By Dr. John E. Morgan

Pastor–Collinsville Baptist Church

It was our first Sunday in the Holy Land.  Gloria and I had been given the money for the trip that most every Christian wants to make.  We were traveling alone – no tour group -  just the two of us wandering around in Israel, Jordan and Egypt for three weeks.

We had arrived in Jerusalem about dark on a Thursday and were staying in an old hotel inside the Old City walls.  We had explored and felt overwhelmed for three days by a Holy presence.  Jerusalem does that to you.

We decided to go to Sunday worship at the Garden Tomb – the one you have all seen on TV and in pictures.  There was a service there about nine in the morning.

It was mid-January.  In Jerusalem, that means cool weather and a chance of some rain.  As we looked out the hundred year old windows of our room, we could see the gray and dismal sky.  The rain was steady but not heavy.  The temperature was in the forties.

We pulled on our rain jackets and started walking.  The tomb was a little less than a mile away.  We leaned into the wind and felt the rain blow around our hoods and onto our faces.  We were running a little late as we were still figuring out jet lag.  Out the city gate, up the sidewalk by the old walls, around the corner and down the hill.  Then across the street into East Jerusalem.

The Garden Tomb is overseen by volunteers from the Anglican Church.  The grounds are a beautiful garden surrounded by a fence.  The gate into the grounds had a sign warning us that most of the compound, including the tomb was closed.  Sure enough, we could see the locked door on the tomb (it still seems strange to me that the tomb is kept closed on Sunday).

In good weather, the Sunday service is held outdoors with an amphitheatre that looks down at the tomb.  Very effective.  But not in this blustery weather.  An usher sent us up a path to the seating area on top of a small hill.  It had a concrete floor covered with a metal roof to provide shelter from the rain and sun.  There were no walls.  We sat on the hard, backless benches.  There was seating for about fifty, but there were only about 25 there.  Because we were late, we sat near the back. We soon cooled off from the walk and pulled our jackets tighter.  The wind occasionally blew rain in on us.

A voice was coming through a loud speaker system mounted under the roof.  There was no one standing in front of us.  We decided that the weather was so bad that they were playing a recorded service from some other Sunday.  We listened to the English accented voices coming from the speaker.

As the service went on, I looked around.  The people were quiet and hunched against the wind.  When I looked back over my shoulder, I just see the Garden Tomb sixty yards away across the carefully maintained plants.  The sign on the tomb read – “He Is Not Here.  He Is Risen”.

We should have been miserable.  But it was actually a moving service.  The speaker was pretty good, but it was the location that made the day special.

As the service neared an end, the voice on the speaker told us we could leave an offering in the basket at the front. We all stood for a closing hymn and prayer.  Our little group of 25 taking a last glance at the Garden Tomb. We picked up our things, and I thought about the other Christian tourists who had slept in or gone to a warm, dry church.  Gloria and I were glad that we had braved the weather.  The rain and cold did not seem all that bad.

Then I began to hear voices.  I looked over the little hill where we had been sitting to see a stream of people.  They appeared as if by magic.  And the crowd grew.  I walked around to look at the bottom of the hill where we had been sitting.  Turns out that we had been sitting on the roof of a chapel built into the hill.  The service we heard was not recorded.  It was live. And we were seeing the congregation who got there early or on time and filled up the chapel.

Our group of 25 joined with the group of about a hundred and fifty who had been in the chapel that is used in bad weather.  We were not the only worshippers there.  We were just the late worshippers who were sitting in an overflow area thinking that we were alone.

Gloria and I laughed at ourselves.  We were so sure we were the only ones there.  When in reality there were lots of other Christians.  We walked slowly past the closed tomb.  “He Is Not Here.”  But His people were.

Sometimes we Christians think our church or our denomination is the only one.  We aren’t.  After we sing “red and yellow, black and white” we should add “Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Pentecostal and all the rest.  We are precious in His sight”.  Somehow the Tomb made that clear to us that day.

Jesus said, “I have other sheep which are not of this fold.” John 10:16