The Mount of Olives

The Mount of Olives is bustling, the crowds quite overwhelming. We are crushed by the people around us, as Jesus must have been as he arrived in Jerusalem.

From the Mount, we see the city, as Jesus must have done. We begin at Bethphage, where the disciples find the colt for him.

As we pause for worship, Bishop John asks us to think of the contrast between the two processions arriving in Jerusalem that day: Jesus on a lowly donkey, amidst the noise and confusion, Pilate's grand procession from Caesarea.

“One believed in smiting your enemy, the other in loving your enemy. It's a huge contrast. But to most of the world today, it looks as if we are part of Pilate's procession,” he says.

Descending through the crush, we arrive at the Pater Noster church, where the Lord's Prayer is displayed in 120 languages. “Prayer was at the heart of Jesus's life. Time spent with his heavenly Father was central to all he did. He prayed all night when he has an important decision to make. And this is the model prayer, said all over the world.”

He invites us to say it slowly, in any language we know.

On down the hill, a twisting route. Under the olive trees, past the traders. It's hot, dusty. We're thirsty, tired. We arrive at Dominus Flevit, the church that commemorates the spot where Jesus wept over the City of Jerusalem.

Archdeacon Karen tells us that for her, these are two of the most powerful words in the Gospels. We reflect on some verses from Jeremiah, lamenting over Jerusalem.

On again, and we reach the Garden of Gethsemane. No chance for peace and prayer here: the Garden is almost overrun. But in one roped-off area, people are harvesting the olives, everyday life going on as ever. The Church of All Nations is a crush. Nonetheless we manage to gather around the altar built over the rock where Jesus prayed.

“This stone is very precious. Here was the culmination of the issue Jesus was facing all the way through,” says Bishop John. “He was tempted to take the easy way out. He had to have it out with God. It was the final handing over of Jesus to God's hands. This is the time Jesus says 'I've done all I can, it's over to you.'”

Lunch, and then a visit to the Israel Museum, where there is a scale model of Jerusalem in the time of Jesus, and also an innovative display of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd boy in the 1940s in Khirbet Qumran, on the programme for tomorrow.