Holy Land Pilgrimage 2015 from Mary Street, the Epiphany in Winchester

This post was written and posted on Saturday, 24 January, following Mary’s (and everybody else’s) safe arrival home. 

I have always known, in a way, that Jesus walked. Bible stories from childhood describe Jesus walking from town to town, walking up into the hills, walking to Jerusalem, stopping by the well and speaking with the Samaritan woman in a walk from here to there. But, I didn’t have a more concrete comprehension of what that meant until being in Israel/Palestine. Many of us walk for recreation or exercise. We ‘power walk’ because we’re told to get exercise or we park as close as possible to the grocery store door to walk as little as possible. I grew up in a family with parents who scoffed at the notion of joining a gym to get something you should be getting from hard work. Walking was a means of getting from point ‘a’ to point ‘b,’ and I still like to walk better if I’m actually going somewhere.

Jesus was always going somewhere, physically and spiritually. He was not accepted in his own hometown, so he walked to Capernaum, the area where he taught the beatitudes on a hillside similar to the one we walked to from our comfortable, air conditioned bus. The country is lush and green, the air is filled with birdsong, and the Sea of Galilee shimmers in the distance. The Valley of Angels was ahead of us, a beautiful sight of high, green mountains shaped like angel wings in the distance – the valley through which Jesus would have walked. But he also walked hard roads, through a dry and barren valley on the Roman road to reach Jerusalem from Jericho. We stood high above that valley at sunrise on a cold morning and I tried to imagine walking in such a vast expanse of land in a time when that would have been my only option for getting around. He spent forty days and nights high on a mountain being tempted by Satan. After riding a cable car halfway up the mountain, we climbed a steep path to the Orthodox monastery where the stone on which he stood is venerated.

On our last two days, we spent time in Jerusalem retracing parts of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and then Jesus’ final walk through Jerusalem after he is condemned to death – the Via Dolarosa. We stood on the remnants of the Roman steps Jesus and his disciples would have used to come into the city and we prayed in the Church of All Nations in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus leaves his disciples to pray and fully submits to God’s will, knowing, it seems, that the end is at hand. Walking the Via Dolarosa early in the morning through the old city market before most of the shops are open, we stood on first century stone at one point, the stones on which he also walked, and we made our way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site of Golgotha and the tomb from which he rose from the dead.

Jesus’ many journeys across his land and his spiritual journey that we retraced are much more real to me now. I came away from the Garden of Gethsemane in awe of the act of submission he made, filled with joy that God’s will became his own along with tears of sadness for his death. I am both challenged and inspired by all we saw and did and am certainly renewed in my commitment to walking the road Jesus offers me.