In the most unlikely places

Today was the big day. We woke up early so we could be the first ones in line to go up on the temple mount. We wasted no time getting started, and we went as long as we could. Nearly 8 miles of walking later, the day certainly lived up to the anticipation. Of all the places in the Holy Lands, Jerusalem might be the most special. David, Solomon, the kings of Judah, Hezekiah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezra, Nehemiah and so many others spent time in this place, and to this day, the city bears witness to them. But they were not the only players in history to make their mark. For over 3000 years Jerusalem has been a city of global interest. It began as a Jebusite village before the time of David, and by the time he arrived to conquer it, it was a developed urban area, built to withstand an opposing army. One of the shrewd moves the Jebusites made was to incase the water supply in a walled fortress. Although the spring sits outside the city walls down in the Kidron Valley, they crafted a system of tunnels to make sure they could get water safely. We got to explore the tunnels and the fortress, some of the earlier pieces of the city, and a building project King David certainly oversaw. Everyone really enjoyed getting to see the water cisterns and the pathways; believe it or not, we've become certified water supply experts over the past couple of weeks.

The next thing David did was build a palace, and his people built a city on the slopes. The Bible often refers to Jerusalem as the city of David, and we spent some time walking around the ruins of this early piece. There are houses and buildings from this time period on the south side of the Temple area. Seeing the city of David was really powerful. Many of us have grown up hearing and reading the stories of Israel's greatest king. We have read the Psalms and prayed his prayers. We have tried to be like him; a man after God's own heart. And now we have seen his palace in Jerusalem. That was really special.

As the kingdom continued to grow and time went on, Solomon became king in Israel. Out of his abundant wealth, he decided to make some renovations. The most famous thing he did was built the temple, but before we get to that, there is something else very important that he did. When he decided to build the temple, he picked out the spot that David had purchased as a threshing floor. This created more space to the north, and who doesn't want a bigger palace, so Solomon moved the palace to the north and decided to turn David's palace into some government buildings. This space was used for government work of different kinds until the destruction of the city in 586 BC.

Some of the most awe inspiring points on the trip have come in the most unlikely places. Everyone loves to see the notable landmarks and the iconic locations, but sometimes it is just as amazing to see archaeology prove the little details of the Bible. Archaeologists found some very curious things in one of the buildings next to David's palace. The most important of which is a collection of over 600 letter seals. Among these seals are the names of two men mentioned in Jeremiah 38:1-4 and the scribe mentioned in Jeremiah 36:10. It's so easy to skip over parts of the Bible with long lists of names or advisors we've never heard of, but finds like this one make the whole grand picture come alive. These were real people with real jobs reading real letters and God was working in their lives, and today for a few minutes, our lives intersected with theirs in the city that David and Solomon built.

Solomon's most prolific achievement was building the temple. This was the first temple in Jerusalem, and there are still pieces from this time. Unfortunately, the temple was destroyed and the people of Judah were taken into captivity in 586 BC. When Ezra, Nehemiah, and Zerubbabel came back to Jerusalem, they rebuilt the temple and the wall and people began living in the city again. After we came out of the tunnels from the Jebusite water source, we got to sit in the shade of 500 year old olive trees and look at a piece of Nehemiah's wall.

For a few centuries, the temple was nothing spectacular. The treasury had been emptied, and the temple had lost most of it's grandeur. In the book of Haggai, God says, "I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in and I shall fill this house with glory." In the first century BC, Herod the Great came to power and he truly made this a reality. One of the things that will stick with me from this trip is the amazing power and ostentatiousness of Herod. His building projects are unlike anything I have ever seen or imagined. He wanted the temple to be monolithic. Instead of building it on the existing hill, he wanted to raise the whole mountain, and he did. We walked through the Rabbinic tunnels this afternoon and looked at the base of the temple mount walls, the gates, and the fortifications all around it. These tunnels eventually go down to what would have been the ground level during Jesus' time. He almost certainly walked on those same streets. Later when the Muslims conquered the city, they built the city much higher on the western side, and now the arches Herod used to fortify the bridges into the temple area have created a system of tunnels and passage ways.

As we stood down at the base of the western wall, we could see the massive stones Herod used to construct his monstrous temple mount. The largest of the stones weighs 570 tons and measures around 40x10x15 feet. No one knows how he stacked these stones a hundred feet high, but he was able to made the temple the icon of the region. It could be seen for miles.

