Israel: Stories in Place
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Being in Israel I spent 8 days just soaking up all the different places we visited. It has been very helpful for me (and I hope interesting to others maybe!) to write up my experience of some of the most significant places, its story and my response.
“Let anyone who thirst come to me … No entrance”: Sermon on the mount The most convoluted place on earth: The Holy Sepulcher Jacob’s Well (a fascinating test of the rights of ownership) Springs of living water: the source of the Jordan river Jesus’s home: the Sisters of Nazareth A cacophony of religion and politics: The Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem Baptism Site Lulu the camel 
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Sermon: Jacob's Well and what it means to me The story of my visit to the well, and three kinds of 'realness': the realness of place Through 4, 5, 6 millenia that water has continued to bubble up, and the deep well has provided safe drinking water, for those with a bucket and a long enough rope! The tangible things and the actual physical places, these are the ground on which metaphor and story and meaning stand, and in our super-spiritual individual world today we need to know that there really is a well in Israel. The story really is true. It really happened. the realness of history and the realness of Jesus Jesus is the one who gives us living water, the Holy Spirit, which becomes a spring welling up for everlasting life – not there in Nablus but here in Milson, inside of you as a congregation and inside of you as individuals. That well of sweet clear refreshing water you carry around within you when you go to work or hospital or home. Let us pray Lord Jesus be our well today. Bring us into your presence, draw us close, sit us down to talk with you. Give us a bucket, give us rope, that we might draw water, for we are thirsty, thirsty for you. Give us every day the water that never runs dry, the spring of life within us, bubbling up for eternal life, that we might be a source of life and hope, love and grace, for each and every person we meet. And may all we say and do be for your glory living Lord, Messiah, who will reveal all things to the glory of God. Amen. with Powerpoint of photos: For Milson: Powerpoint of Jacob's Well Photo: Jacob's Well, 1934 |
“Let anyone who thirst come to me … No entrance”: Sermon on the mount
Up the hill from Capernaum is a site chosen to honour the Sermon on the Mount. It’s not a ‘mountain’ as such, just a hillside, less than half an hour’s walk from home. I’m guessing that Jesus had a regular ‘gig’ (as Bishop Justin likes to call his preaching engagements), and folks would come from Capernaum, Magdala and other neighbouring towns.
It is a beautiful spot, looking out across the lake. Early in the morning it would be still and utterly magic, with the sun reflecting on the lake as it rose, no sounds but the birds; a good place to teach. And maybe in the evening as people finished their day’s work they would head up the hill to hear Jesus speak for a couple of hours before heading home for their dinners. I’m told there is a particular place just down a bit from the church where a slight valley creates a natural amphitheatre, where literally thousands of people could hear a man speak if there was no wind.
Matthew ‘conflagrates’ the main body of Jesus’ teaching onto this hillside, as if it was all one event. Much like the Torah does in piling in all of the giving of the covenants and the law into that one moment in the Sinai desert with Moses up the mountain. (It’s clear why Matthew uses the word ‘mountain’ don’t you think?)
We were there in the late afternoon. By the lake it had been fresh and windy. Up here it got calm as the sun got lower. I appreciated the vivid flowers in the garden. I dug my toes into the reddish dirt. I looked out over the lake that has been the focus of so much of my spiritual imagination through my lifetime.
The church is a rather lovely perfect circle, 8 windows with 8 Beatitudes reaching high upward to 8 arches supporting a golden dome with a centrepoint of bluest blue. A very old illustrated Latin manuscript of the beatitutes sits on the lecturn. Of all the pilgrimage churches we visited this one felt the most prayerful.
But the thing which made us all laugh, and cringe, was the pretty little fountain in the garden, with the plaque with John 7:37 written on it: “Let anyone who thirst come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as scripture says rivers of living water flow from within him.” All very sweet. Except for the two additional signs that had been erected: “Water not for drink”, and “No entrance”; seemingly unaware of the irony. Isn’t that a perfect picture of the fundamental flaw of the church?! Jesus says “come to me” and we put up ‘No entrance’ signs. Jesus says “drink” but the fountains of our own making are muddied, potentially even toxic. It’s brilliant.
