It’s been two frantically-busy weeks since we returned from Israel, enough time for the humdrum of daily life to flood back, dulling the system - but also enough time to see the Israel experience in some sort of perspective. It was a massive experience, not the sort that you can easily forget and, in the quiet of an evening or lying awake at night, my thoughts occasionally drift back to the Lake of Galilee.
Some random reflections follow, none
of them particularly new or profound...
I think it was Father Pixner, a
Benedictine monk in Jerusalem’s Dormition Abbey, who first suggested that the land
of Israel is itself a Gospel, the ‘fifth
Gospel.’ The four Gospels tell us of Jesus’ life and teaching; they speak
of lakesides, deserts, hilltop towns, roads from here to there, wildernesses, mountains.
The fifth Gospel is the holy land itself, the land where the Son of God was
born, raised, walked, worked, preached, healed and died – and we can walk in
His footsteps, in the same locations, marvelling.
We all use our imagination to
visualise the people and places of two thousand years ago, sometimes it is
easy, sometimes it isn’t. Not having many deserts in fertile and green Sussex,
I used to imagine the Judean Desert as a Sahara-type desert, perfectly flat
with waves of sand - perhaps a French Foreign Legion fort lying beyond the next
dune! Instead, the Judean desert is hilly, very rocky, lots of sand with
shrivelled scrubs, a few mountains, some canyons – and occasional streams.
It was easier to imagine the Lake of
Galilee. If you have seen the West Coast of Scotland or the Lake District you
will have a good idea what the Lake of Galilee is like (except the weather is
much better – semi tropical in fact.). The lowest freshwater lake on earth, Lake
Galilee is only thirteen miles by seven, surrounded by hills, and it is easy to
believe that air moving from the cool Golan Heights down to the semi-tropical
waters can cause sudden fierce storms -
as the Apostle Peter could well attest!
(A storm in March
1992 sent waves 10 feet high crashing into downtown Tiberias – which is situated
on the lakeside - causing significant damage).For me, Galilee spoke volumes. It is on a human scale with little villages and towns surrounding the Lake. It is easy to imagine the crowds of listeners forcing Jesus to retreat to a boat for his safety and to preach from a hundred yards offshore. It is also easy to imagine the apostles walking along the shore, from village to village, as Jesus taught in the local synagogues. Indeed, Jesus and four apostles (Peter, James, Andrew and John) lived in Capernaum, and when we were there we visited some of the ruins of the first-century synagogue where Jesus would have taught, and saw what is credibly believed to be the home of Peter. That is what the ‘Fifth Gospel’ means to me.
Speaking of geography, I had not
expected Israel to be so small. It is only 263 miles long and between 9 and 71
miles wide, about 8,000 square miles in area – almost exactly the same size as
Wales. Bethlehem is only 6 miles away from Jerusalem. Nazareth (which is
between the Lake of Galilee and the coast) is about 65 miles north of Jerusalem,
as the crow flies. Observant Jews (like the Holy Family) would travel from
their home in Nazareth to the Temple in Jerusalem three times a year. To avoid Samaritan
territory, they could not take the direct route and would have to go a circuitous
route via the Jordan Valley, adding 50% more distance to the journey. Walking (through
bandit-infested mountains, deserts, valleys in horrendous temperatures or
wading through snow) they would take a week each way. They probably didn’t need
to go to the gym to work out...
The
sheer antiquity of Israel is staggering. At Jericho, allegedly one of the
oldest inhabited cities in the world, the first with city walls, we saw ruins of
23 different civilisations – basically piles of old stones – that archaeologists
tell us may be dated as far back as 9,000BC – in other words they could be 11,000
years old. They may or may not be that old, what is clear is that there was a
city here in ancient times, maybe the one where, in the worlds of the old
gospel song, ‘Joshua fit de battle of
Jericho, and de walls came a tumblin’ down.’ All over Israel there are
ruins and archaeological digs that evidence both antiquity and the
destructiveness of humans – Jerusalem was destroyed twice, besieged 23 times
and attacked 52 times.
And that is one of the dilemmas
facing the tourist - what is real and what is hokum? Since there has been so much destruction, so
much re-building, so few historic records from 2,000 years ago, can we really
rely on the location of supposedly holy sites? Is this really where Jesus was
born, where he died, where he performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes, where
he prayed with the disciples, where he was tempted by the Devil, was transfigured,
ascended into Heaven and so on?
The answer is probably that we
cannot be sure for any individual site. However, there is a very good chance
that many of the holy sites that we visit are indeed holy. The reason is that
there is a trail of ancient writings and ancient churches (typically Byzantine
and then Crusader) pointing to one particular spot.
For example, consider the Church of
the Nativity in Bethlehem. The New Testament says that Jesus was born in a ‘manger.’
However, early writers such as Justin Martyr, writing in the second century, say
he was born in a ‘cave.’ This makes sense as many houses in these days were
built adjoining caves and the cave was used to keep livestock and for storage. Third
century writers such as Origen record that a particular cave was venerated as
the birthplace of the Lord. When Emperor Constantine made Christianity the
state religion he and his mother (Saint) Helena rushed about building churches on
top of all the holy places they could find. So, in 339AD the first church was
built directly above the cave. Emperor Justinian knocked it down in 530AD and
built a larger one. Then the Crusaders in the 11th century did their
own re-modelling and, although the Ottomans nicked much of the marble, the
church survived until modern times. So, the rule is, if your holy place has the
ruins of a very, very old church stuck on top of it, it’s probably genuine. (The
Church of the Nativity contains quite a lot of Constantine’s original church,
including pillars and mosaics, and the ancient altar is over an ancient cave.)
One of the challenges the pilgrim
faces is whether to be a pilgrim or a tourist. I’m a great camera buff, happily
snapping away at the least excuse. At home, my first action on entering a
church would be to genuflect, observe a moment’s respectful pause, and then kneel
or sit in prayer (or, at least, in prayerful silence). In Israel I found myself
barging into churches, wielding my camera like a weapon, looking for the best
camera angle, trying to figure out what exposure and white balance was required...Maybe
I wasn’t the worst behaved but I certainly wasn’t the best. As Chaucer revealed
many years ago, pilgrims are not necessarily as holy as the places they visit.
Enough said!
Our
tour guides were Palestinian Christians. There is concern at the numbers of
Palestinian Christians leaving Israel to find work abroad and our tour agency
had a policy of supporting them economically, to generate work for them within
Israel; thus, we used guides, transport and hotels supplied by Palestinian
Christians and were directed to their cooperative shop in Bethlehem.
The Separation Wall (also called the
Security Wall by the Israelis) is a blot on the landscape. It separates
Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied areas of the West Bank so that they cannot
enter Israel without authorisation. Whatever the rationale for its introduction,
history tells us that apartheid and segregation carry the seeds of their own
destruction and, as we celebrate the life and achievement of Nelson Mandela,
let us pray that there is a Nelson Mandela in Israel today who will reconcile Jews
and Arabs. The Palestinian Christians who were our guides on the tour identified
themselves first as Arabs, as Palestinians, as oppressed subjects rather than as
fellow-traveller Christians. Interesting, but also potentially concerning.
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