Easter season has been pretty amazing this year! One reason is that Easter overlaps with both Passover and Ramadan celebrations. So the three major religions have these intertwining festivals with heightened spiritual awareness, increased crowds, and important rituals which set the season apart from the rest of the year.
We began focusing on Easter in earnest at Palm Sunday on April 2. The center sits on the south end of the Mount of Olives, so with a 20 minute walk through an East Jerusalem neighborhood, we arrived at the church of Bethphage. The Palm Sunday walk used to begin at Bethany, but the current separation barrier makes that impossible. Carrying slender, spiny palm branches, we gathered behind the church which celebrated Jesus alighting on a young donkey to make his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
The ancient crowds shouted, "Hosanna, to the son of David! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord" (Matthew 21:9). Consequently, the modern pilgrims sang songs filled with hosannas and other expressions of praise. Some groups held printed song books, others sang as if the songs were part of their soul. There were guitars, drums, loudspeakers, and one group just sang to the accompaniment of a cell phone held aloft. Our group from the BYU Jerusalem Center sang restoration hymns of praise, including "The Spirit of God" --think of all the hosannas!
The streets near the church of Bethphage where we started were lined with Muslim neighbors, old and young. Some waved to us from balconies and windows, others sold cold water, a good idea on a sunny day. Then the onlooking crowds thinned as the road narrowed and turned, funneling us through switchback turns past churches and cemeteries. As the sun got hot and a short cut was blocked by guards, it made me think of how we sometimes reach points in our discipleship when enthusiasm wanes before our goals are in sight.
What do we do to keep ourselves moving forward at those times? Stiff upper lip? Positive mental affirmations? Fall prey to the siren song of others' expectations? For me, first, I was encouraged by watching my fellow pilgrims and their devotion. Second, I counted my blessings, the nice weather, modern comforts like comfortable shoes and sunscreen, not to mention a cell phone I could use to find the family members I had lost sight of soon after we began. Third, I thought of Jesus Christ. Did he feel lonely in that crowd? Amid all the praise, how many actually understood his prophesied role?
How many of the crowd were cheering for the immediate end of their political troubles rather than celebrating a future heavenly kingdom? Hosannah is a plea for God to save us now. When the political salvation did not arrive the following week, how many of the shouters would be turning into doubters? It is easier to cheer on a revolutionary than to do the hard work of turning myself around to repent, or inaugurating Christ as the king of my soul, to recommit and re-covenant. Jesus must have known that within the week he would be bound and lifted up on a cross, so that he could bind all of us to him and lift us up. At one point this drove him to
Finally the road made one final twist and we were in sight of the Church of All Nations, which marks the traditional site of Gethsemane. We technically did not continue to the final destination, instead heading home after we reached Gethsemane. The rest of the procession continued up into the Old City. The ultimate goal was the church of St. Anne's by the Pool of Bethesda. There, we heard later, our students enjoyed a holy mosh pit of boisterous praise and dancing!
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