Originally published 1/21/19
There was an Episcopalian on a bus full of Southern Baptists, travelling through the Holy Land. Oh...you thought that was the beginning of a joke? Nope, just me and mom, going to see where Jesus was born.
A New Testament fisherman appeared on the Sea just as we floated by....
That's Mount Beatitude, where Jesus might have given the Sermon on the Mount.
My best friend, Laura, or "Lair," as those close to her call her, is the best person I know. I only hope to be as good a daughter, mom, and friend. We've known each other since third grade, and were college roommates, so there's a lot of water flowing under our respective bridges together. And, she was one of my mom's stellar German students in high school, so my mom always asks for an update on Lair's activities, which, at our age, mostly revolve around young adult children's adventures and the health of aging parents.
In early 2018, I was telling my mom how Lair's parents, then in their late 80s, still enjoyed traveling but couldn't physically do it on their own. (They love to travel so much they even came to Tennessee for Isabel's high school graduation.) They told Lair they wanted to go to Montana to an art show. I know, seems like a long trip to see an art show, right? But Lair, being the dutiful daughter that she is, packed them both up and took them to Montana for a week.
About that same time, my Mom had been making arrangements to go on a 10-day pilgrimage to Israel with the pastor of her Baptist church. She had discussed it with me, and assured me that Dad had approved and agreed to have someone come and sit with him while she went. He suffered from debilitating arthritis, back pain and diabetes that made it impossible for him to travel much, and he certainly would not be able to make the strenuous 10-day trip halfway around the world. Not one to let venturing out alone get in her way, she signed up.
Then I told her about Lair taking her parents to Montana.
"Wow, isn't Lair a good daughter," she said. "Taking her parents on vacation."
And then she looked at me in the way that only a mother can look at a child and communicate reams of impressionable information without saying another word.
Oh. I get it. Message received.
At the time we were in Sewanee waiting for Michael to graduate seminary and get a job and Isabel to graduate high school and pick a college. So much was up in the air. To commit to a trip almost a year away, not knowing where we would be or what anyone would be doing was nerve-wracking to say the least. But what's more nerve-wracking is to disappoint my mother, which I'm sure I've done plenty of times in my life. I'm now at the stage at which it's important to me to not disappoint my mom, so I try to make mature life choices that will make her proud and not worry too much about me anymore.
Going to Israel is not for everyone. Obviously, it's a trip mostly for Christians (and Jews and Muslims I later found out) who are interested in seeing where Jesus was born, lived out his ministry, and died.
But even at that, do we really know that this is where it all happened? I mean, we know he was born in Bethlehem, but, do we really? And we know he died in Jerusalem, but where that happened exactly, we don't really know. We went to about 40 locations, which I'll write more about, and the only one that the tour guide was emphatic that it was the actual spot was the Sea of Galilee. We do know that this is the sea where Jesus and Peter and all those fishermen fished. And we went out on it.
On that day, even our guide was excited that we were somewhere that we know Jesus actually was. We were on a big ark of a boat, one that could hold 100 pilgrims and their minders, and we were not the only ark-like boat on the sea that morning. And just as we're floating along, a small blue boat passes by, with two guys in it, presumably fishermen. Now, I didn't see them fishing, nor did they toss a net. And they were the only "fishermen" in small boats on the sea that day. Apparently, the sea is no longer a nutritional resource for the region. The little blue boat stayed its distance from the tour ark, but we all strained to take pictures of it, perhaps to put ourselves back in time, 2000 years ago, to when this sea might have been full of little blue boats like that, one of which might have carried Jesus away from the crowds, or which Peter might have complained in, or upon which a storm might have blown frighteningly. And while no one mentioned it, I thought, this isn't real; that guy is a tourist plant.
So then I thought, what is real?
Faith is the very act of believing in something of which its realness we don't have definitive proof. That may be what this whole trip was about. People have asked me (including my husband) how the trip affected my faith. I don't have an answer for that yet.
The trip was called a "Tour of the Holy Land," which is different from a "Vacation in the Middle East" or "Reflective Time Considering the Life of Jesus." A Tour involves traveling from historic location to historic location under the careful and knowledgeable guidance of a certified tour guide in a large white bus complete with Wifi internet access and evening check-ins at modern hotels with baggage handlers who magically deliver luggage from hotel room to hotel room.
I thought tracing the steps of Jesus should be harder, less luxurious. Though, at the end of a long day of bus riding, bathroom waiting, and picture taking, I was often grateful for an abundant buffet of local and Americanized food to graze on and a comfortable bed to sleep in.
We were ushered - sometimes in very tight time constraints (15 minutes to absorb the Dead Sea Scrolls please, walk quickly past the birthplace of Jesus - there's a lot of people behind you and they close in 10 minutes, 5 minutes to take pictures, let's get back to the bus) that in the moment constrained my ability to have a mystical, holy experience in the Holy Land. But tight time management also got us to about 5 sites a day, which, in the end, I appreciate. (I also appreciated the guides' ability to get 100 people whose age averaged 75 in and out of third-world bathrooms in an effective and efficient manner regularly.)