Up the hill from Capernaum is a site chosen to honour the Sermon on the Mount. It’s not a ‘mountain’ as such, just a hillside, less than half an hour’s walk from home. I’m guessing that Jesus had a regular ‘gig’ (as Bishop Justin likes to call his preaching engagements), and folks would come from Capernaum, Magdala and other neighbouring towns.
It is a beautiful spot, looking out across the lake. Early in the morning it would be still and utterly magic, with the sun reflecting on the lake as it rose, no sounds but the birds; a good place to teach. And maybe in the evening as people finished their day’s work they would head up the hill to hear Jesus speak for a couple of hours before heading home for their dinners. I’m told there is a particular place just down a bit from the church where a slight valley creates a natural amphitheatre, where literally thousands of people could hear a man speak if there was no wind.
Matthew ‘conflagrates’ the main body of Jesus’ teaching onto this hillside, as if it was all one event. Much like the Torah does in piling in all of the giving of the covenants and the law into that one moment in the Sinai desert with Moses up the mountain. (It’s clear why Matthew uses the word ‘mountain’ don’t you think?)
We were there in the late afternoon. By the lake it had been fresh and windy. Up here it got calm as the sun got lower. I appreciated the vivid flowers in the garden. I dug my toes into the reddish dirt. I looked out over the lake that has been the focus of so much of my spiritual imagination through my lifetime.
The church is a rather lovely perfect circle, 8 windows with 8 Beatitudes reaching high upward to 8 arches supporting a golden dome with a centrepoint of bluest blue. A very old illustrated Latin manuscript of the beatitutes sits on the lecturn. Of all the pilgrimage churches we visited this one felt the most prayerful.
But the thing which made us all laugh, and cringe, was the pretty little fountain in the garden, with the plaque with John 7:37 written on it: “Let anyone who thirst come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as scripture says rivers of living water flow from within him.” All very sweet. Except for the two additional signs that had been erected: “Water not for drink”, and “No entrance”; seemingly unaware of the irony. Isn’t that a perfect picture of the fundamental flaw of the church?! Jesus says “come to me” and we put up ‘No entrance’ signs. Jesus says “drink” but the fountains of our own making are muddied, potentially even toxic. It’s brilliant.
The most convoluted place on earth: The Holy Sepulcher
I find it hard to write about the Church of the Holy Sepulcher because it was such a clamour of impressions. My word is ‘convoluted’; the technical definition of which is “intricately folded, twisted, or coiled.” Surely no place in the world is as ‘convoluted’.
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is built, as well as anyone knows, around the rocks where Jesus was died, was buried, and rose again. Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem’s city walls, then buried in a nearby tomb. I must say I had pictured this being further away from the city, and a longer walk to the tomb, but it seems that it was all right there. It was a rubbish dump. It was rocky. Not just stony, but lumpy; outcrops of rock, an ugly mess of a place. There the Romans set up the standing posts they used for crucifixions, where you couldn’t miss them on your way in or out of the city. Jesus, like all the others crucified there, would have carried his cross-beam up from the Roman headquarters, been nailed to it then hoisted up to hang there.
The Bible says that Jesus was laid in a brand new tomb, one recently built by one of the Jewish leaders. This was cut into the rock, into the side of one of the rocky outcrops, and down a couple of steps, sealed with a round stone disk. The low rock platform on which is body lay has been preserved, but the rock cave around it has been mostly cut away over the years, and the spot where Jesus lay is now inside a church inside the main church (under layers of marble!).
The history and church politics of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is worth reading, if mind-bogglingly complicated. All the dramas of battles between and within faiths have made their mark in this place. Here is the briefest of summaries:
I decided not to queue up to touch either the rock where supposedly the cross stood, or the spot where the tomb was. The thought of touching a slab of marble imported from Italy lying on top of where Jesus lay, in a small enclosed crowded space, filled me with dread rather than devotion.
My most vivid memory is of a small bowl of oil, with a candle floating in it, suspended in an elaborate frame, near the stone slab where women remember the women who anointed Jesus’ body for burial. Hosts of candles were burning, some in great bunches tied together, so the flickering light and heat was golden under the high dim dome. A guard kept shooing away the women wanting to light their candles from the oil bowl, but we were allowed to touch the oil. It ran down my fingers, I touched some to my forehead, and also Lucinda’s (the Episcopal priest who was with me). I had bought an embroidered stole in the market nearby and I asked St George’s chaplain, John, to anoint the stole and bless it, so we stood there in a small circle as he did that and prayed for me, as the crowds swirled around us. It was a very moving moment.
