[Image] The bishops visited with His Most Godly Beatitude Theopholus the III, patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Photo courtesy of Bishop Anne Hodges-Copple
Celebrating Pentecost, Epiphany and Christmas
By Bishop Anne Hodges-Copple
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
(Acts 1:8)
In January of this year, I had the unusual experience of celebrating two of the principal feasts of the church calendar—Epiphany and Christmas—but with Epiphany coming first! On Sunday morning, January 5, I joined with 10 fellow American bishops, including Bishop Sam Rodman, at St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem in a celebration of the Epiphany led by the Archbishop of Jerusalem and the Middle East, the Most Reverend Hosam Naoum. It was a glorious conclusion to the Christmas season as it is dated on the Gregorian calendar, and it was just the beginning of our walk of solidarity with fellow Christians from all over the Holy Land, including Jordan.
The next night, on January 6, this same small band of Episcopal pilgrims joined a throng of humanity at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where, together with our Eastern Orthodox siblings in Christ, we rang in the first moments of the Christmas season according to the Julian calendar. There was such a cacophony of languages being sung and spoken at one time—all proclaiming the goodness of God’s love made incarnate—that it also felt like Pentecost, with every human hearing and embracing the God incarnate in each one’s native tongue.
A PENTECOSTAL SPIRIT
It is easy to connect Christmas with the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the crucifixion and resurrection with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre/Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem. Pilgrims like to travel to particular spots to ponder more universal truths. But our pilgrimage also had a certain Pentecostal spirit. Everywhere we went—Jerusalem, Jordan, Nazareth, Galilee—was the power of the Holy Spirit drawing together those who seek justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God. This has been true on all of my previous trips to the Holy Land, but it was especially powerful witnessing many acts of faith and courage against a backdrop of violence and destruction.
Doesn’t sound like what you hear about in the news, does it? And, yet, there it was in the Church of the Nativity on January 6, as pilgrims from around the world waited together for the Christmas bells at midnight. There were three liturgies going on at once. One in Greek, one in Syriac, and one in Armenian. It was certainly not a three-ring circus, but there were three distinct altars, each with its own mass and procession, all going along simultaneously and even, it seemed at times, competitively. There were times when a procession led by a particular patriarch with his priests, deacons and acolytes would process into the precinct of another branch of the family tree and perform a choreography that seemed to be a form of Christmas greeting or a Christmas promenade around the liturgical neighborhood. Pilgrims who understood Greek would explain something to the pilgrims who understood Syriac, and someone else would try and explain what the Armenians were doing. Fortunately, there were many kind people who did what they could to explain the various ceremonials to us English-only types.
The unity behind all the diversity was palpable. It was the joy to the world that the Lord is born! Christmas? Yes. Epiphany? Yes. Pentecost? Yes.
[Images] Participants in the January 2025 bishops’ pilgrimage to the Holy Land celebrated Christmas on January 6 with their Eastern Orthodox siblings during three simultaneous services at Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Earlier that morning, the pilgrims visited the fields and caves of Beit Sahur, traditionally understood to be the place described in the Gospel of Luke where shepherds kept watch over their flocks. Photos by Bishop Anne Hodges-Copple
Earlier in the day, in an outbreaking of the Holy Spirit, we had a different experience of these stacked chronological events on the church calendar. On the morning of January 6, in the overlapping zones of Epiphany in the West and Christmas in the East, we decided to visit the Shepherd’s Fields, a tourist attraction of caves and fields in Beit Sahur, a city east of Bethlehem where, to this day, shepherds tend their flocks. Beit Sahur is traditionally understood to be the place described in the Gospel of Luke where shepherds kept watch over their flocks. When the 10 of us arrived, it was eerily quiet.