It is clear that tourism of Holy sites in important in Israel; at the end of our tour we got certificates, signed by the mayor of Jerusalem and, appropriately, the minister of tourism, verifying our title as official "Jerusalem Pilgrims." I was surprised, though, to learn that it isn't the main industry. Diamond cutting and polishing is. Go figure. Still, the roads are jammed with tour buses, who miraculously navigate seemingly impossibly narrow roads, all without incident, and sites are crowded with tour groups that navigate each other, all intimately linked by the guides who all seem to know one another. And because tourists are plentiful - especially in Jerusalem - so are street vendors, who are all eager to sell you a scarf or a cross or a bag embroidered with Jerusalem to remember your trip. They also have a relationship with the guides, whom they want to recommend that you purchase their goods. And in the country - Capernaum, Masada, Jericho - each site has its own gift shop, just like at the end of each Disney ride, there's a shop where you can purchase memorabilia of that particular place. They do begin to blur together, and all of those tchotchkes also begin to resemble each other.
The logistics of the tour are important, because they deeply affected what we saw and how we saw it. So it's important to know who took us on this tour and what they said. The tour is organized by a company in Boone, NC, that specializes in Holy Land tours. Ours was led theologically by Dr. Don Wilton, who happens to the the pastor of First Baptist Spartanburg, where my brother goes to church. You can also watch him on TV on Sunday mornings. He's South African, so has a nice lilting accent, but I believe his 25 years in Spartanburg have also introduced a long "I" sound that always makes me giggle when I hear it. It's just so Spartanburg. At about three stops each day we settled into a sanctuary of sorts, a place that many of the sites made available to groups to stop and learn a bit. So our teachings (as the Baptists call it) were very Baptist, and I'll get into what that means exactly as I walk through this experience.
We were led on a site basis by two incredibly knowledgeable tour guides, Saliba and Shafiq. They are native Israeli Christians who have a deep knowledge of history, the Bible, and the beliefs of the various Christian denominations. The told us the facts (believed to be true and proven to be true) and linked the Old Testament prophecies to the New Testament stories verse by verse. They took us back 10,000 years at Masada, and explained in great detail how they made saunas in a city on top of a mountain in the middle of the desert. They knew which cosmetic company actually made their products from Dead Sea minerals, and obligingly took us to the right place to purchase Dead Sea mineral lotions. They had a terrific sense of American humor, and reviewed mis-translations in the Bible as it was translated from Aramaic to Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English, which explained a lot of things, like why Joseph and Jesus probably weren't carpenters, and why Joseph and Mary never would have checked into an Inn. I learned that they have to be certified after an extensive course given by the state to ensure that they are not proselytizing, that they are just giving the facts. They were a very important part of the tour.
Just fresh from my renewing Baptism in the Jordan River I asked Saliba about a different kind of tour - one that would be more contemplative: could we walk, for instance, the path that Jesus did from Nazareth to Capernaum? I told him that my husband and I are Episcopalian, and that this kind of hurry-up tour would not suit his Benedictine sensibilities. He laughed and said they would give Episcopalians an entirely different kind of tour. He was aware of the differences between the liturgists and the evangelicals - beyond the obvious difference that Lutherans and Episcopalians drink alcohol, which he laughed about - and said the language used would vary greatly. And yes, we could do the five-day walk, which included, by the way, evening pickups and rest at local luxury hotels.
So now comes the time to examine what I saw, what I believe I saw, and what that means to me, and how it has affected my faith.
It is incredible to see where Jesus my have preached the Sermon on the Mount, and where he may have died (there are two locations, by the way). I think to walk through it, stand on top of it, touch the Wall, was an extraordinary experience. Already, I'm experiencing church differently. Just this past Sunday, the Gospel reading was about the wedding at Cana, the site of Jesus' first miracle, where he turned water into wine. I've been there, where they believe that miracle occurred. Last Sunday, the Gospel reading was about Jesus' baptism in the Jordan by his brother, John. I've been there, too, and saw the doves that frequent the riverbed. So it's different. I'm different. I don't exclaim to the choir that "I've been there!" as we sing about the wedding at Cana, and the River Jordan. I don't kid myself to think that anyone else cares that I've been there.
These doves wandered among the traffic jam of tour buses at Bethabara, the site where it is believed that John baptized Jesus. Are they of the lineage of the dove that appeared over Jesus as he was baptized?
Faith, I think, and belief, are very personal, even though we are directed to share them with others, as Peter did, to establish Christianity. As an Episcopalian, I'm not convinced that proselytizing is the way to do it - not for me anyway. And nobody ever wants to see your vacation pictures, am I right? Note - a few will be included in this series!
I'm glad Lair takes her parents on vacations, and planted the seed for me to be encouraged to go on a vacation with my mom. While ours was slightly different from an art expedition to Montana, I'm sure it was just as meaningful. Now I just have to figure out what it all means....I'm going to write about each place we went to, what we saw, what we heard, and what I learned, in hopes that I can come to a greater understanding of my faith, and what it is God wants me to do with all those pictures.
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