I find it hard to write about the Church of the Holy Sepulcher because it was such a clamour of impressions. My word is ‘convoluted’; the technical definition of which is “intricately folded, twisted, or coiled.” Surely no place in the world is as ‘convoluted’.
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is built, as well as anyone knows, around the rocks where Jesus was died, was buried, and rose again. Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem’s city walls, then buried in a nearby tomb. I must say I had pictured this being further away from the city, and a longer walk to the tomb, but it seems that it was all right there. It was a rubbish dump. It was rocky. Not just stony, but lumpy; outcrops of rock, an ugly mess of a place. There the Romans set up the standing posts they used for crucifixions, where you couldn’t miss them on your way in or out of the city. Jesus, like all the others crucified there, would have carried his cross-beam up from the Roman headquarters, been nailed to it then hoisted up to hang there.
The Bible says that Jesus was laid in a brand new tomb, one recently built by one of the Jewish leaders. This was cut into the rock, into the side of one of the rocky outcrops, and down a couple of steps, sealed with a round stone disk. The low rock platform on which is body lay has been preserved, but the rock cave around it has been mostly cut away over the years, and the spot where Jesus lay is now inside a church inside the main church (under layers of marble!).
The history and church politics of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is worth reading, if mind-bogglingly complicated. All the dramas of battles between and within faiths have made their mark in this place. Here is the briefest of summaries:
- Jesus was killed and buried there.
- Roman emperor Hadrian built a temple to Venus on the site in his attempts to kill off the Christian faith.
- When Empress Helena came with Constantine’s blessing and resources her top priority was to find the actual cross of Christ, which she believed she did find in some rubble. She knocked down and reused the Venus temple and built the largest Byzantine church in Palestine, containing both the crucifixion site and the tomb. It was vast, considerably bigger than the current church.
- While Jerusalem was under early Muslim control the church was damaged and rebuilt several times, with fires, earthquakes and battles taking their toll and being repaired.
- 1009 and a mad Fatimad Caliph destroyed the church as much as he could.
- The churches rebuilt it as much as they could. The Crusaders arrived in 1099 and managed to restore the underground chapels and added their own construction.
- Ever since, the church has been the focus of various internal battles between denominations; it got formally split up between the Greeks, the Franciscans, the Armenians, with some rights to the Coptics, the Syriacs and the Ethiopians. The ancient agreement is delightfully called the ‘Status Quo’.
- Somehow they all managed to agree on some professional maintenance work to be done last year, on the tomb section of the church, which included scientific exploration. This has confirmed the authenticity of the site as the likely burial place of Jesus.
I decided not to queue up to touch either the rock where supposedly the cross stood, or the spot where the tomb was. The thought of touching a slab of marble imported from Italy lying on top of where Jesus lay, in a small enclosed crowded space, filled me with dread rather than devotion.
My most vivid memory is of a small bowl of oil, with a candle floating in it, suspended in an elaborate frame, near the stone slab where women remember the women who anointed Jesus’ body for burial. Hosts of candles were burning, some in great bunches tied together, so the flickering light and heat was golden under the high dim dome. A guard kept shooing away the women wanting to light their candles from the oil bowl, but we were allowed to touch the oil. It ran down my fingers, I touched some to my forehead, and also Lucinda’s (the Episcopal priest who was with me). I had bought an embroidered stole in the market nearby and I asked St George’s chaplain, John, to anoint the stole and bless it, so we stood there in a small circle as he did that and prayed for me, as the crowds swirled around us. It was a very moving moment.
Jacob’s Well
One of the most spiritually powerful places we visited during our course at St George’s was Jacob’s Well.
Nearly 4,000 years ago Jacob purchased from the locals for a hundred coins a piece of land just outside the prosperous Canannite city of Shechem (Genesis 33). It included a well. Nearly 2,000 ago this area was part of the land of Samaria, Shechem was a pile of rubble, a little village called Sychar had been built beside the ruins. One day Jesus walked that way and sat beside the well. He sent his disciples off into the town to get food, and he got talking to a local woman (John 4), who gave him a glass of water.
