Chapter 2 - Black and White

 

The ten hour flight to Ben-Gurion, Tel Aviv began with an early boarding call and seriously strong encouragement from the crew to stuff the luggage, sit down and belt up so that the plane could get into the queue for departure. A sudden snow storm had hit New York. We sat and watched JFK’s snow-plough and de-icing crews at work not knowing whether or not this flight would get off the ground. There was a rousing cheer for the flight crew as we lifted off just before midnight. So what if we had started early and left an hour late? Everyone was breathing a sigh of relief or saying a prayer of thanksgiving. We were on our way.

 

The euphoria of departure did not sustain me through the night. The flight had been scheduled to arrive in Tel Aviv late afternoon. Given the eleven hour time difference, I calculated that I was losing a day and a night.  When stirrings awakened me again I had no idea of time only that I was uncomfortable in the extreme and exceedingly cranky – until I opened my eyes and saw, in both aisles, Jewish men praying. 

 

It was, first of all, a remarkable sight. That people should have the chutzpah to stand up and bow down to God (by any name) without fear of offending their neighbours is decidedly un-Canadian. I’m on this flight to Israel because I’m a pastor (retired Anglican priest) on a pastors’ tour. The wooden cross that I’m wearing is hidden under my shirt and I confess that prayer was not my first thought this morning.

 

I try not to stare, but it’s of no consequence – no one is noticing me and I am caught up in the mystery of their liturgical rituals: the unfolding of prayer shawls over heads, the precise laying of the tefillin to bind hearts and minds to God, the unselfconscious opening of prayer books. I wonder about their journeys. Have they come on a pilgrimage, differently, but like me. Perhaps they’ve come to gather with family for the funeral of a loved one. Perhaps a wedding or a Bar Mitzvah in Jerusalem. Such a blessing!

 

I don’t know the hopes and dreams and passions of the individuals whom I am so boldly observing. But, this I will say: I believe that we share a common human longing for that place that, by birth or tradition or hope reaches out to us and calls us, as we must inevitably call it, home. And I pray that this will be a homecoming generous enough to embrace us all. 

 

Landing in Tel Aviv feels about as familiar as landing in New York. English maintains as the universal language. You can, of course, enjoy your favourite burgers and chips under the golden arches. Barbie has her own .il website. The ancient city of Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, but Tel Aviv is Israel’s business capital, home to international trade, finance, and foreign embassies.

 

We check into a business-class hotel.  We are graciously welcomed with a refreshing drink. Like much of Tel Aviv the hotel is new and efficient. I’m impressed that they have replace the ubiquitous allergen-etc-trapping carpets with laminate flooring. They also served exceptionally fine meals – the best breakfast of the trip – in a country that excels in the quality and variety of delicious foods for every palate. Welcome to Israel.

 

Rested and well fed we begin our tour in earnest. Apart from the arrival and overnight, Tel Aviv is not on the tour. We are on our way to the Holy Sites. 

 

As our bus driver negotiated an intersection traffic jam, our tour guide informed us that we were leaving a Jewish neighbourhood and driving into an Arabic one. The contrast was stark. 

 

Suddenly the streets were cluttered and the traffic congested. A small boy, with a younger one in tow, wove his way through the congested traffic with his hand and voice raised for money. It was impossible to respond of course. If many homes look like building sites it is, we learned, that it is the custom for Arabic families to expand space to accommodate relatives, newlyweds and newborns. What’s more, there is a tax exemption as long as the structure is still under construction. 

 

I was immediately impressed by the outcropping of solar panels and water heaters on the roofs of homes and apartment buildings. Our tour guide explained that solar water heaters are now the law in Israel, thanks largely to consumers who started the trend in the 1950s when, faced with a fuel crisis and restrictions, they found solar an effective alternative. He points out another difference: in Jewish neighbourhoods the water heaters are white; in Arab sections they are black. Why? He shrugs. Different culture.

 

Is it choice? Is it enforced? Why, with all of the discriminatory baggage that comparison implies, are water heaters black here and white there?

 

I have almost satisfied myself with the possibility that the answer lies in an ancient tradition. The traditional Bedouin shepherds’ tent is known in Arabic as beit sha’ar or house of hair. The hair is goat’s hair and it’s black. Goat’s hair shrinks when it gets wet, so in the rainy season it is dry inside the tent. Moreover, when the outside of the tent is hot to the touch in summer’s heat, the interior remains cool. In winter, the reverse is true and a small fire keeps the extended family warm. A model of resourceful economy and efficiency.

 

The house of hair, the nomadic Bedouin lifestyle, the black goats, camels and sheep are being displaced by Jewish settlements. One hundred years ago in Canada the buffalo hunting First Nations people of the plains lost the freedom of their lands and nomadic culture to agricultural European settlements. Perhaps the black solar heated water tanks may one day be a reminder of another lost culture.    

 

The wings of Time are black and white,
Pied with morning and with night.
Mountain tall and ocean deep
Trembling balance duly keep.

                                                            Ralph Waldo Emerson

Six Days In Israel - Chapter 2 of 15

Chapter 3 - Caesarea Maritima

 

If you were wondering where Herod might have been if he hadn’t been, to everyone’s surprise, in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion I can now tell you. He would have been in Caesarea.

                

The first full day of our tour began as we left Tel Aviv for a thirty mile drive north along the Mediterranean coast to Caesarea.

Our guide prepared us with some background on Herod’s extensive construction projects, the most impressive of which is arguably our first destination of the day – Caesarea Maritima. Not to be confused with Caesarea Philippi, he said.  Nor, he said, should we confuse Herod the Great, who was the King who met with the Wise Men at the time of Jesus’ birth, and his son, Herod Antipas, who was in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion.    

                        

Caesarea Maritima lies in ruins today as it has from the 13^th Century, but as we stand amidst the partly excavated ruins it’s easy to imagine it as it was in Jesus’ time. First century Roman Jewish historian Flavius Josephus’ describes Herod’s genius and the city harbour:  

 

"Now upon his [Herod’s] observation of a place near the sea, which was very proper for containing a city, and was before called Strato's Tower, he set about getting a plan for a magnificent city there, and erected many edifices with great diligence all over it, and this of white stone. He also adorned it with most sumptuous palaces and large edifices for containing the people; ... brought to perfection by materials from other places, and at very great expenses. …  and laid out such a compass towards the land as might be sufficient for a haven, wherein the great ships might lie in safety; and this he effected by letting down vast stones of above fifty feet in length, not less than eighteen in breadth, and nine in depth, into twenty fathom deep; and as some were lesser, so were others bigger than those dimensions. This mole which he built by the sea-side was two hundred feet wide … and upon it a wall, with several towers … also a great number of arches where the mariners dwelt. There was also before them a quay, which ran round the entire haven, and was a most agreeable walk to such as had a mind to that exercise; … there were edifices all along the circular haven, made of the politest stone, with a certain elevation, whereon was erected a temple, that was seen a great way off by those that were sailing for that haven, and had in it two statues, the one of Rome, the other of Caesar. The city itself was called Caesarea, which was also itself built of fine materials, and was of a fine structure; nay, the very subterranean vaults and cellars had no less of architecture bestowed on them than had the buildings above ground. … Herod also built therein a theatre of stone; and on the south quarter, behind the port, an amphitheatre also, capable of holding a vast number of men, and conveniently situated for a prospect to the sea. So this city was thus finished in twelve years; during which time the king did not fail to go on both with the work, and to pay the charges that were necessary”.

 

The remnants that remain of the theatre are an arc of seats, about twenty rows high, built to accommodate about 3500 people. The stage and its backdrop, the elegant arches, doorways and decorated columns are gone. This was not a theatre designed for blood sports. From theatre to palace, from the artificial harbour that provided safety for up to 300 ships, to the aqueduct which channelled water to the city from a spring in the Mount Carmel range, from the public baths to the sewers, Herod’s Caesarea Maritima was a place of refinement and pleasure for the King and his friends. Governors Felix and Festus of Judea also resided in Caesarea with detachments of Roman troops.

 

We read in the Gospel according to St. Luke that Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea, became friends on the day that Jesus was condemned to death. Here on the site we read, carved in stone, Pilate’s dedication of his own building at Caesarea Maritima. The original stone is in the Israeli Museum.

