Imagine with me...

So I think running up the steps of the Temple Mount humming the “Rocky” theme song was not anywhere near what was going on in Jesus’ time (not so much because “Rocky” didn’t exist but because running up the steps to a holy place was probably frowned upon). As we sat on the steps of the Temple Mount I imagined the voice of Jesus carrying over the sound of all the people coming in and out. I saw Him pointing to the men carrying heavy loads and remarking what was recorded by the Biblical authors in Matthew 23:4. I watched Him turn and point to the Pharisees turning people away from entering the temple and heard Him say what Matthew recorded in Matthew 23:13. I was very taken aback when Aubrey, our tour guide/professor, explained that the Holy of Holies was sometimes referred to as Heaven because it was where Heaven touched Earth. All of a sudden the words “shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces” from verse 13 became much more concrete. Jesus could very well have played with a double meaning but He was truly an incredible teacher. He used what was around Him to teach common people and grab their attention. Aubrey explained that Rabbis tended to teach at the temple steps. They would gather a big following just because so many people were coming into the temple. Jesus knew how to speak (using memory triggers and things people understood) and where to speak. Just another reason to smile at my Savior.

I’m actually regretting not bringing a camera because all of the sights we are seeing can be used like Jesus used the things around him, as memory triggers for the people I’m speaking to. I want to be able to show them what I have in my mind’s eye when I describe what the text of the Scriptures is describing. The question I plan on wrestling with throughout this trip, the “so, what?” question was blown apart today, especially when we sat right by the pool of Bethesda.

It becomes something so much more different than ruins when I see Jesus in my imagination walking around the areas I’m walking around. I can see Him asking the man if he wanted to be healed (John 5:6). Besides becoming real to me, the stories coupled with the actual place clear up some fuzzy spots my imagination would fill in with incorrect information. Aubrey explained the background of places like the pool of Bethesda where cults believed the various pools in that area had healing powers. Roman soldiers used it many times and it is incredible that Jesus showed up and says, “You don’t need this, I can heal you.”

We had started the day sitting on the roof of what was believed to be the upper room and the room of the last supper. And after walking along the road around the temple and sitting on the steps of the temple my imagination’s thoughts came back to me when Aubrey was talking about the place where it all started, what was going through their minds? Aubrey suggested that since the disciples had the last supper in that house they went back to the same house because the family was sympathetic to Jesus and His followers. I can’t imagine how frightened they must have been. They came back, dejected and scared because they had nowhere else to go. The silence around my locker room when my high school basketball team lost a game does not compare to what must have happened in that room. The craziness that broke out when a voice breathlessly yelled that Jesus had resurrected and the wide-eyed expression of the disciples when Jesus showed up must have been spectacular. I can see why all of this matters. I can see how the Bible becomes more than just a collection of stories. The Old Testament begins to look more like a foundation than a fairy tale. Jesus is a person who made His dwelling among us (a memory trigger that John wrote in John 1:14 that the Israelites would definitely have understood because of the forty years of wandering where they made their dwellings all over the desert). The word in the Greek is literally “tabernacle among us.” John 1 is riddled with memory triggers like this and it is beautiful to see what John means throughout all of these beautiful places in Jerusalem. Today’s field study’s impressions? Imagination coupled with accurate data causes the stories of the Old Testament and the New Testament to become more than awesome, but actually breathtakingly real.