Over the years various churches have been built and flattened on this spot. In 1860 the Greek Orthodox Church purchased the site, with help from the Russians, and started repairing the crypt with the well in it, and building a new church. It took nearly 150 years, but the church was finally finished in 2006.
It nearly didn’t. Wars and earthquakes didn’t help. The worst moment, however, was in 1979. A group of Jewish Zionists attempted to purchase the church, and when the priest refused they kidnapped him. He refused to sign the papers and he was killed. His body lies in the church, and he is honoured as a martyr. His name was Archimandrite Philoumenos.
I can understand the Jews wanting to own the site. After all, it was bought by their ancestor Jacob. It is a sacred site for the Jewish people, and it is under foreign control. Not just that, but it is hung with hundreds of icons, decorated crosses, lights and art works. The Greeks sure know how to ‘glam up’ a place! I kind of loved it but it was all a bit much for my Reformed bones. It does rather seem to be a violation of the 2nd commandment. I can understand it all being entirely offensive from a Jewish point of view.
So the church regularly is on the receiving end of threats and gunfire. Jewish youths driving past are in the habit of putting a few gunshot holes in the metal gate.
It challenged my thinking about rights of ownership. Both Jacob and the Greeks paid good money for the land and the well. Both believed it was a holy site, and honoured it as a godly place. But if God has promised the land of Israel to the Jewish people as their homeland … part of me says that this applies as much to this well as to anything. It’s not as though the Greeks have much of a local church congregation. It is funded and run for foreigners by foreigners.
Anyway, I must tell you my story about visiting the well.
So, you go down steep steps under the altar of the big airy new church into round cave-like space, the 1700-year-old Byzantine church built around the well of Jacob. Around the walls are paintings of Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman. There is a desk with a priest selling icons and bottles of well water. In the middle is a stone well. It has a simple metal frame and crank handle, attached to a slightly battered stainless steel bucket. It was completely awesome.
The well is about 35m deep, which is quite a lot of cranking the crank handle! You wind the bucket down till it hits the water (far too deep and dark to see), you feel the bucket get heavier as it takes on water, then you wind it back up again. Simple as that. The water is as sweet and fresh as it was 4,000 years ago when Jacob drank from it, part of Israel’s vast underground system of channels and springs.
But the coolest thing is sitting on that stone edge, knowing for absolute sure that Jesus sat right there, talking to the woman who cranked the handle and gave him water. No doubt about it. Time gets compressed. The ancient story becomes immediate, present. And it was such a significant conversation he had with her, so honouring of her and her questions, so profoundly honest and profoundly symbolic and so deeply sharing of who he was. This story has certainly been a deeply important one for me in my own faith, and I’m sure it has a special resonance for all Christian women. To be there and drink that water was more than I could take in. It brings tears to my eyes remembering it. It brought no fresh theological or contextual insights. It was just a stone ledge around a hole in the ground with water in it. But it was one of the more powerful experiences of my life. It was just so very real.
One of the most spiritually powerful places we visited during our course at St George’s was Jacob’s Well.
Nearly 4,000 years ago Jacob purchased from the locals for a hundred coins a piece of land just outside the prosperous Canannite city of Shechem (Genesis 33). It included a well. Nearly 2,000 ago this area was part of the land of Samaria, Shechem was a pile of rubble, a little village called Sychar had been built beside the ruins. One day Jesus walked that way and sat beside the well. He sent his disciples off into the town to get food, and he got talking to a local woman (John 4), who gave him a glass of water.
Over the years various churches have been built and flattened on this spot. In 1860 the Greek Orthodox Church purchased the site, with help from the Russians, and started repairing the crypt with the well in it, and building a new church. It took nearly 150 years, but the church was finally finished in 2006.
It nearly didn’t. Wars and earthquakes didn’t help. The worst moment, however, was in 1979. A group of Jewish Zionists attempted to purchase the church, and when the priest refused they kidnapped him. He refused to sign the papers and he was killed. His body lies in the church, and he is honoured as a martyr. His name was Archimandrite Philoumenos.
I can understand the Jews wanting to own the site. After all, it was bought by their ancestor Jacob. It is a sacred site for the Jewish people, and it is under foreign control. Not just that, but it is hung with hundreds of icons, decorated crosses, lights and art works. The Greeks sure know how to ‘glam up’ a place! I kind of loved it but it was all a bit much for my Reformed bones. It does rather seem to be a violation of the 2nd commandment. I can understand it all being entirely offensive from a Jewish point of view.