 

It was here in Caesarea Maritima that Peter preached the gospel to the Roman centurion Cornelius. Here Philip the Evangelist made his home and hosted Paul and Luke following their journey from Greece to Palestine.

 

About two weeks after leaving Caesarea for Jerusalem, the Apostle Paul was accused of causing a riot and returned to Caesarea where he remained under protective custody in Herod’s praetorium between 59 and 57 AD. Fearing that the newly appointed governor, Festus, would re-open the case against him, Paul appealed to Caesar, according to his right as a Roman citizen.  And so his remarkable journey to Rome began on a Roman ship setting sail from Herod’s massive artificial harbour.

It would have been a busy harbour. Like all imperial powers, Rome depended heavily on the power of commerce alongside military might. Ships from commercial fleets, under the protection of the Roman navy, would have been a familiar sight in this port. Bulky commodities, like Herod’s building materials and staples would have been shipped by boat. I mused about the possibility that the wreck of a 1^st Century AD Roman ship discovered in 2000 off the coast of Spain may have been en route to Caesarea with a cargo destined for Herod’s palace. The 100 ft. long ship was carrying hundreds of jars of garum – a fish sauce that was favoured by rich Romans. Garum was believed to have been an aphrodisiac.

 Looking out from the amphitheatre, beyond our tour guide to the unobstructed view of the uniquely Mediterranean blue sea, it occurs to me that many significant adventures and missions will have begun within this view. 

From here, during the first century persecution of Christians, most likely aided by Roman galley slaves who had converted to Christianity, Mary of Magdala with Lazarus, Mary of Clopas and Mary of James and their servant girl Sara escaped as stow-aways on a merchant ship leaving this port for Marseilles and so to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer where the Magdalene’s evangelization of southern France began.

This is the rainy season in Israel. The sun is shining. If the earth was flat we could see all the way to Spain from here.

 

My first visit to the Mediterranean was to its most westerly shores and it left me with an indelible memory.

 

The year was 1978. We drove through Spain on a guidebook and my very, very limited Spanish, studying cathedrals and Goyas, spending our nights in the serene accommodation of Spain’s converted monasteries and convents.

 

Two weeks into the trip, my companion demanded some civilized (read English-speaking) society. We turned the rental car towards the Costa del Sol and checked into a five-star American hotel.

 

It was something of a culture shock. The lobby was abuzz with the latest stock market reports and baseball scores. Bikinis stretched over well-oiled forms were de rigueur. Scotch at the bar. An occasional whiff of something that was getting people who couldn’t afford to be here arrested ‘back home’.

                                                                                                         

At first light I headed for the beach. The only sound was the surf brushing the sand. Then, venturing beyond the 8-foot chain link and razor wire fence that kept the locals out of this American enclave, I encountered a scene that seemed to be from another time – biblical time. A small wooden boat was anchored and it’s crew of five men skilfully drawing in the nets. Only at the end of that hard and early morning’s work did the men acknowledge me with my Nikkormat focussed on them. They grinned, paused for the moment and carried their catch away in a five gallon bucket. 

 
Six Days In Israel - Chapter 3 of 15

Chapter 4 - At the Foot of the Mountain

It is like the dew of Hermon, Descending upon the mountains of Zion; 

For there the LORD commanded the blessing — Life forevermore.  (Psalm 133:3)

 

Three distinct peaks cluster to form Mount Hermon and straddle the Syrian-Israeli border. The snow-capped peak towers over the landscape and dominates the northern horizon. It is Israel’s highest mountain and only ski resort. At 9200 ft. is it higher by 2,000 ft. than Canada’s 2010 Olympic Whistler Mountain. The chair lift operates year ‘round to accommodate hikers as well. From December through March it is often snow-capped. The mountain is known to some as 'the grey haired mountain'. In Israel it is known as 'the eyes of the nation' for it gives the Israeli defense, security and police a strategic observation post.

We approached the mountain from the Israeli-occupied portion of the Golan Heights and arrived, unexpectedly perhaps, at the entry to the cave and the ruins of the temple dedicated to the god Pan. (Mt. Hermon is named for Pan's father, the god Hermes.) This is the site of the ancient biblical Caesarea Philippi (renamed by Philip, a son of Herod the Great, after himself.)

In the Book of Deuteronomy (Ch.3) we read of Mt. Hermon, then known as the northern boundry of the Promised Land, the northern boundary of conquest. With this reference in mind it is intriguing to consider the argument for Mt. Hermon as the site of Jesus' Transfiguration.

Reading from Mark 8: 28ff and its parallel Matthew 16:13ff - "When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do men say that the Son of Man is?" ... "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." ... After six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and let them up a high mountain apart. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light."

Another Israeli mountain stands just 6 miles southeast of Nazareth and ten miles from the Sea of Galilee. The round steep 1,350 ft. Mount Tabor is also referred to several times in Hebrew Scripture and is identified by many as the Mount of the Transfiguration. Getting to the top of Mt. Tabor is steeply challenging - we didn't do it. But, it reportedly offers a magnificent view of Mt. Hermon to the north (on a very clear day!) and the Jezreel Valley at its feet. Atop the hill are ruins of Roman period and 13th C Crusaders walls, towers and other structures. It is also significantly home to a Greek Orthodox monastery and the Franciscan monastery and Church of the Transfiguration.

The historian Josephus mentions a Roman fortress located on Mt. Tabor at the time of Christ, however we will not change long-held traditions here so we'll join the psalmist and say, "The north and the south thou hast created them: tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name." (89:12)

No one questions that Caesarea Philippi was the most northerly point of Jesus’ journeys. All three synoptic gospels record his visit to this region as the place where he asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” and Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” There and then Jesus gave Simon the name Peter and said, “On this rock I will build my church.” (Interesting aside – this is the first known use of the Greek petros or Aramaic cephas/kephas being used as a personal name.)

 

Known as Bania, Caesarea Philippi is now an archaeological site at the base of Mount Hermon within the Golan Heights and under Jewish control.

Hebrew Scripture refers to Mount Hermon several times. It was regarded as a sacred place in Roman times and its Arabic name, Jebel-esh-Sheikh, means the 'Mountain of   the Chief' or chief mountain.

We visit the archaeological site of the Temple of Augustus and the Grotto of the god Pan. The Temple was built by Herod the Great in 19 BC. On the façade, the niches for statuary remain. The carved stones from the grotto access are displayed at the entrance. The Romans adopted this Greek god and Homer’s hymn (ca. 4^th Century BC) aptly describes this rugged place:

"Pan, the shepherd god, long-haired, unkempt. He has every snowy crest and the mountain peaks and rocky crests for his domain; hither and thither he goes through the close thickets, now lured by soft streams, and now he presses on amongst towering crags and climbs up to the highest peak that overlooks the flocks."

The waters do not gush forth as they once did, but as the snows melt and seep into the rocks, the springs are fed and begin to flow into Israel’s essential waterway – the Jordan River.  

                                                                                                                                                                        Six Days in Israel - Chapter 4 of 15

 Chapter 5 - Herod’s Legacy

In 37 BCE Herod the Great conquered Jerusalem from the invading Parthians. Herod promptly pledged his allegiance to the victorious Romans and was appointed King of Judea by Marc Antony.

To his fellow Jews Herod was a despot, a murderous tyrant. He ruled with an iron fist until his death in 4 BCE. One of Herod’s recorded last commands was that, upon his death, the leading men of every village in Judea would be rounded up, brought to Jerusalem and executed. And there are still people who question the likelihood of the Slaughter of the Innocents.*

To the Romans he was a hero and the large Greek speaking population in Israel, hailed him as a benefactor. Herod’s building projects served king and country well – he lived like a king, employed thousands, kept the taxes flowing to Rome and so kept his rule (relatively) secure. Caesaria Maritima, the city of Sebaste, and Masada were architectural and engineering masterpieces that enriched the land with culture, trade and status.

About seven miles south of Jerusalem we come to Herod’s desert fortress, Masada.

Masada is a UNESCO World Heritage Centre.

With Josephus’ description in hand and a chair-lift to the top, it is still possible to experience its impact: “on a hill raised to a (greater) height by the hand of man and rounded off in the shape of a breast. At intervals it has round towers, and it has a steep ascent formed of two hundred steps of hewn stone. Within it are costly royal apartments made for security and for ornament at the same time. At the base of the hill there are pleasure grounds built in such a way as to be worth seeing, among other things because of the way in which water, which is lacking in that place, is brought in from a distance and at great expense.”

