third and final Jerusalem day (for now)

Well between the nineteen of us who are here, we've managed to cram so much into our final day -- including nine of us scrambling under an unfinished section of separation wall in East Jersalem. There were visits to Yad Vashem, and many joined the exuberant Palm Sunday procession with all denominations, thousands of Palestinian Christians and many others from all over the world. There was bottle-necks, singing, palm fronds galore and a long slow shuffle to the Lion Gate entrance to the city. On entering, rice showered down from the windows above. There's a reluctance from most people to leave. Margaret has only just arrived; there will be time for more Jerusalem next weekend.

Back to the trip to Bethany though. We (nine of us) were stood in Mary and Martha's garden close to where their home may have been. I was hit by a moment of rhetoric as I could see the map of our morning pilgrimage ... I said

"So here we are at the place Jesus turned up, late, and Martha said to him 'if you'd been earlier our brother Lazaurus would not be died' and Jesus said 'take me to the place you have laid him'. Now today we can get straight to Lazarus's tomb, two minutes away, because its just down the hill and there's a final gap in the separation wall that hasn't been built, yet. So we can go this week, but by next week it will probably be closed off. So today we can go straight, next week though, we'd have to go back the way we came, get another bus and take forty minutes at least to get round, not allowing for the checkpoint.

So we headed to the end of the garden -- the gated section, where the wall is to be built, was padlocked off today: we started to clamber underneath -- two local Palestinians came with hammer and chisel to smash the lock, but we asked them not to risk trouble for themselves and got through by crawling and rolling!

The visit to the tomb and back through the wall was a poignant pilgrimage with a difference, and perhaps an unrepeatable one for many years to come if the wall goes up and stays up.