So the church regularly is on the receiving end of threats and gunfire. Jewish youths driving past are in the habit of putting a few gunshot holes in the metal gate.
It challenged my thinking about rights of ownership. Both Jacob and the Greeks paid good money for the land and the well. Both believed it was a holy site, and honoured it as a godly place. But if God has promised the land of Israel to the Jewish people as their homeland … part of me says that this applies as much to this well as to anything. It’s not as though the Greeks have much of a local church congregation. It is funded and run for foreigners by foreigners.
Anyway, I must tell you my story about visiting the well.
So, you go down steep steps under the altar of the big airy new church into round cave-like space, the 1700-year-old Byzantine church built around the well of Jacob. Around the walls are paintings of Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman. There is a desk with a priest selling icons and bottles of well water. In the middle is a stone well. It has a simple metal frame and crank handle, attached to a slightly battered stainless steel bucket. It was completely awesome.
The well is about 35m deep, which is quite a lot of cranking the crank handle! You wind the bucket down till it hits the water (far too deep and dark to see), you feel the bucket get heavier as it takes on water, then you wind it back up again. Simple as that. The water is as sweet and fresh as it was 4,000 years ago when Jacob drank from it, part of Israel’s vast underground system of channels and springs.
But the coolest thing is sitting on that stone edge, knowing for absolute sure that Jesus sat right there, talking to the woman who cranked the handle and gave him water. No doubt about it. Time gets compressed. The ancient story becomes immediate, present. And it was such a significant conversation he had with her, so honouring of her and her questions, so profoundly honest and profoundly symbolic and so deeply sharing of who he was. This story has certainly been a deeply important one for me in my own faith, and I’m sure it has a special resonance for all Christian women. To be there and drink that water was more than I could take in. It brings tears to my eyes remembering it. It brought no fresh theological or contextual insights. It was just a stone ledge around a hole in the ground with water in it. But it was one of the more powerful experiences of my life. It was just so very real.
Springs of living water: the source of the River Jordan
Psalm 104:10-13
You make springs gush forth in the valleys; flowing between the hills,
They give water to all the beasts of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
The birds of the sky nest by the waters; they sing in the branches.
From your high reservoirs you pour water on the mountains; satisfying the land.
One of our most fabulous experiences in Israel was visiting the springs of the Jordan river. The northern-most point of Israel is, and was historically, the base of Mt Hermon, by the city of Dan. These days Lebanon is a stone’s thrown away to the north, and the Kingdom of Jordan to the east. There a lush microclimate sustains a forest, and water gushes out from between the rocks. Pure, sweet water, and lots of it.
You have to remember that this land is made of soft rock. People carved caves easily in it. And rainwater has carved channels through it. It rarely rains in parts of Israel; most of the water comes from springs, fed from rain in the hills. The hills capture the water, funnel it through the rock, and it bursts out here and there.
We have some springs in New Zealand, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Here, a stream just starts flowing out from under of a bank of stone. A little trickle quickly becomes a rush of river. And it is exuberant, noisy, brilliant!
Psalm 104 expresses it well, the gushing in the valleys, the trees overhead filled with birds.
It’s hard to find a better metaphor for the blessing and action of God. It is impossible to control, it just ‘is’. It is abundantly more than we could ask or even imagine. Into a hot and dusty land this pure water flows, every day, whether it is raining or not, quenching thirst, sustaining life in all its variety, satisfying the land.
For millennia people have lived there. Read more about Tel Dan: here
The Romans built nearby, Caesarea Philippi (also called Banias).
The point was to build your city with a spring on the inside of your walls (David did the same on Mt Zion, as did Jericho). Having your own internal water source was not just convenient, it was a matter of life and death when under attack.
Which is exactly what the Samaritan woman asked Jesus for, in a spiritual sense: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” (John 4:15) Jesus promised her, and us: “the water I give will become in you a spring of water gushing up to eternal life”.