There is some poetic justice in the follow-up.

During the revolt of the Jews against the Romans, ca 66 CE, Jewish rebels took the garrison of Masada. When Jerusalem fell and the Temple was destroyed other zealots and their families fled to Masada and joined them, maintaining their stronghold for three years. It took Roman governor Flavius Silva, the Tenth Legion, auxiliary units and thousands of enforced Jewish prisoners-of-war to breach the walls. About one thousand men, women and children, chose to burn the fortress and end their own lives rather than be Roman captives. Two women who had hidden themselves and their children survived to tell the story.

The first temple, Solomon’s Temple, was completed in 968 BCE. Four hundred years later it was destroyed by the Babylonians and the Jews were carried away into exile for 70 years. After the Jews returned to Jerusalem the Second Temple was built. It didn’t hold a candle to Solomon’s and in 20 CE Herod turned his attention to rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. It is generally agreed that it had nothing to do with being a faithful Jew but to recover the glory of Solomon’s Temple, even to eclipse it, to his own credit. It was a stunning achievement.  It was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.

 

 

• Scholars suggest that the fact that  first century Roman Jewish historian Flavius Josephus did not report the Slaughter of the Innocents may reflect the probability that the numbers of boy children in Nazareth at the time of Jesus’ birth were far fewer than tradition has come to assert. In that small community, the slaughter may have been carried out suddenly and secretively giving no chance for escape. The tragic news would not spread abroad as widely or quickly as it does today . This in no way denies the fact of the slaughter nor does it suggest that the loss of even one child’s life to a tyrant’s whim is excusable.

   Six Days in Israel - Chapter 5 of 15

Chapter 6 - The Carpenter’s Son

 

So far most of our destinations have been back-story. The next four days we will walk in Jesus’ footsteps. The tour necessarily followed the most expedient route. I will set aside the tour itinerary and sort our destinations into a more chronological order.   

 

We begin where God’s self-revelation in Jesus began, in the Galilean village of Nazareth.

 2,000 years ago Nazareth was a small village. Today it is a city of thirty churches and monasteries, as well as mosques and ancient synagogues, with a population of 65,00 people, mostly Arabic,  A fairly recent Jewish community has settled on the heights above the city.

From the hill top, about 500 feet above the town, there is a panoramic view to the north of snow-covered Mount Hermon and, to the west, the blue waters of the Mediterranean. At the foot of the hill a Roman road ran past and to the south a road that led all the way to Egypt. The caravan route to Jerusalem passed only a mile and a half away.

In Jesus’ time the inhabitants of Galilee were looked upon with contempt by people of Judea because they spoke a cruder dialect and were regarded as less cultured. Nathanael, who asked, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" was himself a Galilean of the nearby village of Cana – site of Jesus’ first miracle turning the water into wine at the wedding to which his mother, he and his friends had been invited.

For Christians Nazareth is most important as the site of the Angel Gabriel’s visit to the Virgin Mary. Two Christian churches claim to stand on that biblical and historic site. We can not be certain and both are possible. Both are holy sites. The answer – visit both sites. Who knows?  

 

Saint Gabriel’s Church of the Annunciation is built above a holy spring which, according to Greek Orthodox tradition, is where Mary would have drawn water each day and where the Angel Gabriel would have greeted her with the news of God’s divine plan for her role in our salvation history

  

 
  St. Gabriel’s Church  
  of the Annunciation is
  renowned as well for
  an outstanding collection
  of icons and frescoes.
 

The Basilica of the Annunciation is also an impressive contemporary building of local white limestone. It was completed in 1969 over visibly excavated remains of the original structure dating back to Crusader and Byzantine times.

The Grotto of the Annunciation on the lower level was, according to Roman Catholic tradition, the home of the Virgin Mary and the place where she would have been visited by the Angel Gabriel.

 Near the Basilica is the Church of St. Joseph built in 1914 on the traditional site of Joseph’s carpenter shop.

  

The only site in Nazareth that indisputably dates back to Jesus’ time is the structure that houses Mary’s Well. The well provided water for the village then as it does today and, along with much of the Old City, the housing has been recently renovated and restored to its original form.

In the 1990s the new owners of a gift shop next to Mary’s Well found beneath their feet an exciting network of beautifully preserved ancient stone arches that were once part of a giant bath house. Archaeologists are convinced that it dates back to the time of Jesus and would have been fed by the same water that flowed to Mary’s Well.

 

The uncertainty of where the Annunciation took place will not likely be resolved in our lifetimes. I sometimes hunch that our uncertainties are by God’s design. In any event I do not think it overshadows the real import of Nazareth in any way. What is vital and exciting is that Nazareth was Mary’s home town. With considerable certainty it is possible to walk on the ground that Jesus and Mary and Joseph walked on here. Possible to pace the way from home to carpentry shop, from drawing water to stopping to chat with neighbours and to know that to this place God sent the angel Gabriel with a message for a virgin: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.”

 

If Mary was afraid of the consequences of God’s daring proposition, as she well might have been, it did not prevent her. This courageous young woman said ‘yes’ and a new chapter in God’s Salvation History began to unfold.

 

When Mary and Joseph returned with the child Jesus after his birth in Bethlehem and their long sojourn in Egypt to escape Herod’s villainy, they were returning home. Joseph could pick up the business he had left behind and they would be surrounded by extended family which I noted is tremendously important to the peoples of this region.

 

Tourists are encouraged to revisit the past and find the imagining of the Holy Family’s time here made all the easier with a visit to the solid ground of Nazareth Village.

 
Nazareth Village was founded by a non-profit institution and built on an undeveloped piece of land near the centre of the city.  Every detail of the reconstruction is based on a study of archaeological digs in the area and the structures have been built using the same materials and techniques that were used 2,000 years ago.

 

The village is operated by students from abroad, volunteers and a staff of local residents, both Christian and Muslim. Dressed in period costumes, they wear them with ease and look like they were born to the fashion as well as to the place. As they get on with their everyday tasks and leave the tour-guiding to the Village guide, it’s easy to see it all as a window onto another time – Jesus’ time.

 

When we stepped through a stone doorway into a dim interior and the smoke of oil lamps and everyone around me murmurred how enchanting it was as we would might be over a candlelight dinner, I remembered how difficult it was to carry wood and keep the fire stoked, what a strain it was on the eyes to do homework in the flickering light and how grandmothers knit complex patterns without looking at

the work in their hands. Having to bow down and step attentively onto uneven stone steps into the carentry shop was soul-touching. 

 

A skilled carpenter, looking very much as we imagine Joseph, is entirely at home in the shop working with replicas of the first century tools, demonstrated a remarkable first century drill which requires a great deal more skill than any drill I’ve encountered.

 
The first century oil and wine presses were particularly engaging. Some of the pastors on our tour were eager to learn more and are invited to try their hands. If the weaving project on an ancient loom is not exceptional, it is made so by the gracious and engaging young woman who welcomes us to the domestic side of life in Nazareth Village.

 

I walked out along the terraced fields and felt the rough, gnarled trunks of ancient olive trees. The harvest had just been completed. The usual method is to vigorously hit the branches with a stick causing the fruit to fall on the ground. There’s an abundance of green olives left scattered in the grass. Bitter.

 

A small herd of a half dozen very well fed sheep and three goats graze under the olive trees. The shepherd plays his part well and it appeared that the sheep know the routine as well as he does. 

Sheep are almost impossible to train and where, I wonder, is the Border Collie?
In fact, where are the dogs? We have frequently seen domestic cats, both wary and welcoming of tourists, but not one dog.

 

A most memorable moment for me was when we entered the re-creation of a first century synagogue with the adjacent mikvah (ritual bath) for purification. There are no artefacts in the synagogue. Its simplicity and scale are authentic and it’s entirely possible to believe that the Holy family worshipped in Nazareth in exactly such a synagogue embellished by little more than prayer shawls and the Torah scrolls.

