Barnes in Common

the magazine of Churches Together in Barnes
March/April 2008

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Easter in Jerusalem

by Roger Hutchings

A few years ago, I spent the whole of Holy Week in Israel, mainly in Jerusalem. It was an instructive experience! Staying in a decent hotel, I found in my room on arrival a newsletter in English detailing what was 'on' in the city. Pages of information about museums, places of interest, coach trips and other activities followed. It was only on the last page and near the bottom of one column that there was a brief note: 'This week is Holy Week for Christians, and next Sunday is Easter.' In the city where Easter happened, that was it! There was no list of services, nor any reference to the events the week commemorates. I admit I was tempted to bin the publication in disgust, but, of course, it was a valuable sign of modern-day reality.

The week began with a visit on 'our' Palm Sunday to a Samaritan Passover celebration. The chanting in Aramaic of the Exodus story was Middle-Eastern. The removal with boiling water of the slaughtered sheep's wool by excited children was alarming. The baking of the whole lambs in earth ovens felt a long way from London. Israeli military personnel were stationed on the perimeter of the site, holding their machine-guns at the ready - 'in case of trouble'.

After that Passover event, I spent the next few days visiting various holy places and joining in some of the Christian ceremonies. The Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem appeared on a special dais in the courtyard outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the Thursday evening to re-enact the foot-washing in John's gospel. There was a large crowd. In his robes, the Archbishop hardly had to stoop to perform the foot-washing, and as far as I could tell the feet to be washed had been carefully organised in advance.
On Good Friday, I joined one of the many groups of Christians walking the Via Dolorosa, as you might expect. The shops were open in the narrow streets of the Old City, with canaries singing in their cages and shopkeepers shouting their invitations to buy everything from vegetables to handbags, together with plenty of tourist tat. The noise was terrific, and the groups of Christian pilgrims on Jesus' journey had to battle their way from station to station. Locals pushed through the praying groups as they went about their shopping. There were wonderful incongruities all the time, like a scout band in uniform making their way through those same streets, playing marches on out-of-tune brass instruments.

That evening, I attended a 'funeral' service in the Russian Orthodox church at the foot of the Mount of Olives. The priests and nuns were, I understood, re-enacting the burial of Jesus. It was, for me, a curious but very moving act of worship, and the haunting sounds of Russian chants will stay with me for life. At the end of the Jewish Sabbath at sunset on Saturday (and thus in some traditions the beginning of Easter day), I was able to be in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the amazing spectacle of the announcement of Resurrection. The church was packed, with the fitter, younger people standing on the plinths and clinging to pillars to get a good view. Into the tiny chapel where Jesus was thought to have lain, the patriarch went in all his finery. When he emerged, he brought with him the miraculously burning 'light of Christ' in the form of two flaming torches. As he appeared and announced the Resurrection, every bell in the church rang out and the crowd burst into a cheering, whistling shout which would not have disgraced an English goal at Wembley. Then the young men lit their torches from the patriarch's, and dashed off through the crowd to take the light of Christ to other churches.

After all that (and more), it was almost more extraordinary to be singing 'Thine be the glory' in a thoroughly traditional Anglican service on Easter morning! And once again, as the previous week, I was aware after the service that the busy life of Jerusalem, wonderfully sacred and wonderfully secular, was just carrying on regardless.

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