How do we have a spring on the inside? Did Jesus mean that each and every person can, through him, have constant access to life-giving spiritual power? This is what I believe … though the church has mostly through its history proclaimed that each and every person can access this living water only through the institution of the church. In my ministry I don’t want to be the gatekeeper at the well, charging people money for a cup of living water, dished out for one hour on Sunday mornings. Hell no! I want to be a tour guide to the spring. Get it yourself! Bend down and drink from the spring which is just gushing out from the rock. Take as much as you want. Better yet, open up your own spring, in the rocks of your own life, let it flow and keep on flowing.
Psalm 104:10-13
You make springs gush forth in the valleys; flowing between the hills,
They give water to all the beasts of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
The birds of the sky nest by the waters; they sing in the branches.
From your high reservoirs you pour water on the mountains; satisfying the land.
One of our most fabulous experiences in Israel was visiting the springs of the Jordan river. The northern-most point of Israel is, and was historically, the base of Mt Hermon, by the city of Dan. These days Lebanon is a stone’s thrown away to the north, and the Kingdom of Jordan to the east. There a lush microclimate sustains a forest, and water gushes out from between the rocks. Pure, sweet water, and lots of it.
You have to remember that this land is made of soft rock. People carved caves easily in it. And rainwater has carved channels through it. It rarely rains in parts of Israel; most of the water comes from springs, fed from rain in the hills. The hills capture the water, funnel it through the rock, and it bursts out here and there.
We have some springs in New Zealand, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Here, a stream just starts flowing out from under of a bank of stone. A little trickle quickly becomes a rush of river. And it is exuberant, noisy, brilliant!
Psalm 104 expresses it well, the gushing in the valleys, the trees overhead filled with birds.
It’s hard to find a better metaphor for the blessing and action of God. It is impossible to control, it just ‘is’. It is abundantly more than we could ask or even imagine. Into a hot and dusty land this pure water flows, every day, whether it is raining or not, quenching thirst, sustaining life in all its variety, satisfying the land.
For millennia people have lived there. Read more about Tel Dan: here
The Romans built nearby, Caesarea Philippi (also called Banias).
The point was to build your city with a spring on the inside of your walls (David did the same on Mt Zion, as did Jericho). Having your own internal water source was not just convenient, it was a matter of life and death when under attack.
Which is exactly what the Samaritan woman asked Jesus for, in a spiritual sense: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” (John 4:15) Jesus promised her, and us: “the water I give will become in you a spring of water gushing up to eternal life”.
How do we have a spring on the inside? Did Jesus mean that each and every person can, through him, have constant access to life-giving spiritual power? This is what I believe … though the church has mostly through its history proclaimed that each and every person can access this living water only through the institution of the church. In my ministry I don’t want to be the gatekeeper at the well, charging people money for a cup of living water, dished out for one hour on Sunday mornings. Hell no! I want to be a tour guide to the spring. Get it yourself! Bend down and drink from the spring which is just gushing out from the rock. Take as much as you want. Better yet, open up your own spring, in the rocks of your own life, let it flow and keep on flowing.
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Jesus’s home: the Sisters of Nazareth
Our second morning staying at the guest house of the Sisters of Nazareth we were taken down some steps under the church. The St George’s team wouldn’t say what was down there but they seemed particularly excited about it – “You won’t want to miss it” was all they said. Our guide was the petite but ‘don’t-mess-with-me!’ nun Sister Margaret (Irish, despite being in a French order). She explained that the Sisters of Nazareth had come from France where they had run an orphanage, invited to set up a school in Nazareth in 1881. They happened to buy a piece of land which was mostly rubble, slightly higher up the hill from the town, with its enormous Church of the Annunciation which had stood since Crusader times. They set up a small school for girls, and started to clear the site ready for building. One day the gardener was moving some stones and he discovered an opening in the hillside. It was full of rubble, which they started clearing out, thinking the cave would be a nice cool place for the girls to play. They discovered to their amazement that the space had been an ancient church. They found a curved roof, a skylight, channels and storage for water, and steps leading down even further. Over the next 120 years the sisters and their students bit by bit cleared and dug out the spaces beneath their church. Only in the last decade did they get in a team of archaeolologists, who have verified their findings. The official word is that this could well be house that Jesus grew up in. Certainly it was believed to be so in the mid 300s when a Byzantine cave-church was dug into the rock beside the old house. Certainly the bishop who was buried there in the 5th century thought so. And certainly the Crusaders thought it was Jesus’ house when they built the ‘Church of the Nutrician’ over the top of the whole site (this Crusader church was completely destroyed above ground, but thankfully the below-ground structures survived).
