Rooftops of homes in the Muslim Quarter of The Old City
This morning I chose to rage against the rain and wander into the Old City. My jeans sipped racing water from limestone streets, the moisture slowly climbing past my ankles, up toward my knees…but I didn’t mind.
I marched on in the name of art–art or ignorance. Perhaps art and ignorance had a love child, and my continuing was a response to that child’s unspoken imperative?
Just inside Jaffa Gate there’s a small alley few tourists ever turn into. I did, and climbed up a hidden staircase that seems to point to nowhere.
There are actually two levels to the Old City; however, only residents (about 30,000 people actually live in the 2 1/2 mile in diameter walled section of Jerusalem called The Old City) stride atop the roofs of the shops, restaurants and holy sites. Most people are content to browse the busy streets below, and so if you want to get somewhere fast, you go up first.
When I reached the top of the staircase, I found myself staring across rooftops at television antennae, satellite dishes and hot water heaters. Jerusalem tries to let go of her charm in places like this, just to relax for a moment, because it’s hard work being impressive all the time. But despite her best efforts Jerusalem (like an angry two-year-old) can’t help but be relentlessly charming. Where I stood constituted an especially sacred spot. Looking at an aerial photo of the Old City, one can quickly see that the point at which the partitions of the four quarters of the city meet constitutes a perfect cross–a cross at the top
This is where I stood today, amid the rain, snapping photos–a spiritual no-man’s land. 
And even in that place, that beautiful crossroads of Muslim, Jewish and Christian spiritualities, the cross speaks, rising up above the clamor of the center of the Old City, its ancient and bloodied past, meeting the lens of my camera.
The cross persists.
The Jews relegate Jesus to a rouge Rabbi with unrealized Messianic aspersions. Muslims understand Golgotha to be the stage for a divine parlor trick where the still living frame of Jesus was mysteriously replaced by a true criminal.
The cross persists, rising from the ground, bleeding into my cmaera lens, racing through my own iris and crashing into my heart, where whispers the same question the disciples were compelled to respond to 2,000 years ago:
“Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:13-15).
When someone asks me who the Son of Man is, to be honest, I’m not sure. He’s a sort of apocalyptic figure who dances across the pages of Daniel and Ezekiel before reappearing in the Gospels. Is Jesus speaking in the third person here? Is Jesus pointing to John the Baptist? Jesus doesn’t seem to evaluate which “people” are correct in their identification of the Son of Man. But when Jesus asks his disciples who they say He is , there is no room for speculation. Peter responds (seemingly) without reservation, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus’ line of questioning is swiftly and dramatically pointed, moving from the theological presuppositions of the masses to our response to the reality that the Creator is standing before us. He’s always standing before us.
What do we do with that? Speculation is one thing. Speculation, rhetoric, life in the classroom pondering Biblical nuance can prove fruitful from time to time.
But when the bell rings and the final word is spoken, the cross persists. It eternal whisper rises above the clamor, drives a stake through our hearts and by confronting us with the most important question we could ever entertain, and one which all of us, in the end, will answer:
Who do you say Jesus is?
Our answer to this question (as individuals, families and communities) will determine the trajectory of our lives in a way that no other response can, because an affirmative answer promises His life and demands every breath of our own.
