Christians, Jews, and Muslims

This photo is taken just outside of the Church of St. Anne, a Crusader Church: here you can see the ruins of what in the Bible are called the pools of Bethesda. "After this, there was a festival of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool called, in Hebrew, Bethesda..." (see John 5:1-9)

As you may recall, Jesus encounters a man there who had been ill for 38 years. Jesus asks him, "do you want to be well?" and the man explains how for 38 years he's had others cutting in front of him and no one to help him get into the healing pools. Jesus tells him to "stand up, take your mat, and walk." And the man is made well.

Our pilgrimage to this land has been rich with places that come to life as stories like this are remembered and in the process Christian faith is renewed and strengthened. It makes one wonder: what mats do I need to pick up in order to walk? Do I want to be made well and what are the costs associated with that choice?



But here, at least, there is no "Christian truth" that can be separated out from an encounter with other truths, and in particular the experience of Muslims and Jews. The three traditions are literally intertwined and layered on top of each other: therein lies the great challenge and potential gift of this holy city. The picture above shows the Rev. Dr. Stephen Need, Dean of St. George's, standing outside of the Dome of the Rock, built in 691. Amazing.

He spoke eloquently with us about the strong prohibition against images in Islam and of what that may teach us as Christians. Although both Jews and Christians are told to "have no graven images before us," for the most part we have settled on a tension between icons that point us to God and graven images that get in the way. We live with a tension between iconophilia and iconoclasm: the love of images and the need to shatter them. Ultimately, though, we know in our deepest apophatic spiritual and theological bones that all images fall short of who God really is.




The Dome of the Rock is built on the old Second Temple Mount, some say on the very site of the Holy of Holies. There are no images of Allah: only abstrations and caligraphy that allow mathematics and mysticism to meet. Before it was the site of the Solomonic and Herodian Temples, this location is said to be the place where Abraham took his son (Isaac or Ishmael, depending on your tradition) to be bound on Mt. Moriah. It is an ancient and holy place and you can feel that in the air; it is truly palpable.

And here, of course, one encounters Jews at prayer at the Western Wall, what is left of that Second Temple built in the time of Herod the Great. We also went up to the wall to pray, and here too The Holy One is present. This isn't to suggest we are all the same; one would have to be blind to even think that for a moment in this city. But perhaps our instincts are the same: being created in the image of God we yearn to find our way to God, the Source of our Being.

These kids made me hopeful about the future, or maybe just hopeful about the possibility for hope. "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: 'may they prosper who love you. Peace be within your walls and security within your towers.' For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, 'peace be within you.' For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good." (Psalm 121:6-9)

We explored the ruins of the ancient City of David and sat on the excavated steps of the Second Temple as this couple came toward us taking their wedding pictures. We are not the same. But there are some constants and some things that do bind us together, in the midst of it all.