Please No Explanations

In Jerusalem the churches swarm with tour groups, each with its guide, lecturing in low tones about history and architecture.  The walls echo with commentary.

But outside the Church of All Nations, at the Garden of Gethsemane, on the Mount of Olives, there is a sign:  Please No Explanations Inside the Church.  And you walk through the doors, and you sit in a pew, and there is silence, finally, and coolness, and shadows.

 

The altar is built above a hole where a large, flat rock rises out of the marble floor—the rock where tradition says Jesus knelt and prayed the night before his crucifixion, and where you can kneel and pray, too, along the edges, lining up first to bend down and kiss the stone or run your hands over its thick, dark layers.

from Light When It Comes  (Eerdmans 2016)

The post Please No Explanations appeared first on A WordPress Site.