 

I overheard a snatch of conversation. Whether in Arab or Hebrew I do not know. As a boy Jesus would have learned Aramaic spoken at home and Hebrew for reading and memorizing the holy texts and the language of debate in the Jerusalem Temple. I smile at imagining them setting out with family and neighbours, walking the mile and a half to the caravan route on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In such good company you could walk an entire day and not worry about where your twelve year old son was. Of course his mother was distressed and dismayed to discover him questioning the Teachers! Was that respect? When Jesus returned home from that life-changing pilgrimage did he study more diligently? Did he sit on the hilltop to listen for the voice of God in the wind and catch a glimpse of God in Creation?  Noticing the lilies of the field, the oxen yoked to plough, the ordinary things that would become everyday illustrations for his parables.  

 

Our visit to Nazareth ended with a visit to the beautiful gardens of the Nazareth Sisters convent. The sun was shining and from a lookout we were able to see across the Jezreel Valley to Mount Tabor and Mount Carmel. Perhaps this is the precipice from which the angered Nazarenes meant to throw Jesus into the abyss. I wonder about their hostility after all his growing up in their midst. Who did he think he was? The carpenter’s son.

 

I wonder about Jesus leaving home. I wonder if Mary wept as mothers are wont to do. Did Joseph wipe his eyes with the back of his hand – a bit of sawdust. I wonder what Jesus’ thoughts were as he climbed to the top of the hill and didn’t look back.


Six Days in Israel - Chapter 6 of 15

Chapter 7 - On the Way to Bethlehem

For seventy-some years I lived with the mantra “Bethlehem is in your heart. 

Make room for Jesus there.”

It’s true. And not.
 

Bethlehem is 5 miles south of Jerusalem. As we board the bus, there’s a sense of excitement and an urgency to get going. To see, to touch and get in touch with God’s self-revelation for us Gentiles in the person of Jesus.
 
I waited impatiently. Distracting myself with memories of Christmases past: the sanctuary winter-fresh with the fragrance of cedar and golden-warm in flickering candlelight, the crystal clear voice of an eight year old boy leading us into the procession – Once in Royal David’s City.

In spite of the trials of the journey, the crowded birthing place and subsequent dangers, Mary and Joseph would surely have been in awe of the unexpected circumstances that took them to the historic city of Bethlehem for Jesus’ birth.

We have sifted our iconic images out of the New Testament, but Beyt Leḥem (House
of Bread) is a significant Jewish holy site and story of these roots of our faith is told in Hebrew Scripture. Ca.1500 BCE Rachel, mother of Joseph, died giving birth to her second son, Benjamin. Jacob buried her on the roadside here. We will visit Rachel’s tomb today. In the book of Ruth we read of the young Moabite widow who accompanies her mother-in-law Naomi home to Bethlehem and here marries Boaz, bringing by God’s grace, her Gentile genes into the bloodline.

Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob … and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king. (Mt. 1) 

Records from ca 1200 BCE indicate that Canaanite tribes created a settlement here and named it Beit Lahama. Because of its strategic location, the Philistines established a garrison in Bethlehem.

Today Bethlehem is headquarters of the Palestinian National Authority and a lively centre of culture and tourism, home to about 30,000 people. Owing to recent mass emigrations, mostly to refugee camps, Christians now comprise only about 2% of the total population. These are Christians whose mother tongue is Arabic and whose history takes many of them back to the early church. Our Bethlehem guide tells us that they are marginalized by both Muslims (they are not Muslim) and Jews (they are Palestinian).

“Before we leave the hotel for Bethlehem,” said the guide, “check and be certain that you have your passport. You are entering Palestine.”

The First Christmas may not have been exactly as we have interpreted, imagined
and taught but, now as then, it is certain there are obstacles on the way to
Royal David’s City. 

There’s the Wall.

Bethlehem is a Palestinian city. With the dividing wall and checkpoint in sight, our driver pulled the bus over and our guide informed us that he and the driver were not allowed to enter Palestine.               

A Palestinian driver is arranged to take us through the checkpoint and a Palestinian tour guide to meet us in Bethlehem. (On the final night of our tour, at the farewell to Israel dinner we learned from the Minister of Tourism that fifty drivers and guides have been approved for a trial period. If there are no incidents, travel in and out of Bethlehem will be allowed.)

I watched the cordial hand-over from my front seat vantage point. We were waved through checkpoint, driven a short distance through a maze of narrow, traffic-calmed streets and came to a full stop at the gift shop.

Where else can a bus load of Christian pastors from diverse traditions go on Sunday morning? Of the three Abrahamic religions Christians are the only one to observe Sunday as a day of rest and worship.  Muslims observe Friday as a special day of prayer and Jews observe the Sabbath on Saturday. Places of interest to our group were, for a few hours at least, functioning solely as places of worship. 

In any event, we had been primed for this destination: “Don’t spend your money before we get to Bethlehem,” instructed our tour organizer, “Palestinian Christians really need our support.” Every last item on the gift shop shelves, in bins and behind glass, had been hand-made locally in every quality from silver and gold to olive wood crèche sets to key fobs. And every pastor and spouse was on a mission! 

It had not been unusual to be greeted with a welcoming drink and a talk. It was unusual to be told that a hand-crafted crèche, like the one sitting on the glass-top of the display case, would be mailed to us. Not a g-w-p. No strings attached. All the store owner asks, before the shopping (or not) begins, is that we clearly write our name and home address on one of the papers that are placed in front of us.

The best was yet to come.  An insider scoop on one of Israel’s major discoveries – the store owner is the grandson of the Palestinian merchant who was instrumental in bringing the Dead Sea Scrolls to the world. Referring to his grandfather’s framed portrait on the wall, to the glass-encased large clay jar and replica of the Temple Scroll, he told us the story of the shepherd who brought that very jar, with parchment fragments inside, to his grandfather. His grandfather was not only a merchant, he was an amateur archaeologist. He found the fragments ‘interesting’. The jar would sit in his workroom for the next eleven years before the ‘discovery’ was made.  The rest is history.

We were given ample time to have our pictures taken with the Dead Sea Scroll display, admire the icons and browse through the souvenirs before we were ushered out with our purchases towards the next stop on our schedule – the shepherd’s fields.

Our Bethlehem tour guide, was waiting in the parking lot with half a dozen street vendors gathered nearby waiting for us tourists. He didn’t shoo them away. He didn’t caution us. They are his neighbours. He respectfully waited while a few American dollars changed hands. The traditional kaffiyeh and agal headdress is still worn and was the best seller.

If you found it easier to imagine our young guide in the drivers’ seat of an Alfa Romeo than in a sheepfold, you would be spot on. When he used an Italian expression, he apologized for speaking better Italian than English. In fact he speaks six languages but it was the year he spent in Italy that gave him both the tongue and the style. He returned home to marry his childhood sweetheart with plans to immigrate to Europe. However, they found themselves captive when the door to the emigration was closed.

Pope Benedict XVI urges Christians to remain in the Holy Land. In his 2010 New Year Greetings to the Diplomatic Corps,  the pope reflected on his recent tour of the Holy Land and urgently appealed “to the Israelis and the Palestinians to dialogue and to respect each others’ rights. Once again I call for a universal recognition of the right of the State of Israel to exist and to enjoy peace and security within internationally recognized borders. Likewise, the right of the Palestinian people to a sovereign and independent homeland, to live in dignity and to enjoy freedom of movement, ought to be recognized.”

There are still a few shepherds watching their flocks on small plots near this biblical site. Very few. We look out across the hill imagining a way clear up the hill where trees once shaded flocks mid-day as they grazed their way to the Dead Sea.  

Sunday morning services concluded, we were skillfully guided near the front of the lineup waiting to visit the Church of the Nativity. The church stands massively, protectively over the cave that was first recorded as the birthplace of Jesus in the writings of Justin Martyr (c 100-165).

It was St. Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine who, convinced of the authenticity of this site as Jesus’ birthplace by the oral tradition of the region, began the building of the first Basilica here in the fourth century. The present structure dates to the sixth century and is administered jointly by on-site monastic communities of the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches. We owe much to the faithful churches and monastic orders who have invested so heavily in building and maintaining these holy sites for Christians of past and future generations.

As we moved slowly down the steps into the chapel, conversations stopped mid-sentence and quiet enfolded us. The undercroft was lighted in mystery by the warmth of candles glowing from silver lamps suspended, as if from sky hooks, to illumine layer upon richly coloured layer of ancient plaster pealing from the cold stone walls. 

