Where Jesus touched the earth

It's easy to get a bit cynical about pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land.  Everywhere you go, there seems to be a church built on a location where Jesus and/or his disciples said or did something.  Dominus Flevit, where Jesus wept over Jerusalem; the Church of All Nations at Gethsemane, over the rock where Jesus agonised over the coming cross; the Church of St Peter in Gallicantu, where Peter denied Christ; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built upon the place where Jesus was crucified and buried and from where he rose from death.  You get the impression that if Jesus was known to have sat down or sneezed somewhere, a church would have been built!

None of the sites are necessarily proven.  What we can say is that there is a long tradition associated with them, and that the building of churches in these places has prevented them from being 'lost' to the pilgrim. If you like the idea of 'sacred space', you will certainly find a sense of holiness arising as you add your prayers to those of many generations of pilgrims before you.  And the journey from one place to another, for example on the Via Dolorosa (Way of Suffering, or Way of the Cross), helps to evoke the memory of events from 2000 years ago.  Nonetheless, some struggle with the 'churchification' and commercialisation of Christ.

How are we to find Jesus in all of this?  The following poem by Steve Turner puts it well:

'Where Jesus touched the earth'

I went to see where Jesus

Church of All Nations

Once touched the earth

but the Church

Had got there before me

And obscured his footprints

With arches, buttresses,

Gold and incense.

I went to see where Jesus

Once touched the earth.

I couldn't see for

Concrete and collection boxes,

For postcards and guide books.

So I looked further down.

I looked to the ground.

But the ground was thirty feet

Higher than back in AD3.

This is not where Jesus walked.

I looked down, down to my feet,

My legs, my arms, chest.

I looked down to where Jesus

Touches the earth.

Holy Kissing?

That caught your attention, didn’t it? And I thought it was a suitably enigmatic title for my first blog.

Let me explain. I am recently returned from a trip to the Holy Land, and in the 7 days I spent there I have visited more churches and holy sites than I care to mention. For me, this was a pilgrimage and a profound spiritual experience but I stopped short of the response of many pilgrims. Not for me the bowing before and kissing of places which may (or may not) have been the place of Jesus’ conception, birth, manger, healing miracles, death and resurrection. Perhaps it offends my Protestant sensibilities, but such veneration of place and object seems to lie somewhere on a scale between simple superstition and outright idolatry!

I cannot deny, however, the sense of the sacred that seemed present in so many places. Perhaps it is the association with events in the life of Jesus, or the worship of pilgrims down the centuries? It was deeply moving to observe the varieties of liturgy at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, early on a Sunday morning: Franciscan, Orthodox and others co-existing and worshipping in the same building at the same time. It was awe-inspiring (in the divine sense of the phrase) to share in the Lord’s Supper on the Mount of Olives and overlooking the Sea of Galilee. It was truly faith-building to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

In the end, that may be what it’s all about. To be a pilgrim is to follow Jesus and to journey with him. If visiting biblical sites and touching, even kissing, awakens and strengthens us for the pilgrimage, it can after all be holy!