secluded as I have always thought of them. The other thing he pointed out truly struck me as amazing and I have been thinking about it ever since. It was that from the area of the Garden of Gethsemane it was only a 15 to 20 minute walk up over the hills and into the Judean wilderness. The same wilderness where David and his men spent some time hiding out from Saul and where many others have hidden out over the years. The same wilderness where he himself had spent 40 days before being tempted by Satan. How easy it would have been for Jesus to have just walked away from all the pain and suffering that was to come. And yet he chose to stay and submit himself to the Father's will.

After Gethsemane the bus met us and picked us up so we didn't have to walk all the way back up the hill for which I was very grateful! From there we moved on to a place out side of Bethlehem where we were able to see the terrain that involves so many stories from the Bible. David would have had to walk a similar path to that bread to his brothers when he became the hero that defeated Goliath. Joseph and Mary would have had to make their way through similar terrain to get to Bethlehem for the census. We also got to see a traditional vineyard with it's guard houses a place hollowed out of the bedrock for pressing wine. We read Isaiah 5 where God compares his people to a vineyard that he has planted and it became so much more real!

Bethlehem itself has become a large town in an area that is under Palestinian control. The town right next to it is a Christian town and Bethlehem is a mostly Muslim town that is becoming more and more mixed, Christians and Muslims. There we visited the Church of the Nativity, possibly built where Jesus was born. (It's hard to tell with all the gold overlay and ornamentation.) It wasn't one of my favorite sites, but across the street is a building called the Bethlehem Peace Center where we were invited up to see their collection of nativity scenes from around the world. This one was my favorite. It was donated by a church in Hong Kong. The next two days are free days and I'm going to try to catch up on posting things (you've probably noticed these haven't all been posted on the days they were written) and laundry and sleep and maybe get a bit of site seeing and shopping in.