  

Flashing cameras are allowed everywhere. The sense of mystery and holiness will be broken when we stand on the threshold of the womb of our faith and the inevitable photo op. As the elder I was first in line and welcomed the hand of our guide assisting me to kneel on the chancel step where I was able to reach

out and touch the star under the altar and

gaze down towards the ancient cave of

Jesus' birth. It was a profoundly holy moment.

Our guide silently signalled  ‘hats off’ to the men and ‘feet off’ the top chancel step to those who were lining up in front of the altar to pose for the “I was there” flash. 

Finding myself with the luxury of a lead time, I was able to explore a nearby cave with two stone mangers.

It was easy to see that, once the mangers were filled with hay for the livestock, the smaller one would make a perfect crib. Yes, I can still see Mary tenderly salting and binding her newborn son in swaddling bands while Joseph cleans out the manger and cushions it with fresh, fragrant hay. It was, even as it was on Canadian prairie farms not so long ago, customary to house and feed animals on lower floors or side rooms of family homes. I remember the warm breath, the sweet and pungent smells of stabled livestock. And here, as his mother rests, Jesus sleeps in the warm safety of the manger, nuzzled now and then by a curious ewe. Faithful Joseph watching over them. Listening for the infant’s cry.

Listening for the voice of God. 

 

We stopped at the site of Rachel’s tomb. "And Rachel died, and was buried on the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem. And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave: that is the pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day." Genesis 35:19-20

As we departed Palestine, the sight of the graffiti covered wall jolts me back to the

question of making room in our hearts.

Six Days in Israel - Chapter 7 of 15

Chapter 8 - Baptism in the Jordan

Three snow-fed springs flow from the base of Mount Hermon, merge to form the Jordan River and begin its course southward, flowing in and through the Sea of Galilee, meandering on to the Dead Sea. The Jordan is a vital resource to the dry lands of the country and a holy site for both Jews and Christians.

Here Jesus was baptized and God the Holy Three revealed as Jesus came up out of the pristine water and the Holy Spirit descended on him in the form of a dove and a voice was heard from heaven, "thou art my beloved son; with thee I am well pleased."

John the Baptist attracted huge crowds and it is likely that the crowds of people we encountered was the greatest similarity to this site as it was 2,000 years ago.

We arrived late in the day. There were several groups of men and women still waiting with their priests and pastors for their turn to enter the designated baptismal site for a total immersion or a sprinkled baptism or renewal of baptism.

Everything from dressing rooms to white gowns and gift shop is provided for the pilgrims' convenience.

From here Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness. Our bus tour took us through the wilderness - the barren, deserted wilds of today's Israel where, even in this rainy season this January the sun is glaring and the winds blow hard and cold. We have travelled many miles and have seen one deer. Where are the ox and the owl. Happily, many species near distinction are being reintroduced.

In this wilderness, changed as it is, Jesus remained for forty days and forty nights. Without food. In this wilderness his ministry, as ours must, began by facing and conquering the temptations common to all humanity - our pride, our appetites and our greed.

Water levels are critically lower throughout Israel. We've all read reports of the pollution. No one in our group chose to enter the water.

I take a bottle of Jordan River water back to the hotel room. The cool water washes over my feet renewing, blessing the path whereon I go. 

Six Days in Israel - Chapter 8 of 15

Chapter 9 - Walking On Water

If you were naming a natural phenomenon, health resort, a beauty spa and resource, a family vacation destination or a centre for spiritual formation chances are you wouldn’t name it The Dead Sea. In fact, the Dead Sea, by any name, is all of those things. (The Old Testament refers to this inland lake as the Salt Sea.)

Tucked into a valley between Israel and Jordon, at the Jordan River’s final destination, the shore of the Dead Sea is 1300 ft. below sea level – the lowest point of dry land on earth. Which is interesting, but not what has people flocking to its beaches. It’s the incredibly buoyant water and the mineral rich mud that is fuelling an expanding health and beauty industry with world-wide distribution.

As our bus headed south on a route parallel to the Jordan,                                                                 the cohort of pastors began to sound like children on a Sunday School outing. “Did you bring your bathing suit?”    “I’m going to cover myself in mud?” “Did you get the newspaper?” This is water you can (almost) walk on!

One reclining-on-the-water pastor after another had his picture taken reading that daily newspaper. It was in fact a Hebrew newspaper and no one could read it. Which may have been a good thing. How can you smile those joyful smiles when you’re reading headlines these days? There are times when it’s better to let go of what we can and can’t control and simply enjoy the God-given moment.

I muddied my feet but I didn’t go into the water. I can’t swim. I know that’s not the point. You can’t swim in the Dead Sea, you have to float. That’s the point. Floating is more difficult that swimming. It’s uncomfortably counterintuitive. It’s like saying to God, “Thy will be done” and meaning it.

 

Six Days in Israel - Chapter 9 of 15

Chapter 10 - Fishers of Men
“Although God has created seven seas, yet He has chosen this one as His special delight.”

If you had said to me that there was only one place in Israel that I could visit, Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee would have been my choice as the rabbis of old said it was God’s.

This is where Jesus took up his three-year ministry in earnest, teaching and performing most of his miracles. This is where a handful of fishermen became fishers of men, disciples of a charismatic, miracle-working, itinerant rabbi.

In the inspiration and research for Those Women I spent a great deal of time reverently imagining and getting to know the people who surrounded Jesus in Capernaum and on the Sea of Galilee. It was a deeply emotional experience.   It felt like a homecoming rather than a visit and, uncharacteristically, they were not emotions I could or even wanted to hide. I stood on deck with the wind in my face, knowing that Jesus was standing with me just as he stood with his friends then. It helped that one of the pastors did come alongside and put his arm around my shoulders.

Nor will I forget the way the day began for me. As we gathered near the house of St. Peter and the Synagogue for the relevant Gospel reading and our guide’s teaching, the owner of the Apple iPad bible handed it to me and so it was my privilege to read:

Now when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, He departed to Galilee.  And leaving Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the regions of Zebulun and Naphtali, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: “The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, By the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles:    The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,  And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned.”
From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. Then He said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

They immediately left their nets and followed Him.

Going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets.

He called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him.
And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them. Great multitudes followed Him—from Galilee, and from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.        Matthew 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC4_JcDmv24&feature=player_embedded

In preparation for sailing on the Sea of Galilee, we visited the Ygal Alon Museum at Kibbutz Ginosar to see and learn about the 1986 discovery of a first century boat preserved in the mud near the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It seems most fitting that the boat was discovered by two brothers, second generation fisherman who grew up here. The preservation process was a painstaking 10-year process before the boat could go on display. The boat is 26 ft. long, 7½ ft. wide. It could have been rowed or sailed and was most likely, say the researchers, a fish boat. Was it Peter’s boat?  We don’t know, but it is most certainly a type that the successful fisherman Peter would have owned. One of the interesting finds made by the scientists is that the hull is constructed primarily of Lebanese cedar planks and oak frames, but a dozen other wood types have been used in repairs. A clay lamp and cooking pot also from the first century were found in and near the boat.

These two links will take to You Tube interviews with the Yuval brothers …

Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66BKA9bWjHI&feature=player_embedded#at=13

Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6dbRr7VYs4&feature=player_embedded#at=104

 

Wooden replicas of the boat, known as Jesus Boats, are popular with tourists like us. The original boat was suited to either sail or oar. Ours is engine powered.  

The water level was higher and the lake was therefore larger when Jesus sailed here, nonetheless it is stunning to look out and see the whole of the lake from side to side and end to end. You can also see the hills to the east, the ‘mountain’ where Jesus went alone to pray. From there he walked on this water. Peter also walked on this water.

There are still fishermen bringing in catches of St. Peter’s Fish and of course, it was on this very lake that Peter reluctantly threw the nets back into the water at Jesus’ word and had to call the sons of Zebedee to help him and Andrew haul in the best catch of any season! I was excited to see that an archaeological dig of Mary’s Magdala has begun. Magdala was an industrial center and fish were salted there in preparation for export.

In Jesus’ time Capernaum was a large and significant city on the north-western shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was on a busy trade route and a Roman garrison was stationed there. It is not mentioned in Hebrew Scripture because according to recent archaeological evidence, it was not established until the 2^nd C BCE. It also helps to explain why Simon (Peter) and Andrew moved along the shoreline from the village of Bethsaida on the north-east side of the lake to Capernaum: the bustling new centre would have expanded opportunities to sell their catch to local and export markets.