In addition to building the temple, Herod also constructed a lot of the other Jerusalem locations we read about in the Gospels. We visited several of these places, but two of them really stuck out. The pools of Bethesda and the pool of Siloam both figure into Jesus' ministry and they are both places where miracles happened. The pool of Siloam is in the southern part of the city, down the hill from the temple mount, and at festival times served as a ritual bath. Although all of it is not excavated, we got to stand on the original steps as Pastor Terry read John 9 and told us about Jesus healing a blind man. One of the really cool things he taught us today had to do with the way Jesus chose to heal him in this story. We know that Jesus could give sight to the blind with a word, but this time he did something different. He put some mud on the blind man's eyes up by the temple courts and then sent him to wash in the pool of Siloam. At first this seems like a really strange thing, it is a very long walk (something we got to experience right after we heard this story), but what we saw from being there was the view he would have had on the way back up. When he washed his eyes and saw for the first time, he must have looked up and seen the magnificent temple mount. All the way up the hill, he beheld the glory of God in the temple in Jerusalem. It was a great reminder that sometimes God doesn't do things the way we might have picked, but he always has a wonderful purpose if we will just open our eyes and see.

The pools of Bethesda are up closer to the temple mount and they are the setting for the healing story in John 5. Like most places in he Holy Lands, the pools of Bethesda have now been about 5 different things, but part of the south pool has been completely excavated. Dozens of invalids used to sit around these two large pools hoping to be healed. It's thought that the pools were known for their healing powers even before the time of Christ, and the legend said that an angel would come down to stir up the waters every day and the first person into the pool would be healed. There was a man who had been there for 38 years, trying every day to reach the pools, only to be passed by others as he tried to make it down the steps. Then, Jesus came to the pools of Bethesda and he healed that man. John tells us that after he was healed, the man who had spent his whole life unable to walk went to the temple courts. Never in his life had he been there before, but now because of Jesus he was free to run up to house of God on his own two legs. This was one of the harder lessons, because as we sat there we had to ask ourselves, do we continue to limp around even though we've been healed? What are the things Jesus has freed us from, healed us of, granted to us that we don't take advantage of? How can we walk fully in the freedom we've been given?

On our way out from the pools of Bethesda we stopped quickly in St. Anne's church. The crusaders built the church in the 12th century as a monument to Mary's mother, Anne. The acoustics in the cathedral are exceptional. We stood as a group and sang the doxology. Every not echoed off the walls and filled the room up the ceiling. I don't think we'll be in high demand any time soon, but we had a great time.

Unfortunately, Herod's temple did not stand for long. In 70 AD the Romans destroyed the temple, and in 135, Hadrian expelled all the Jews from Jerusalem and turned it into a pagan city. He built the Roman style cardo in the middle of the city, and opened up shops all along the main thoroughfare. The city revolved around commerce, trade, and the marketplace. As our last adventure of the day, we walked along this ancient Roman section of the city. Today it is part of the Jewish Quarter, and there are still lots of shops, pieces of walls, and the bustle of the marketplace. Today was special because the whole quarter is preparing for the annual lights festival. People were mounting lights and setting up sound systems for an 8 day celebration. As we walked the streets today, we could feel the energy of things to come.

After Hadrian, the Muslims took over Jerusalem, and in the 7th Century they built two mosques on the temple mount, the Al-Asqa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, together comprising the third holiest place on earth for Muslims. Their tradition says the Dome of the Rock is built on the place where Abraham took Ishmael to sacrifice him, and the place where the prophet Muhammed saw night visions and ascended to Heaven. These mosques are both around 1300 years old, and each one is a thing of beauty. The Dome of the Rock, especially, is one of the aesthetic masterpieces of the ancient world. Though the tensions on the mount are tangible, the magnitude of that location is not lost. It was very still and very quiet up there, almost as a representation of the weight of the history of that place. Jewish tradition claims that it was on that spot that Adam was created by God, Abraham came to sacrifice Isaac, the Holy of Holies rested, the sacrifices were offered, and God's presence dwelt. It is also a place that has seen empires rise and fall, kings pour out their storehouses, and millions of pilgrims come to worship. This morning, we were there. The few minutes we had on the Temple Mount were unforgettable. We spent time at the western wall, praying with the others who were there, but even that wasn't quite the same as standing on the ancient stones at the top of the holy city of Jerusalem. What a day.

~Cole Feix