Normally, this area would be crowded with buses and bustling pilgrims all making their way to various caves where poor families, especially shepherds, often made their homes in the time of Jesus. There is one particularly popular cave well-suited to an intimate celebration of Eucharist and singing. Unfortunately, and somewhat surprisingly, the cave was occupied. We could hear a lively band of believers singing Christmas carols in English. It was odd, though. While the singing was beautiful and filled with gusto, I noticed something about the pronunciation that sounded unusual. I couldn’t quite place the accent. Our group made our way to another chapel and proceeded to have our own good time caroling under a dome that provided particularly nice acoustics. As we finished and exited the chapel, we were met by an enthusiastic group of 50 or so Anglican pilgrims from Malaysia! It was a bit of a love-fest with perfect strangers warmly greeting one another. It reminded me of the third verse of the hymn “I come with joy to meet my Lord.”
“As Christ breaks bread, and bids us share,
Each proud division ends.
The love that made us, makes us one,
And strangers now are friends,
And strangers now are friends.”
So, you see? There it all was: Christmas carols bringing us to a humble venue, the Epiphany of people from east (and west) discovering their holy family in one another, and the Pentecost of one, holy, catholic and apostolic church rejoicing in the power of the Spirit and conquering language barriers.
TOGETHER ALL IN ONE PLACE
In the second chapter, verse one of the Acts of the Apostles, the evangelist Luke describes how the disciples “came together all in one place,” somewhere in Jerusalem after the ascension of Jesus. This was the prelude for Pentecost, the arrival of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and thousands more. Ours was a more intimate setting—a small group of believers, gathered in a house in the Old City, waiting and praying and watching for the action of God to initiate and animate their own acts of faith.
It is possible that this gathering place was the same upper room where the disciples celebrated the Last Supper with Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. In Jerusalem, it is possible to visit two places that claim to be the “Upper Room” of the New Testament. One is the Cenacle on Mt. Zion, and the other is the Syriac Orthodox Church of St. Mark’s in the Old City. Scholars debate the evidence about the certainty of any one location, but our group of pilgrims found the room at St. Mark’s to be particularly compelling as a place where the disciples might have gathered. The Syriac church traces its origins back to Antioch as mentioned by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles and has remained an indigenous church of Jerusalem and the Holy Land since that time. The architecture of the Cenacle is from the time of the Crusades, and pilgrims reach that Upper Room by ascending steep stairs. To enter the far more humble Upper Room of St. Mark’s, you have to take stairs down to the chamber, which is still an active monastery of the Syriac Church. Its location is part of what makes it a compelling Upper Room possibility, as the Jerusalem of 2,000 years ago was many layers lower than the Old City of today.
Our group’s invitation to visit this historic and spiritually resonate chamber at St. Mark’s was one of several examples of the extraordinary and repeated hospitality we received from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Archbishop His Eminence Anthimos Jack Yakoub, and other leaders of the Syriac Church. For me personally, this was dramatically demonstrated when I was granted permission to preach at a Eucharist celebrated in the Syriac Upper Room at St. Mark’s, which had been beautifully restored since the last time I visited. The spirit of inclusivity and harmony was palpable. After the service, a Syriac deacon conjectured that I was the first woman to preach in this space. I commented back, respectfully, I hope, that my guess was that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother Jesus, and other women may have been afforded the privilege of a homily or two by our Lord, even if not part of the official record.
[Image] Pilgrims visited the upper room of Syriac Orthodox Church of St. Mark’s in the Old City, one of two possible sites of the Last Supper. There one of the monks displayed his handwritten copy of the Gospels.
Physically standing in the rock-hewn chamber that dated back to the time and circumstances of the Last Supper and the first Christian Pentecost, with a diverse group of disciples, created a spiritual chamber filled with solidarity and hope. It was our own “Upper Room” moment before moving on to the rest of our journey. There were not many of us, perhaps 20 in total. Still, there was a kind of smallness that turned into vastness as we shared the profound longing for peace and the importance of Christian unity and solidarity in the pursuit of such peace. There was an apostolic quality in the sense that the spirit of the living God was calling us to go out and spread the good news that the church in Jerusalem, through the solidarity of its various patriarchs, is bearing witness to resurrection hope against a backdrop of existential threats to its continued survival.