That St. Peter’s house, dating from the Hellenistic period (first century BC) has been identified in Capernaum is virtually certain. Among the features that single this stone house out are floors of lime and more than one hundred inscriptions including the names of Jesus and Peter, a mention of the Eucharist, crosses and other Christian symbols.

We turn to the pilgrim Egeria’s diary: “In Capernaum, the house of the Prince of the Apostles became a church. The walls, however, have remained unchanged to the present day.”

A few hundred feet from St. Peter’s house, on the highest point in the town, stood the Synagogue built by a Roman centurion whose servant was later healed by Jesus. That Synagogue was destroyed ca 70 AD and replaced, perhaps two centuries later, with a white stone Synagogue. Beneath the stone walls, archaeologists uncovered the remains of an earlier basalt synagogue which is the synagogue where Jesus cured the demon-possessed man, and where he frequently taught and preached.

A lakeside Franciscan chapel stands on the traditional site of the miraculous catch of fish and where, following his resurrection, Jesus cooked breakfast for his disciples and said to Peter, “Feed my sheep”.

The Franciscan presence in the Holy Land extends from 1219 when Francis requested permission from the papal legate to enter the Saracen camp at his own risk. There the Sultan Melek-el-Kamel listened to him and gave him permission to visit the Holy Land. The Franciscans have remained in the Holy Land ever since.

Jesus said to his disciples, “Come away to a lonely place all by yourselves and rest a while.” According to oral tradition and the pilgrim Egeria, that lonely place was Tabgha where the Benedictine Monastery and the Church of the First Feeding of the Multitude now stands.

About 350 AD, a small church was built on the site and thirty years later when the Spanish pilgrim Egeria visited the site she wrote of a field of hay and palm trees, with seven springs: “And this is the field where the Lord fed the people with the five loaves and two fishes. In fact the stone on which the Lord placed the bread has now been made into an altar.”  A century later the church was enlarged and changed into a Byzantine style oriented to the East. The Egyptian influenced floor mosaic was added by the Patriarch Matryrios of Jerusalem. Among the pilgrims to visit Tabgha were St. Jerome and St. Sabas. The sacred stone and mosaic survived the Persian destruction of the church in 685 AD and laid hidden for 1300 years. In 1932 a church was built to protect the mosaics and fifty years later a new basilica was built on the foundations of the Byzantine church and includes all of the found artifacts. The Benedictine monks maintain the basilica, a nearby home for the handicapped and a camp for youth groups. To step inside the basilica is to hear Jesus’ invitation to come away and rest a while.

Our day ends idyllically at another Franciscan church – the Mount of the Beatitudes. Our guide has sensitively chosen our way for the incredibly evocative effect of this setting in the evening light.

The entire complex is a stunning example of the Italian Franciscan monk and architect Atonio Barluzzi’s genius. The building’s octagonal shape represents the eight beatitudes, the lower walls feature a marble veneer casing and gold mosaic lights the dome.

Built in 1938, the church takes full advantage of the site being set uphill from the ruins of a late 4^th C church, cisterns and small monastery noted in the pilgrim Egeria’s diary: "Near there [Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes] on a mountain is the cave to which the Saviour climbed and spoke the Beatitudes."

Scholars and preachers spend a great deal of time in the accounts of Jesus’ ministry around this freshwater lake. Arriving here at the end of the day was clearly intentional and it was here that we were given some time to walk our own ways for a while.     Each in the quiet of the gardens, leaning on the railings or sitting on the garden steps looking out over the landscape to the Sea of Galilee, knowing that we are being changed.                        

The familiar stories will never be heard or read again without feeling all of this in my bones.

 

Six Days in Israel - Chapter 10 of 15

Chapter 11 - Amazing Grace

It’s better with lemon 

There is nothing that so easily brings people together and draws out the best of human kindness than a scratchy throat or the common cold.

When I stepped up to the bar on the far side of the vast hotel lobby and asked the young bartender for salt there was a moment’s hesitation. He didn’t say, but even as he reached for the salt cellar his look asked if he had heard me correctly. So I told him that it was a gargle for my sore throat. He picked up a small plastic glass, poured salt into it and hesitated just a moment before he said, “It is better with lemon.”  It was my turn to telegraph a question mark. “My mother always uses salt and lemon,” he said. “Then,” I said, “Please let me try your mother’s recipe.”  He squeezed the juice of a whole juicy Israeli-grown lemon into the glass, added a little hot water, refused payment and wished me good health.  It worked so well that I was back at the bar the following evening for another portion with thanks to his mother and to him. Again he refused payment and I left him what I hope was a generous tip. 

 

Repeating yourself

Our Jewish tour guide was, like our driver, a professional employed by the Ministry of Tourism. His family immigrated to Israel when he was fifteen years old.  Following a successful engineering career he was persuaded to use his gifts as a tour guide. He is well suited to leading a tour – gracious, organized, disciplined, steeped in the history, faith and culture of his homeland and comfortably familiar with the New Testament and the Christian presence in Israel.

All of these qualities might be expected of a guide assigned to a group of Christian pastors. Our group had a special need. Whilst most of us spoke only English, some of the pastors and the family members travelling with them spoke only Spanish.  We needed a guide who spoke not only Hebrew and Arabic to communicate with local people, but also English and Spanish. Every message and aside was communicated in English and then he repeated himself in Spanish. To be fair to all he would turn it about speaking first in Spanish and repeating himself in English. Bravo!

 

Lift Your Voices

It was one of those on-the-spot itinerary changes that our tour organizer engineered as we were about to begin following the Via Dolorosa In the heart of Jerusalem he decided that we must go into St. Anne’s Roman Catholic Church. For the amazing acoustics.

Built in the 12^th C, the church was in ruins when the Ottoman Sultan presented it to Napoleon III in 1856. To their credit the French government has restored it to its original design – Romanesque with cross-vaulted ceilings, pillars and clean lines – and placed in the care of a resident order of priests. The high altar designed by French sculptor Philippe Kaeppelin is all the adornment this worship space requires.

We might have simply listened to the soloists but one of our soloists was a young man with a remarkable voice and a church music vocation. When he was urged to lead us all in Amazing Grace he did so and turned a tour group sing-along into worship. 

The ongoing joy of that surprising experience is, thanks to YouTube, we’re able to revisit the site, admire the architecture and lift our voices in praise of God’s amazing grace again and again.

If you follow (copy and paste) the url below you can join us at St. Anne’s and sing along.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-Ght8Ljocg&feature=related


Six Days in Israel - Chapter 11 of 15

Chapter 12 - Jerusalem, O Jerusalem

I can’t sleep. It’s 3 a.m. There’s a full moon over Jerusalem. A sprinkling of stars dimmed by the city’s night light. It’s a stunning view from the hotel room window. I have an almost irrepressible urge to go out, to walk Jerusalem’s streets. I’ve been warned – the streets are narrow, not on a grid. In any event, I’m not really enthusiastic about getting dressed and going out into the cold. Tomorrow morning will be soon enough.

I draw the drapes against occasional headlights and the cold. I tuck back into bed and think about tomorrow. If I was the tour director I would take us to Bethany and let us walk from there to the Mount of Olives for a first look at Jerusalem as Jesus often saw it. Then down past the Garden of Gethsemane, across the Kidron Valley and through the Golden Gate to the Temple Mount.

 I am dreaming of another time.

In Jewish tradition, the Golden Gate is the gate through which Messiah will enter Jerusalem at the end time. The Ottoman’s sealed the gate in 1541 to prevent Messiah’s coming. Today, a Muslim cemetery stands in front of the sealed gate.   

Sleep overtakes my imaginings and it is suddenly morning. 

Today we will visit the Western Wall. 

Enormous limestone blocks form the wall which served as the western retaining wall for Herod’s rebuilding of the Second Temple. What we approach from the plaza is only the `tip of the iceberg`. The exposed section facing the plaza is nearly two-hundred feet long with about sixty feet of the wall above ground level remaining unchanged. It reaches another twenty feet in height with the stones repositioned to support the most recent construction of the mosque. Underground (we did not have access) is an extensive stretch of the supportive arched ways that supported Herod’s expansion of the top of the mount.

