Our Last Day in Israel

“The Bible doesn’t come alive to you, you come alive to the Bible.”

            We said goodbye to the four students leaving us this evening, who are not staying for the second half of the trip, and are departing with us before we leave for Greece tomorrow. Tonight we had the last group meeting of all of us here in Jerusalem. It was bittersweet. One the one hand, it was sad to say goodbye to those leaving us and to Jerusalem, but on the other hand, it is exiting to move on to a new country and new adventures. It was good to gather together one last time and worship together. Dr. Kalantzis told us this above quote as we started gathering, a student had told him this the last time he led this program. It really struck me; I came into this program really willing and open to what God had to day to me. As I have lived and learned here for the past few weeks, I have seen myself go and my attitude change. But it is important to remember that this did not come as a result of the Bible becoming any more real to me, the Bible was always real. It was me, my attitude and way of thinking that needed to change not the Bible.  The connections that I have made are a result of me coming alive to Bible and what it is saying. The Bible is not coming alive to me, it has always been alive.

            Today we went to the two sites that remember the crucifixion and resurrection, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and The Garden Tomb. Our first stop was The Garden Tomb. This site has a relatively recent history of being remembered as the location of the crucifixion and resurrection, dating to the late 1800’s.  Whereas the Holy Sepulcher dates its history back to the 3^rd century. The Garden Tomb was thought to be the place because of the proximity of ancient tombs to remains of a garden to a hill that looked like a skull. The site also had early Byzantine churches near the tomb, indicating that it was a holy site. The site is also located just outside the gate of the Old City, near the where ancient Jewish and Roman executions would have taken place. One thing that our guide stressed was that the important thing was not whether or not this was indeed the physical site of the crucifixion and resurrection, the important thing was that these events happened and that the tomb was empty. Regardless of the accuracy of this location, it was still a great feeling to come to a place in order to reflect on the amazingness of God and what He was done for us, while being in a place filled with people from all over the world doing the same thing. The most important thing was indeed to walk into the tomb, see that it was empty, and visible know that Jesus had conquered death through the resurrection.

            Later we were able to tour around the Church of the Holy Sepulcher with a professor at the Hebrew University, It was really great experience to get an explanation of many of the different aspects and history of the church. The professor was a protestant, but her favorite church was the Holy Sepulcher. To her, this was not a disunity of the church here, but a unity. She explained to us that often we see little arguments that a result of people being together, and we expound on that, and point to that as disunity in the church. As she sees it, which I thought was a really good way to look at it, was the fact that these six churches come together in this one place that Christians come here from all over the world is a sign of the unity of the church. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the only church in the world where eastern and westerner churches come together to worship and haves services under the same roof. Often times signs of unity are not highlighted and the disunity is what shines through.