We started the day with a wonderful breakfast and a brief morning service for our team which includes members of St. Anne’s and two other churches. After an archeological briefing about the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. We then attended a larger service at St. George’s Cathedral, our host for our time in Jerusalem and met afterwards with Bishop Suheil Dawani whose diocese includes Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and the West Bank.
Our primary activity today was a walking tour through East Jerusalem to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which surrounds Calvary and Golgotha. Throughout the trip important sights including ATMs and drug stores were pointed out. We had lunch at a restaurant where we ate schwarma (hope I spelt that correctly.) Passing through Damascus Gate we descended into the Souq where we saw spices, candy and clothing sold alongside electronic goods.
Arriving at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher we learned about the infighting between the 6 Christian groups about who owns what parts of the church that has gone on for hundreds of years. A Muslim family holds the official key to the church to ensure that everyone is treated equally, we met the family patriarch during our walk.
The church is buried amongst many other buildings and is only noticeable when you get fairly close. We went inside and viewed various sights (and sites!) including Calvary and Golgotha. There were crowds of people gathered around various religious sites, some who had queued for hours.
The goal of the walk was to get us acquainted with the location and to encourage us to travel back by ourselves in small group. At no time did we feel the situation was dangerous or risky, the biggest risk is getting lost and the signage is very good.
After walking back from the old city we took a short break and then had a lecture on Islam from our guest speaker Firas Amad. I think several people were surprised to find out that Jesus and Mary are figures in the Koran and to hear Firas’ perspective on religion and politics.
We had dinner and retired for the night.
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