Dominus Flevit

"And when Jesus saw the city, he wept over it." (Luke 19:41) We went up to the Mount of Olives today to visit Dominus Flevit, i.e. "Jesus wept." So begins our journey into an exploration of Holy Week. This is a view from outside of the church but below you will get a view from inside. Like so many of the churches we've visited, it was designed by Antonio Barlucci who seemed to have a genius sense of space and context. This church is shaped like a tear-drop; beautiful, really. I think when I visited here in the 1980s I was more suspicious of modern churches claiming to be on historical sites. I have become more keenly aware this time around that modern churches are built over the ruins of crusader churches which were built over the ruins of Byzantine churches. This doesn't "prove" historicity but it does mean, as I've noted before, that these have been sites associated with these events for many centuries and they are, as such, "thin places" where you feel the presence of the Holy One. Whether or not it was this spot, we stood on the Mount of Olives and we prayed and we read Scripture and we sang hymns. We were not the first ones there to do so.



While the altar is rather dark in this photo you get a sense of what Barlucci has done. You gather to pray and celebrate the Eucharist looking through clear glass over the city Jesus wept for. In the center of course you can see the Dome of the Rock. I have been reflecting in these past few days about the relationship between Christians, Jews, and Muslims and how these intertwine with political realities. I have no easy answers or even complex ones; only a growing sense that the challenge of being a peacemaker in this part of the world is not easy or simple. There is no magic wand to be waved.

Jesus wept. As we prepare to walk the journey of Holy Week, in the midst of this Epiphany season no less, I am still pondering all of these things. Along the way in this journey, Stephen offered a prayer that is becoming my own. It was written by a woman named Janet Morley, about whom I know nothing, and it comes from a book called Companions of God. It goes like this:

O God,

I came to your holy land...seeking a pure encounter.

A cleansing, a pilgrimage, a sense of direction.

There are no pure experiences, no unmixed feelings.

No beauty that is not woven with pain.

I wanted truth.

I find several incompatible truths.

I wanted faith.

I have met faith passionate, intense, real, and blind.

I wanted the Bible to come alive.

I find it living, breathing, and justifying violence...

There is no innocence in prayer, no innocence in religion.

Just nowhere else to go to avoid noticing the tenacity of evil.

Or carrying my share of history, of present pain,

my share in the struggle for peace.

For, if your disciples keep silent,

These stones will cry aloud.