It was our own intimate prelude to an infusion of the Holy Spirit that would build over the course of our journey as we met with the three Patriarchs of Jerusalem: Yakoub, Naoum, and His Most Godly Beatitude Theopholus the III, patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Our brother bishop Naoum is often the spokesperson for the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, and this has been particularly true over the last couple of years when the patriarchs issue unified statements speaking up for the beleaguered minority of Christian residents in the Holy Land. The patriarchs gave the U.S. bishops an example of Christian unity and solidarity for speaking truth to power when such speech might be very costly.
[Image] The bishops showed their support for the Princess Basma Center in Jerusalem, a therapeutic center for children tat is owned and operated by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem.
THE MANY WAYS TO BEAR WITNESS
As Bishop Rodman and I made our way back to North Carolina after our pilgrimage, we were filled with a type of Pentecost zeal to share our experiences of the vitality and heroic witness of the churches in Jerusalem and the Holy Land. The desire to share this witness was renewed for us, but not new. This is not the first article you’ve read in the Disciple about pilgrimages like this.
The diocese has also, for some time, encouraged churches to take part in and offer Bearing Witness, a video-based adult formation course of study produced by the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem. Bearing Witness brings the voices of Christians, Jews and Muslims living in the Holy Land to our local settings and provides background readings and study materials to help us connect our lives of discipleship with our brothers and sisters in Israel, Palestine and Jordan. It is rather like going on a pilgrimage without leaving home. Bearing Witness makes the case that supporting the Diocese of Jerusalem and its hospitals, schools, vocational training and other humanitarian institutions is a current day act of the apostles providing healing, compassion and dignity to all the people of the Holy Land. Learn more about Bearing Witness.
But Bishop Rodman and I wanted to provide an additional opportunity to connect with the ancient places as well as the current residents—the “living stones” of Christianity in Israel and Palestine. We are, therefore, along with the Rev. David Umphlett, rector of Holy Trinity, Greensboro, leading another pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Jericho and towns around the Sea of Galilee this fall, October 23-November 3. We realize there may be trepidation about such a journey at this time. We have, however, utmost confidence in the leadership of the company that is organizing our trip, Qumri Pilgrimages. Based upon our own recent experience, we will travel only to places known to be safe and experience a level of hospitality and affection that will transform your understanding of what it means to “walk in love as Christ loved us” (Ephesians 5:2).
There are an infinite number of ways to bear witness to Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to “do infinitely more in us than we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20). As we move into Pentecost and so-called Ordinary Time in the church calendar, we know that these are not ordinary days. These are extraordinary times. With all the breaking news that breaks our hearts almost daily, it continues to be of the utmost importance to lift up our hearts to the Lord. We lift up grateful hearts, broken hearts, heavy hearts and inspired hearts. Everything can change day to day, season to season.
What will not change is the sacred liturgical moment of dismissal, when the deacon sends us out into the world to rejoice in the power of the Spirit and look for ways, near and far, to walk with our neighbors in the ways of love, the ways of justice, the ways of mercy, the Way of Jesus, from your neighborhood, to Jerusalem, to the ends of the earth.
LEARN MORE
Upon their return from their January pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Bishop Sam Rodman, Bishop Anne Hodges-Copple and the Rev. David Umphlett sat down to discuss the experience.
Learn more about St. Mark’s House in the Old City.
VISIT THE HOLY LAND
The Diocese of North Carolina is planning a pilgrimage to the Holy Land October 23-November 3. Led by the Rev. David Umphlett, the pilgrimage will include Bishop Sam Rodman, Bishop Anne Hodges-Copple and pilgrims from across the diocese. The journey includes time at sites that bring Scripture to life, including Jerusalem, Nazareth, the Jordan River and Bethlehem.
The 12-day trip cost includes accommodations, land transportation, fees, tips and guest speakers. The cost is expected to be $2,845 per person (double occupancy), and travelers are responsible for their own airfare. Registration is now open; for more information or to express your interest in this trip, visit bit.ly/HolyLand2025.
Bishop Anne Hodges-Copple is the VI bishop suffragan (resigned) of the Diocese of North Carolina. Contact her via the communications department.
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