 It was the English who started calling it the Wailing Wall. When the British took Jerusalem from the Turks in 1917 and the Jews once again had access to this fragment of the former Temple, it was here that they came to pour out their petitions and grief to God – in a word, they wailed. Fifty years later, when Jerusalem was united under Israeli control, the mood changed – the wall had become a place of praise and celebration. It was henceforth, at least within Israel, called the Western Wall. I attest to the fact that there is still some wailing going on. 

 The celebration taking place when we arrived was a Bar Mitzvah. We caught glimpses of the family, the rabbis, musicians and dancers. I heard the joyful strains of Havana Gila. Somehow it seemed out of place here, like an American pop song that we could all sing along to. Let the music be a strange sound in my ears. 

 I enter the women’s side. There’s some jockeying for position. It’s good to wait. I’m seeing how the wall is approached and that when you depart you do not turn your back on it.  When I reach the wall I realize that what is done is the thing I desire to do – I press my hands flat against the wall and lean my forehead against the stone. I hear the murmur like speaking in tongues. Do I imagine the vibration? The electricity of touch, millions of hands and foreheads pressed against these stones, thoughts and voices ceaselessly pleading with God, thanking God. Ceaselessly.

I remembered watching a documentary that spoke of the custom of leaving prayer notes in the wall. I will do that. I’ll leave a written prayer here as I would light a candle to keep my intentions before God when I’ve moved on.  I back away from the wall and find a reasonably neat piece of paper in my bag. No pen. No pencil. You really can not interrupt someone at prayer to ask for a pencil (especially not at the Western Wall knowing this may be a once-a-year or once-a-lifetime experience for them) What to do. Confident that God will know what I would have written, I began to think of the names and intentions I had brought here and accordion-folded them into the paper. Just at the end of my folding, I noticed that the woman standing next to me had a pencil in her hand. She was checking her day-timer. That’s interruptible. I signed my name, returned the pencil.

Our guide has assured us that the numbers at the Western Wall today are not ‘crowds’.  As I made my way to the wall a second time, I had a strong sense of Real Presence. I found a secure crevice for my prayer note and pressed my hands against God’s.

I expect it sounds irreverent, but in hindsight, I’m entirely pleased with the thought that I’ve left a sort of blank cheque with my name on it in God’s in-basket.

                                                                                                                                                                        Six Days in Israel - Chapter 12 of 15

Chapter 13 - Lema Sabachtani

Visits to the Holocaust Museum, the Via Dolorosa and the Garden Tomb have become one in my memory.

 We entered the Holocaust Museum on a pathway lined with Carob Trees honouring nearly 20,000 Righteous Gentiles, people who risked their lives to save Jews during the holocaust. The Carob trees are a symbol of sturdiness and strength. The walk through the museum ends at a glass wall inviting one to walk out onto a deck and look beyond the pain to that place where all are called to be Righteous.

We had only an hour and a half at the Holocaust Museum. Walking at my own pace, looking and listening to the deeply personal stories of survivors through the Museum exhibits was a profoundly moving experience. On another level the presentations revealed the alarmingly effective way in which one man’s vitriol infected and fuelled atrocities among an educated and cultured people. Who knew? Who was listening? Who was listening to Roméo Dallaire and his cry for help during the genocide in Rwanda? Shake Hands with the Devil.

I was three years old when my Dad left with the Canadian forces to fight Hitler. Nightly, for five years, the radio would be connected to a battery and through the static the sound of Winston Churchill’s voice would strike fear in my heart. Bombs were falling on houses and families like ours. Men like Dad were being killed in the armies. My friend Andy was born in Israel. His father was a British Army Major. Israeli radicals were shooting at the Brits. They felt lucky to get out alive. What most of us did not know, and could not have imagined was the dreadful truth that Hitler was attempting to exterminate a whole people. God’s people. Children like me. Like Anne Frank. Who will ever forget hearing her story?

Like all particular tragedies, the Holocaust thrives on a universal human condition: man’s relentless inhumanity towards man.

Artist Barnett Newman was the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland. In the late 1950s, in the wake of WWII, as he recovered from a heart attack Newman began to paint what became a series. He was working on the fourth 5 x 6 ft. canvas when he realized that the series he was painting was the fourteen Stations of the Cross, subtitled Lema sabachtani – Why hast thou forsaken me? Newman had come to understand that those words, the words of the crucified Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, had both particular and universal significance. The series is part of the National Gallery, Washington D.C. permanent collection and widely regarded as the peak of Newman’s achievement.

I first encountered Newman’s work during a week-long residential programme at the College of Preachers in Washington D.C. We were sent to the gallery with a Xeroxed black and white copy of a traditionally illustrated prayer guide to the Stations which would serve as background to our reflections on Newman’s interpretations.

His minimalist style was startling. Meaningless. I wanted to walk away secure in the Way I’d known since childhood. Only the assignment kept me in front of the disturbing image on the first canvas and allowed me to begin to understand the hard reality, the plain uncompromising injustice of corrupt power and the human ignorance that expresses itself in violence. As I worked my way through the fourteen stations, I too wanted to cry out “lema sabachtani”. My Good Friday reflections on Newman’s Stations continue to expose the universal brokenness that was nailed to the Cross with Jesus.  

A decade before Newman painted the Stations, he reflected on the meaning of his art: “The basis of an aesthetic is the pure idea that makes contact with the mystery, of life of men of nature of the hard black chaos that is death, or of the greyer softer chaos that is tragedy. For it is only the pure idea that has meaning.”

I thank God for artists and authors who help me to see more deeply.

Author Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were taken to Auschwitz. In his foreword to Wiesel’s unforgettably painful memoir, Night, Francois Mauriac reflects on a conversation that he himself had with a Jewish reporter who when he was a small boy had been one of hundreds of children crammed into a cattle car, separated from their parents and on their way to a camp. Mauriac asked himself, “How can one believe in God who has allowed this to happen? How?”

“And I,” he writes, “ who believe that God is love, what answer was there to give my young interlocutor whose dark eyes still held the reflection of the angelic sadness that had appeared one day on the face of a hanged child? What did I say to him? Did I speak to him of that other Jew, this crucified brother who perhaps resembled him and whose cross conquered the world? Did I explain to him that what had been a stumbling block for his faith had become a cornerstone for mine? And that the connection between the cross and human suffering remains, in my view, the key to the unfathomable mystery in which the faith of his childhood was lost? And yet, Zion has risen up again out of the crematoria and the slaughterhouses. The Jewish nation has been resurrected from among its thousands of dead. It is they who have given it new life. We do not know the worth of one single drop of blood, one single tear. All is grace. If the Almighty is the Almighty, the last word for each of us belongs to Him. That is what I should have said to the Jewish child. But all I could do was embrace him and weep.”

I can not help but relate Wiesel’s experience of the beating, which he describe as it is quoted below, to the scourging of Jesus. This is only one of many humiliating cruelties Wiesel suffered and dared to recall in Night:  

 I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip.

“One! … Two! …” he was counting.

He took his time between lashes. Only the first really hurt. I heard him count: …

“Twenty-four … twenty-five!”

It was over. I had not realized it, but I had fainted. I came to when they doused me with cold water. I was still lying on the crate.”

These are the voices and not the comfort of familiar litanies that demanded to be heard as I rushed along the Via Dolarosa.

 Station #1: Jesus is condemned to death. “Now the men who were holding Jesus began to mock him and beat him.”

Crucifixion was a gruesome form of execution. Scourging with a leather whip containing small pieces of bone and metal ripped the flesh to the bone preceded crucifixion. New digital technology has allowed research on the Shroud of Turn to move ahead with remarkable results. Images of the body that had been wrapped in the first century shroud bears convincing likenesses to the description of Jesus in the Gospels. There is evidence that the body that was wrapped in that shroud received an unusual number of lashes – more than one hundred.

 Luke 22   And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head.” John 19

 The research also found, not only wounds that evidently resulted from a crown of thorns, but traces of pollen from a thorn plant that grew in the Jerusalem area.

 After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. Mk. 15

It was at the Nazareth Village that a penny dropped – the cross (rather the cross-piece) that Jesus carried was not a milled 12x12. It was a rough, peeled tree branch hefty enough to hold the full, dead weight of a man. The upright post would have been solidly fixed into the ground at the place of execution – Golgotha. Nailed or tied to the cross, the body collapsed in a way that prevented deep breathing and depleted oxygen. The cause of death was slow, painful asphyxiation. 

