Holy Land Trip | Part 2 | Temple Mount

Here we are at the end of day two of our journey. I would not expect a post every day, but our itinerary requires something to be said. I don’t have room to do justice to every visit but will try to highlight some of the stops. To begin, I will ask a question that we were asked. What is sacred space for you?

The Temple Mount: Al-Aqsa Mosque, The Dome of the Rock, & The Wailing Wall

We spent most of the day in old city Jerusalem. Walking around there, you could sense an energy among all the pilgrims and locals opening their shops, visiting various sites, and worshiping in different ways. In the background as we walked from place to place we could hear a Jewish family celebrating a Bar Mitzvah with singing and dancing, the call to prayer from the towering minarets of local mosques, and a few Christian groups singing hymns. Immediately you could sense the sacred value placed on this town by the many faiths practiced here.

Many of the religious sites here are contested as different faiths compete for control. On the surface, you might not recognize this with all the music and noise of the bustling city. It seems as if everyone is going about their normal days, worshiping, and finding their place here in the old city. However, as you look closer, you begin to see the walls, checkpoints, and the various rules that separate this area and its people. Areas are often defined by who shouldn’t be there and what a person shouldn’t bring. This is more noticeable at no site other than the Temple Mount.

At the break of dawn, we were climbing up a makeshift ramp leading to a checkpoint before being allowed onto the Temple Mount. If you are unfamiliar with this, it was the place the Jewish Temple would have stood before its multiple destruction’s (586 BCE & 70 CE). This is also the place (Mt. Moriah) where Abraham was said to have brought and almost sacrificed his son Isaac. Today, the surface of the Temple Mount is maintained by Islam who has built the beautiful Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque there. At the same time, the Jewish people are concentrated around the Western Wall at its base.

Going up onto the Temple Mount, we were instructed not to wear or bring any religious symbols like crosses or religious texts. We learned that some religious leaders are often required to be escorted during their visits. For many, these restrictions might have created a challenge, but I did not feel that way. It allowed me to spend some time thinking about what sacred space means to us, where we go to find that space, how we keep that place, and how we respect the sacred space of others.

On the Temple Mount, I found peace in being able to journey through the gardens that were once filled with pilgrims cleansing themselves and bringing their sacrifices to the temple. In portions of the Temple Mount, Jesus was also once found teaching. We saw the place where the Dome of the Rock now stands and is thought to be the place where the Holy of Holies in the Jewish Temple was.

Today, you will find most Jewish people coming to the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall to pray. You will find this place the most active on Friday before Shabbat dinners. This wall is the closest that most Jewish people come today to the Temple Mount. For some, this is because the Temple Mount is occupied by another faith. For others, their reasoning varies. Many won’t venture onto the Temple Mount as they do not trust where they have been told the location of the temple’s Holy of Holies was and they don’t want to accidentally step in that area. Only the high priest was permitted to enter this area at the time the temple was standing.

I say all of this, not to log the places we visited, or even to give you a lesson on history. I say it because this is a place where the word “and” makes a lot of sense and can be said often. Jews and Muslims worship here. Catholics and Protestants visit these sites. We visited the Garden of Gethsemane to see that peace and sorrow are found here. Ending our day, we saw that some believe the Garden Tomb (visited today) and some believe the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (visit later this week) are the actual burial sites of Jesus. The word “and” is everywhere.

As we have heard a few times on this trip, there is a place for everyone in this town. As Christians, coming here heightens our sense of the presence of God but it also makes us aware of each other, no matter where we come from. Whether we were walking the streets of the old city, standing on the Temple Mount, or praying with the Jewish people at the Wailing Wall, we could feel a sense of unity. Although the barriers exist, and conflicts continue, the many people who travel here are more alike than we care to admit, all of us finding the sacred in this space in different ways.

Shalom, Salam