Exploring the Fifth Gospel: The Holy Land 2025

09/18/2024

A somber picture. Looking east to the Mount of Olives with the Dome of the Rock on the Mount/Haram. Thousands of white-ish-gray tombstones of the largest Jewish cemetery in the world drape the hillside. The hopeful buried within eyeshot of the place where the First and Second Temples stood, believing this to be the sacred Ground Zero of Messiah's Return, making all things new and ushering in an unbreakable, eternal peace. That is, by the way, a hope all three monotheistic religions- Judaism, Islam and Christianity- share. Alas, it is not so presently. On a lesser scale in the grand scope of life, I have held out hope that our group trip planned for February 2025 would happen. That trip is not to be. We will return to the Holy Land, some day.

08/25/2024

How about Mary Magdalene from the other side? 😊

08/21/2024

Peeking through the trees of the Mount of Olives, the unique onion domes of the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene. ❤️

08/17/2024

This.

07/27/2024

"The portico called Solomon's" (Acts 3:11, 5:12, John 10:23) was the space bordering the eastern temenos (wall) on Temple Mount. So-called, according to Josephus, because as Herod the Great was expanding the Temple complex in the late 1st century BC, the eastern wall remained essentially unchanged, original to King Solomon. A portico surrounded all four sides of the Mount, providing shade and shelter from the elements. The New Testament identifies this area as the place where Jesus taught, and the apostles, post-Ascension, held court. Today, it is a rather unkempt park, with scattered debris. Most of the crowds congregate on the vast expanse of the platform surrounding the Dome of the Rock.

07/24/2024

The Chapel of Adam in Holy Sepulcher. Early morning, and pleasant without the crowds! The chapel altar is directly beneath Golgotha just above this space. Notice the frame on the wall just off to the right of the altar, it draws attention to a conspicuous crack in the wall. This, it is said, was caused by the earthquake unleashed at the death of the Lord Jesus at the ninth hour. Matthew 27:50-54 records this surreal sequence: The veil in the temple was rent, the earth shook, the rocks were split, and then, the dead were raised from their tombs. This not being done in a dark corner; the whole city witnessed the consummation cameo of the Last Day. But here's the cool thing about the Adam Chapel, one tradition (of many) holds that the skull of Adam was kept by, and taken aboard the ark at the time of The Flood. It was gifted by Noah to Shem, who buried it here. Hence, "the Place that is called The Skull" (Luke 23:33). When Christ was crucified, the blood ran down the crack, and covered the skull, and hence, symbolically and powerfully, the original sin of Adam. Is that true? Who knows? There are many such salvific, faith-encouraging Stories in the Holy Land. Even if this account is not historically rooted, it is absolutely, 100% theologically true.

07/23/2024

Early morning hours at Holy Sepulcher in November 2022. "Why give so much importance to a physical place? ...This place is the witness of the real death of Jesus of Nazareth and his resurrection and so it is at the origin of our faith and our hope... [In this place, the Gospels] tell us that Jesus really did die and really did rise... This place [Holy Sepulcher] is therefore at the origin of the Christian testimony and hope. It is itself a witness. As the angels announced the resurrection of Jesus to the women, the Church continues to offer this message to us as a solid foundation for our faith and our hope.”

07/21/2024

Qumran by the Dead Sea. We believe the Essene community lived and worked here from the second century B.C. up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. They preserved scrolls of every Old Testament book, along with many other extra-biblical texts. And, they happen to be the most ancient texts we have. And, there is little to no variance in those manuscripts. It tells us that the Bibles we hold in our hands today are very reliable. When this community got word that the Romans were heading their way to destroy Jerusalem, they hid the precious scrolls in jars, which were scattered in the Judean Mountain caves above the camp. They stayed hidden until 1947, when a Bedouin shepherd boy found them when he was looking for a lost sheep.

07/19/2024

The world's oldest, still active Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives... (can you say that a cemetery is active?) ...the Kidron below and the Muslim cemetery bordering the Old City Walls surrounding Temple Mount, or as Islam refers to it, the Haram. West Jerusalem looms in the backdrop.

