On Monday, July 7th, we left Tantur for a week’s tour of Galilee. How shall I summarize the overwhelming number of places we saw? Let me list them quickly and then make some more detailed comments. We saw Caesarea Maritima (founded by Herod the Great, Paul imprisoned there, inscription with name of Pontius Pilate found there), Mt. Carmel (Elijah and the prophets of Baal in i Kings 18), and Megiddo (=Armageddon); we visited Cana and Nazareth; we stopped at places associated with the
The Church of the Beatitudes near the Sea of Galilee
Sermon on the Mount and the Feeding of the 5,000 (Tabgha); we stopped in Capernaum and Kursi (the place where Jesus healed the man possessed by the demons named “Legion” and sent them into the herd of pigs) and took a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee, concluding with viewing a recently discovered boat dated to the first century; we traveled to Caesarea Philippi (where Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”) and the Golan Heights; we saw the headwaters of the Jordan and ate in a Druse village; we returned to Tantur by way of Mt. Tabor (by tradition associated with Jesus’ Transfiguration), Beit She’an (an important archaelogical site), and Jericho, stopping to eat in a Circassian village.
Who are the Druse? They are a somewhat secretive group that is an offshoot of Islam who live in a few villages in Israel, including the Golan Heights. Who are the Circassians? They are a group who migrated a century ago from an area in Russia between the Caspian and Black Seas who now are Muslim or Christian. They are examples of the religious and cultural diversity one can find in israel.
Was it special to be in Galilee where Jesus lived, grew up, and began his public ministry? Yes. Was it a deep spiritual experience to see all these places? Not really. Recall my comments in an earlier posting about the difference between being a tourist and a pilgrim. Sometimes the hectic pace of moving from place to place, along with busloads of other tourists, in the hot Galilee sun (supposedly over 100 degrees Fahrenheit – isn’t that what 40 degrees Celsius adds up to?) doesn’t lend itself to spiritual experience.
Yet there are moments when the specialness of these places is touching — standing in the Catholic Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, looking at First Century ruins that may have been the house where Mary lived when the angel came to her — gathering in the courtyard of a church in Cana with a couple come to be married and others to renew their marriage vows in this place where Jesus changed the water into wine for a wedding feast — standing on places by the shores of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus may well have preached the Sermon on the Mount or fed the 5,000 — taking a van to the top of Mt. Tabor where Jesus may have been transfigured.
What I have been appreciating the most are those places that help me to understand the actual cultural and historical context of Jesus. In Nazareth they have created “Nazareth Village,” a living history exhibit where they have restored a First Century village and farmlands based on the latest archaeological findings. My understanding of the Bible — and soon my preaching as well — will be deeply impacted by that visit as well as the time we spent at several other archaeological sites. (They’ve discovered a Roman bath in Nazareth. Did Jesus and his family use it? I have tended to think that Jews didn’t use such pagan things, but there is evidence that they did on some occasions. Caesarea Philippi was a place of healing springs at the headwaters of the Jordan River which includes the ruins of several Roman temples, including one to the Greek god Pan; does that add to the significance of this being the place where Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”)
I have also been realizing what I knew only dimly before: the Holy Land has been a place of pilgrimage for many centuries. Perhaps it began even earlier, but we know that the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were built under the sponsorship of St. Helen, the mother of Emperor Constantine. As we visit various sites, we see remains of shrines or churches from that time, from later Byzantine times (5th to 7th centuries), from Crusader times (11th to 13th centuries), and finally in recent times — that is, since the late 1800’s. If we search for where Jesus actually walked, we may not find it; if we look for where Christians thought he walked over the centuries since at least 325 A.D., we find those places everywhere.
Our guide was a young Arab Christian woman (Melkite, or Greek Catholic). The most moving times in Galilee were when in several churches she sang for us beautiful Byzantine chants — or when we gathered by the pool of our hotel on the shores of the Sea of Galilee for a Eucharist led in the evening by one of the priests in our group and we heard the wind and the waves of Galilee as we read about Jesus walking on the water and inviting Peter to come to him.
