Day 04 - Mount of Olives, Mt. Zion, Jewish Quarter, Mahane Yehuda Market, Shabbat Dinner

It’s hard to believe we’ve only been here four days! We’ve done and seen and learned so much since we arrived late Monday night.

Today was Jerusalem.

We started off outside the eastern wall on the Mount of Olives. From the Mount of Olives you can see the city of David, the southern steps, the Temple Mount, the Golden (which has been sealed off) and the Lions Gate.

The Mount of Olives is the setting for several key events in the life of Jesus.

Jesus passed through the Mount of Olives as He made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem in fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy.

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zechariah 9:9, ESV)

Jesus came to the Mount of Olives after the Last Supper to pray. Gethsemane, by the way, isn’t so much a place as it is a thing. It’s essentially a compound word in Hebrew that means “the place of pressing oil.” It’s here, at the place of pressing, that Jesus began to feel the weight of what was soon to come.

Jesus was betrayed by Judas and arrested by here.

We walked a little further on and found a quiet place away from where the tourists tend to gather. We spent time reflecting together on Jesus’ incredible sacrifice on our behalf. We shared the bread and the wine as a community of believers who largely didn’t know one another four days ago – but are brothers and sisters in Christ all the same. We then had a few moments to read and reflect and pray on our own.

I opened to the Psalms of Ascent – psalms intended to be sung as you go up to Jerusalem and I came across this passage.

As the mountains surround Jerusalem,
so the Lord surrounds his people,
from this time forth and forevermore. (Psalm 125:2, ESV)

As I looked out over Jerusalem from one of those surrounding mountains I thought about how that is exactly what God does for us. He surrounds us with His grace and mercy and provision and protection. He surrounds us with His love “from this time forth and forevermore” and nowhere is His love more evident than in the death, burial, and resurrection of His Son.

We spent the rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon walking the streets of Jerusalem. We visited the traditional site of the Last Supper (though the “traditional” site is unlikely the actual site). We visited Mount Zion. We walked the first-century Cardo (the main street running north to south). We went from the Muslim Quarter to the Jewish Quarter to the Christian Quarter. We stopped at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and then ate lunch outside the Jaffa Gate.

Our last stop in the city was the Mahane Yehuda Market. I don’t know that I can adequately describe this experience. The market comprises dozens of merchant stalls. There are vendors selling fresh squeezed juices, fruits and vegetables, varieties of fish and cuts of meet, coffee shops, and souvenir stands. It’s packed from side to side with people gathering everything they need to prepare for Shabbat – which begins at sunset every Friday evening.

Shabbat is the Jewish day of rest. We call it Sabbath. God built a rhythm of six days of labor and one day of rest into His creation and over and over again, throughout the Bible, reiterates His command to observe Shabbat.

And we got to experience a Shabbat unlike any of us had ever experienced before.

It began at the Western Wall just after sunset. It was crowded with men and women come to worship and pray before the Shabbat dinner. We had a chance to worship and pray ourselves. We had all been to the Western Wall before, but being there on Shabbat was something different – something special.

We then made our way to the home of Robin and Avi – a warm and welcoming Jewish couple – who graciously hosted us for Shabbat dinner.

They led us in songs often sung on Shabbat. They spoke a blessing over our glasses of wine and the challah bread. They shared their story of “making Aliyah” (Aliyah in Hebrew literally means to ascend or to rise, but has long been used to describe Jewish people immigrating to Israel from other nations). They patiently answered all of our questions about their lives, traditions, and faith.

We talked and ate and got to know one another better. It was a sweet, unhurried time.

We live in a culture that suffers from chronic busyness. Rest is, for us, a luxury, not a necessity. We know we should rest, but we never seem to find the time.

That’s the difference, I think, between our culture and the Jewish culture. They don’t try to find time. They make time – and they make it at the same time every single week. It’s a non-negotiable. It’s an settled, rhythmic act of obedience.

But it’s not a legalistic one, if we understand it properly.

Jesus Himself said that, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27, ESV).

Sabbath is a gift from God. It reminds us that our identity is not in what we do but in who we are – or, rather, whose we are. It’s a time to delight in the goodness of God – in His provision of good food and good relationships.

God didn’t institute this rhythm of work at rest at Mount Sinai. He instituted it at creation. This is not just how the Jewish people were created to operate. It’s how all people were created to operate.

I wonder what would happen if we, as Christians, took Sabbath seriously. I wonder what it would do for our relationship with God and with others. I wonder how it would impact us physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I wonder if we would find that God knew what He was doing when He devised this rhythm.

Tomorrow we head north towards Galilee. Our time in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas has been wonderful and I think we’d all be content to stay here for another week. But we’re looking forward to what God will show us in the coming days.

In the meantime, Shabbat Shalom.