Exploring the Christian Quarter

In order to further orient ourselves, we were assigned yesterday to explore one of the quarters of the Old City. We were asked to pair up with a person of another nationality, a 'buddy,' and then group with another pair to form a 'family.' My buddy was Kate, an Australian farm girl, aged 20; the other pair in our family were Ben, an Australian Anglican pastor, aged 32, and Chuck, an American from Wyoming, aged 72, I believe. So this is my 'family' for the next two weeks, and I couldn't have a better one.

We were assigned the Christian Quarter with a number of tasks to perform between 10 am and 5:3o pm: discover a high place and vantage point; discover a low place with perhaps an archaeological dig; find the neighborhood's principal site; find another religious shrine; talk to a local about what it is like to live in the Old City. However, we were asked to perform two special tasks: discover the joys and sorrows of the quarter, and bring back a small token to symbolize the quarter. Although I've been exploring the Old City for two weeks, now, this provided some real impetus to dig deeper into the lives of the people.

So we set out, entering the New Gate on the northwest corner of the Old City and walked along Latin Patriarchate Rd toward Jaffa Gate. It was not long before we found a door with a stone-cut sign reading "Issa Is the Name, Basketball is the Game." I pointed out that "Isa" is Arabic for Jesus, so Ben inquired within. Our came a delightful seventy-some odd year old Arab Christian man, who explained that he had made the sign and set it in the wall for his son, named Issa after Jesus Christ, who loves basketball. At this, we received a healthy dose of Middle Eastern hospitality: he invited us into his home to show us around and tell us a number of stories about his family.

He introduced himself as Annus and his wife as Georgina. He'd worked all his life as a stone mason. I found this particularly interesting since Jesus himself was a tekton, which we translate 'carpenter' but is more of a general construction worker who would have used stone building materials in first century Galilee. Here was a man that was living the life of the Christian Quarter. He brought us back to one of the inner rooms that was the original room in the house which he has since turned into his bedroom and living quarters. He added to that in order to have a workshop, which functioned as the foyer in his retirement.

In particular, he told us an amazing story about renovating the back room when he turned it into his bedroom. At the top of the dome was the keystone, which had to be removed for the reconstruction process. As a dome, the keystone had an upper side that remained hidden from view. On this upper side, he discovered an inscription placed there by the original builder (almost inevitably one of his ancestors): a cross with the Arabic words "Allah Masia," or God is the Messiah! So he did some metalwork with an old lamp that he turned into a hanging display so the keystone could be mounted on the wall above his bed. He has never taken it out of the room.

After a while we excused ourselves to continue on our journey. After a short while we came across a very nice restaurant at which we figured we might have lunch later on, so we stopped in. The owner was a Syrian Orthodox Christian who knew St. George's well; apparently the staff at the college often take their lunches at his establishment. A priest, the former dean of St. George's, died two days ago, so we talked about this, and he showed us pictures of the man and a joint Gregorian Catholic and Julian Orthodox calendar he had worked on for years. His work on ecumenism had also touched the priests at the Armenian service the night before, who were very sad at his passing; he had been schedule to participate in the liturgy there.

Anyways, the owner proceeded to give us a full history of the Syrian Orthodox Church, including its breakaway from the orthodox church catholic when it rejected the Council of Chalcedon in 451. They believe that Christ is fully divine and fully human in one person, however, they do not believe he has full divine and full human natures; the natures have merged (called monophysitism, or 'one nature-ism'). Orthodox Christianity (all of us) believe that this threatens the unity of God, since if Christ has a new merged divine-human nature, then is his nature the same as the divine Father's? Can we still speak of one God, or a 'binity' of the Father and Holy Spirit and a separate, second God-man Christ? Probably not, but the Syrians have backed away from their strict formulation.

He also told us that in the east there are two specific monastic traditions, as in the west you have Franciscans, Benedictines, Jesuits, Dominicans, and a host of others. Here, there are St. Anthony's monks, whose communities are traced back to St. Anthony of Egypt, and the communities of St. Ephrem the Syrian, whose communities are largely found in the Syrian Orthodox Church. St. Ephrem defended the formulation of Christ as one fully divine, fully human person at the Council of Ephesus through his poetic songs praising Mary as the Theotokos, the God-bearer (the heretic at the council, Nestorius, refused to call her this and only Christotokos, the Christ-bearer, since for him there were separate human and divine persons). The hymns continue to be sung and memorized, without being written down for a thousand years, today; and it was this emphasis on the unity of Christ's person against the heretic Nestorius that led to the Syrian church's own heresy of over-emphasizing the unity of Christ's natures at the next council, Chalcedon. As with most heresies, it is pushing a truth too far; the road of orthodoxy is the narrow road.

For those actually wondering about my day, yes, we did end up eating lunch there, and ended up with an absolutely terrible picture of all four of us. However, the beef and chicken kebabs were delicious.

So to get to our high point I led the group back to the tower on the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, which everybody thoroughly enjoyed. Kate is a tad claustrophobic and thus was walking very slowly down the narrow stone steps in the tower, so I decided to take a rest in a window sill. Then I decided to see if I could climb in it...
...and she decided it was worth the picture.

Well, that was our very busy day yesterday. It was sort of a free, but more a day of taking in the city- for the first time for some, and in a whole new way for me. For our tokens, we brought back the receipts from climbing up the tower, since that was our chance to give a small amount of money to the church and our opportunity to view the whole of the Old City from one central vantage point. Joys and sorrows? The sorrow of hearing how the Syrian Orthodox Christians are cut off from their patriarch in Damascus because of the continued political situation between Syria and Israel. But what a magnificent joy of meeting Annas and hearing his nigh-magical story of the keystone.