I made a conscious choice to go to Jerusalem sans Blackberry. My usual commitment is to Facebook "blog" as I go on a trip. This time I decided to live in the moment without sharing in the moment. And that made all the difference.
I also thought I'd capture elements of the trip on my blog site without any real sense of order, at least outwardly logical order... and without a sense that I had to limit my thoughts or emotions since so few see this page anyway!
I have to disclose that I am in no way a Biblical scholar. But this trip brought back every Sunday school lesson, every Bible-in-a-year reading, every verse memorized, every sermon heard and then some.
So there I stood in a dusty bus station parking lot and looked up.
A rough cliff to my right bore a clear skull face. The spot is the place of an ancient quarry. Not far away, are the walls of Old Jerusalem. The road to Damascus and Jericho would have come this way.
It is now and would have been in Jesus' day a busy, busy place. The type a place a crucifixion would have happened to deter potential criminals. The Bible tells us that "they" took Jesus out of the city to "the place of the skull." Golgotha or Calvary depending on if you read Aramaic or Latin.
When I go up and into the "Garden Tomb" and through its gate, my heart beat slows. The place is a beautiful oasis in the midst of a crazy busy Arab market. Glorious olive trees, flowers, lush green plants. The air's clean quality is palpable compared to the dusty street I just exited. The place literally and immediately fills me with emotion.
The guides note that many believe this place to be the garden of Joseph of Arimathea - the place where Jesus was buried after his crucifixion. While no one can be exactly sure where the crucifixion took place, there was a very real essence about this place, something special and spiritual unlike other places I I visited (including the traditional site located inside the walls of Old Jerusalem -in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre).
If you proceed on with basic Bible 101, you know that Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man and secret follower of Jesus. He got permission to bury the body of Jesus in a new, unused tomb that Joseph himself owned. The Garden Tomb area holds many items that would have been evidence in Jesus' day of a wealthy owner's site - someone like Joseph of Arimathea. There was a wine press, very large water cistern and a working garden. Then there's the matter of the tomb itself.
The tomb was unearthed in 1867 and was noted to be a typical tomb of the 1st century AD. What made it such a spiritually significant moment, both logically and emotionally for me, was that the tomb met all the features mentioned in the Bible's account of the tomb of Jesus. It bore things like it was cut out of solid rock not a natural cave; it was sealed with a large rolling stone that ran in a track outside the door; and there was space inside for several mourners to pray. But the thing that made me pause was that the burial place was unfinished and on the right side of the tomb, visible from the outside. All things very unique to this site and Biblically accurate.
I had to go back and re-read Mark and John to catch the right side and visible from the outside elements as unique. How many times did I read the Easter story and not put that in place?
I do not know if this site was the actual burial place of the cucifixion, burial and resurrection of Jesus. It sure seemed to fit the details described in the Gospel. But like the guide reminded us, that is not the remarkable part.
The rest of the story lies in that the tomb was empty; He was not there; He had risen.
And, well that was in the moment and is still today enough for me.
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