We raced through the Stations along the Via de la Rosa. There was no time to pause and contemplate the Way of the Cross. Only at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre did we stop.

Once again opinions differ on the location of Jesus’ crucifixion and the tomb in which he was laid. The long-standing tradition of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built by the Roman Emperor Constantine ca. 326, is accepted by most historians as the Tomb of Jesus and the 23 x 13 ft. rock inside the present church as the location of Calvary.

Nonetheless it has been and is contested on grounds that it sits within the city walls. The alternative site is the Garden Tomb which is to this day outside the city walls. However, a little digging turned up the news that before the city was rebuilt in ca 44 CE, the site on which the church stands in northwest Jerusalem, was outside the city walls.  During restorations in the late 70`s a white limestone quarry was uncovered and it is possible that, viewed from the city, it may have looked like a skull. In 1986 a metal ring substantial enough to have held a wooden post of up to 8 ft., was found struck into the quarry stone.  In 2007 graves from the first century were found on the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

We walked out of the Old City through the Damascus Gate to the Garden Tomb.   I found the Garden Tomb appealing and well worth the visit. It is after all still a garden, not a church. Here one walks through a grove of 2,000 year old olive trees. I listened briefly to the local attendant’s lecture then slipped away in the direction of a tomb pointed out by our guide.

Even at 5’2”, I had to bow down to enter the tomb. It was as I always imagined it should have been: stone cold. And stone cold was the sunlight on the limestone pillow for his bloodied head.  

A deep and present sadness enfolded me. I recall not the facts but the feelings of nights waiting with the dying, of kissing my grandfather’s cold lifeless face, of holy water and sand, of “sure and certain hope”.

In faith, we wait for morning. In grief we walk through the garden wile the day’s still dark with shadows. We want to be surprised, overcome with joy.

We are. The stone is rolled away.  

He is not here. He is risen.

Peter and John were summoned to the tomb and saw the empty shroud lying there and the napkin which had covered his face rolled up in a place by itself.

Jewish tradition demanded that if the face of a dead person was in any way disfigured, it should be covered with a cloth to avoid people seeing this unpleasant sight. Jesus` face, covered in blood from the piercings of the crown of thorns and swollen from falling and being struck, would have been covered with a napkin and removed before his body was wrapped in the shroud.

In the Cathedral in Oviedo, Spain, is an ancient piece of cloth measuring about 35 x 20` that has a clearly documented history back to the tomb of Jesus. Digital research has now compared the images and bloodstains on the sudarium with the images and stains on the Shroud of Turin. The match is perfect to over 125 points.

The only reasonable conclusion is that the Oviedo sudarium covered the same face as the Turin Shroud – the face of the Risen Lord Jesus.

                                                                                                                                                                     Six Days in Israel - Chapter 13 of 15

Chapter 14 - Leave Taking

My visit to the Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall in Nice some years ago was nothing short of a conversion experience so on the afternoon of the sixth day, the last full day of our tour, I left my fellow travellers at the Garden Tomb and set off to do the one thing that I was determined to do in Israel: visit the Hadassah University Medical Centre to see the Chagall stained glass windows of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

In his dedication of the twelve stained glass windows that light the Abbell Synagogue at the medical centre, Chagall wrote:

“This is my modest gift to the Jewish people who have always dreamt of biblical love, friendship and of peace among all peoples. This is my gift to that people which lived here thousands of years ago among the other Semitic people.”

The sun is still shining. ‘Pack your sunglasses’ was good advice. I have a sore throat and there was some concern about my going off on my own but this brief afternoon time is a gift of silence and solitude for my soul. I feel the breeze on my face and the presence of Christ in this land. I want to soak this present feeling into my memory. There’s nothing more that I want to see, hear or take in. I doubt that I can take in anything more.

An expensive taxi ride gets me to the restaurant in Abu Ghosh early. The doors are unlocked but restaurant is not yet open. With an hour to wait for the tour group to arrive, I ask if there is a pharmacy that I might walk to.

“No,” said the young man at the desk. “It’s too far. I must go out now but I will return in about twenty minutes and take you.”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “Only a scratchy throat.” I protest in vain.

A second gentleman approached and said, “Please sit down and I will get you a cup of tea with lemon and sugar to sip while you wait.” When I offer to pay for the tea, he stepped back and said, “I am not a machine that you put money in to get what you want. I give you this tea because I care for you.” “Thank you” He smiled, ”Enjoy your tea.” I get it.  And I do.

The young man (who turns out to be the manager) returns, takes care of some business and invites me to go along now to the pharmacy. It’s a short drive that would have been a long walk.

On the way he tells me that most of the 9,000 residents of Abu Ghosh are descendants of one man who settled here in the 16^th Century. He speaks impeccable English. His first language is Arab, but their business is chiefly Israelis and tourists so now he speaks mostly Hebrew and English. Yes, he has spent time in America but returned here to marry and raise their family surrounded by family. The restaurant is a family business. The men and boys, no women, who staff it are all family.

When we arrive at the pharmacy he parks the car and enters the pharmacy with me. This time I do get it. He is a young man with ‘old fashioned’ values: respect for family, for elders and women, He is not a machine.

The tour group arrived for the farewell dinner. The guide obviously relieved to see me. The Minister of Tourism joined us to present each one of the group with a certificate of appreciation. Christian pastors from America are good ambassadors, good for business and I admire her effort.  Also I appreciate the fact that she recognizes the service of our tour guide and driver. They deserve the applause. The restaurant lives up to its reputation. I had learned to say thank you in Hebrew – toda.  At last I learned to say thank you in Arabic – I don’t know how to write it. it sounds like czhekara.

We’re on our way to Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion International Airport  with our memories, our pins and certificates and a bookmark that reads ‘Pray for the peace of Israel’.

How can we pray believing for peace between the Jews and Palestinians in the Holy Land when we Christians can’t get it together.

Still, here we are, Christian pastors with a long list of differences, who have set aside theological and traditional differences for six days to see and celebrate Christ with and in each other. It’s a start. 

                                                                                                                                                                     Six Days in Israel - Chapter 14 of 15

Chapter 15 - God So Loved the World

UPS rang my doorbell yesterday morning and handed me a parcel from Bethlehem via Israel.  “Thank you and Happy Christmas,” I said indicating the return address. 

This would be the promised gift of an olive-wood crèche from the Kando family  gift shop in Bethlehem. I had not looked closely at the model on display in the shop and don’t really know what to expect. Now it’s February and I’m not sure that I even want a crèche. Nonetheless, I am not a person who can leave a gift package unopened.

First observation: this is not a factory-made box. The cardboard is major appliance weight that has been cut, stapled and taped for this purpose. Inside are not the puffy water-dissolvable caterpillars we’ve come to expect but Styrofoam recycled and sliced by hand. The box within the shipping box has been made by the same method to protectively hold the crèche. I proceed carefully and uncover, snugged in with more Styrofoam, a stable and a bag securing the nativity figures.  

The moment I opened the stable’s brass-hinged platform I was moved to tears. Thoughts of not wanting this crèche were banished. There is a verity of time and place that speaks more plainly than silver and gold.  This is an intentional icon.

The 9” stable is constructed of 1½ x ¾“ pieces of olive-wood meticulously sanded and fitted, grains aesthetically placed and glued together. An angel from the realms of glory, and a very skilful hand, is carved out of the back wall. The manger is a replica of the Palestinian carved-out stone mangers that I saw in Bethlehem. The infant Jesus wrapped in swaddling cloths, two little lambs, a donkey and a cow and a luminous trailing star (150 pieces. I counted them) have all been creatively coaxed out of scraps that we would have tossed away. So it is with the larger pieces for the bowing down Bethlehem palm tree, Mary and Joseph, the kings and shepherd who were all God-nudged to this world-changing event.   

There is evil in the world but the vast majority of people are good and desire goodness and justice for all as stated in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Universal needs like safety, shelter, food and clean water, freedom to think and speak and worship.  Imagine, if you will, the power of dreaming: Martin Luther King, Bp. Desmond Tutu – God Has a Dream.  Imagine the world transformed by us, the vast majority, who have turned our backs on our personal and political tyrants to stand together for good with God who so loves the world.

                                                                                                                                                                       Six Days in Israel - Chapter 15 of 15