It was a drizzly January afternoon in Jerusalem and I was sitting in the Mahane Yehuda market eating Iraqi bamia (okra) with an Observant Jewish friend.  As usually happens in Jerusalem, the talk quickly turned to politics and religion. He’d read some of our better Christian theologians (he was impressed with N.T. Wright and Raymond E. Brown) and I’d read some of the better Jewish ones (I was impressed with Abraham Joshua Heschel).

While my friend respects the teachings and narrative of Jesus, he has no interest in becoming a Christian.  Nevertheless, he is intrigued by the Jesus who stood on the Mount of Olives and wept over Jerusalem.  He easily referenced the passage from Luke 19 that played a central role in his doctoral dissertation on Renaissance English literature.

 “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you” (Luke 19:41-44 NIV).  

My friend has wept over Jerusalem himself. In his own words, “grieving for the calamities its citizens bring upon it through arrogance and ignorance in a cycle that is as painful today as ever before.”  

A few moments later he asked me a question that a Muslim student would also ask me during our English class a few weeks later. “How do you interpret Jesus’ statement,

“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me”?

We have so many assumptions and unasked questions between us – we Christians, Muslims and Jews.  Questions like this have their own particular relevance in a place like Jerusalem where devout practitioners of their respective faiths pray and chant and fast and sing and light candles and pass beads through their fingers regularly; all focusing their attention towards the God of Abraham, the God of Creation, the One God. 

My Jewish friend was relaxed and curious. When I was asked the same question by my Muslim friend a few weeks later, his eyes shone with intensity and challenge.