07/16/2024

It never ceases to amaze me when I think of the antiquity of Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem: That these two venerable churches have been hosting worship services continuously for nearly 1,700 years. Here in Virginia, we have churches dotting the countryside dating back to the 19th, and sometimes rarer, an 18th century founding, and we think, that is impressive longevity. (It is, but a thousand years. Millennial wow!)

Oggi, 15 luglio, è la festa della della del Santo Sepolcro. È una ricorrenza che esiste da quasi novecento anni: fu nel 1149, infatti, che avvenne la cerimonia di consacrazione della basilica.

Negli anni abbiamo partecipato a diversi interventi di restauro per conservare la bellezza di questo luogo intriso di memoria: nel 2011 il restauro degli affreschi della ca****la del Ritrovamento della Croce, nel 2016 i lavori di conservazione dell’Edicola del Santo Sepolcro, nel 2022 l'inizio della ristrutturazione della pavimentazione della Basilica.

Restaurare un luogo fisico significa preservare il messaggio che porta nel mondo, il significato che ha assunto nella cultura collettiva. È anche grazie a questa cura che, a 875 anni dalla sua dedicazione, la Basilica del Santo Sepolcro conserva intatta la sua solennità.

07/13/2024

Let's Go! We'll find a way. :-)

07/12/2024

The bronze bas-relief of the Tree of Jesse in the narthex of the Church of Saint Catherine's in Bethlehem, is a large work given as a gift by Pope Benedict XVI during his trip to the Holy Land in 2009. This church is adjacent to the Orthodox Church of the Nativity. The two churches share the space over the Nativity Cave. The main scene in this massive bronze work is of the prophet Samuel reviewing the sons of Jesse. The eighth son, David, is out in the field with the flock. God looks on the heart, and not the outward appearance. The older sons looked the part (like Saul!), but God's assessment was different.

07/11/2024

Not my pic, but O, what a pic! Mar Saba Monastery east of Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the Judean Wilderness. A Greek Orthodox fortress built in the 5th century and occupied continuously. The settlement sits snuggly in an escarpment above the Kidron Valley. The same Kidron Valley that runs between the Mount of Olives and Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It empties into the Dead Sea. I would love to include this place on a future tour, but only men are allowed inside the monastery. :-(

07/02/2024

Belvoir Castle, the 12th century Knights Hospitaller (Crusaders) built and used this commanding perch high above the Jordan River Valley to defend the Kingdom of Jerusalem from Gilead and points east beyond. In 1182, King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem defeated the Ayyubid sultan Saladin here. But it turned out to be a pyrrhic victory as Saladin would march north and thoroughly wipe out the Crusaders at the Horns of Hattin. Belvoir is not easily accessible these days by tour bus. Very narrow and winding and steep. Very rare to get a tour group up there! (But, I enjoyed our harrowing journey to the top back in 2018 :-) )

06/22/2024

A Magdala frame of mind this morning. ❤️ The mosaics from the four chapels off the sanctuary, and the ancient street level chapel below with the modern work depicting the woman who was healed of the internal bleed. Magdala, the hometown of Mary Magdalene, where tradition says she perished at the time of the Jewish War (66-70 AD.)

06/17/2024

Last time here, much tarp and scaffolding enfolding Hezekiah's "Broad Wall." Nice touch to get us up closer and more personal to this historic wall. In the 8th century BC, when the Assyrians were threatening to invade Jerusalem, King Hezekiah re-routed the Gihon Spring inwards to the Pool of Siloam through his famous tunnel, and expanded the city with a second wall to reach Mount Zion on the west ridge. This expansion made room for the exiles to relocate to the city from the fallen northern kingdom.

"Wall of Hezekiah" | One David's most renown descendants, King Hezekiah fortified Jerusalem against foreign invasion during the 1st-Temple era, constructing the massive wide wall we see before us. It was uncovered during excavations in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and lies were the boundary of city once stood; nowadays, Jerusalem is much, much larger.
-Old City, Jerusalem, Israel