So, underneath all these layers of churches, what is actually there? A house and a tomb.
I was delighted to discover a very cool website called Bible Walks, which has far excellent photos and maps and descriptions. Visit : Biblewalks website.
The Sisters believe that this was the house built by Joseph for Mary and Jesus after they returned from Egypt. It was then outside the town of Nazareth, the front door opened onto the path to a well a little up the hill from the town. It is a large doorway (perhaps Joseph was tall!) and you can still see the slot cut for the bolt for the door. Inside the door is a large room, which would have been the living and bedroom, with another smaller room to the side. You can see the stone fire pit. Up the side wall are steps leading onto the roof. The house was set into the existing rock, with carefully stacked stones forming the other walls.
A little further down the hill is a tomb, cut into the soft rock. Perhaps the most stunning thing is that the round stone door is still there, and still rolls across the entrance. Off a ‘crying room’ are two tombs. The Sisters believe that Joseph made these tombs, one for himself and one for Mary, but that only Joseph was buried there.
The house was only lived in for a generation or two. By the 2nd century more tombs had been dug, indicating that the family no longer lived in the house. This fits with the Bible record, which is that the family of Jesus moved to Jerusalem after his death and resurrection, forming the core leadership of the early church there. Mary herself was buried in Jerusalem. Jesus’ brother James led the church in Jerusalem until he was killed in 62. Jesus had sisters and brothers, so presumably nieces and nephews, who may have lived in this house, but I guess they set off, as did much of the early church, spreading the good news of Christ throughout the world. Or maybe some stayed in Nazareth. Anyway, I’m off on conjecture now.
Being there, in those ancient stones preserved by faithful people through 2 millennia, I found deeply moving. So different from the cluttered crowded decorated space of Jesus’ birth spot in Bethlehem. This was raw, rough, solid, incredibly untouched by the years. It was a very short step of the imagination to picture Mary sitting right there making bread, or Jesus climbing those stairs to pray on the roof in the dawn. Each morning I watched the dawn rise from the roof right above this spot, knowing that the light would have been just the same as what Jesus grew up with, and the birds, and the warmth of the sun, catching the hilltops. Here Jesus knew great intimacy and respect for his earthly father, and here Jesus came to know his heavenly father. Here Jesus grew in a loving home, caring for younger sisters and brothers, learning his Hebrew and scriptures, disappearing when he could to sit in quiet alone.
It’s worth commenting on the Byzantine church, which was completely awesome. It is built with a skylight which brilliantly illuminates the altar. It is built with a cistern, connected to the original well, from which water flowed down into the chapel, through a series of interconnected small pools. The Sisters believe this was important for baptism, to be baptised in flowing, ‘living’ water. It was built with beautiful coloured mosaics, but none of these remain.
Our second morning staying at the guest house of the Sisters of Nazareth we were taken down some steps under the church. The St George’s team wouldn’t say what was down there but they seemed particularly excited about it – “You won’t want to miss it” was all they said. Our guide was the petite but ‘don’t-mess-with-me!’ nun Sister Margaret (Irish, despite being in a French order). She explained that the Sisters of Nazareth had come from France where they had run an orphanage, invited to set up a school in Nazareth in 1881. They happened to buy a piece of land which was mostly rubble, slightly higher up the hill from the town, with its enormous Church of the Annunciation which had stood since Crusader times. They set up a small school for girls, and started to clear the site ready for building. One day the gardener was moving some stones and he discovered an opening in the hillside. It was full of rubble, which they started clearing out, thinking the cave would be a nice cool place for the girls to play. They discovered to their amazement that the space had been an ancient church. They found a curved roof, a skylight, channels and storage for water, and steps leading down even further. Over the next 120 years the sisters and their students bit by bit cleared and dug out the spaces beneath their church. Only in the last decade did they get in a team of archaeolologists, who have verified their findings. The official word is that this could well be house that Jesus grew up in. Certainly it was believed to be so in the mid 300s when a Byzantine cave-church was dug into the rock beside the old house. Certainly the bishop who was buried there in the 5th century thought so. And certainly the Crusaders thought it was Jesus’ house when they built the ‘Church of the Nutrician’ over the top of the whole site (this Crusader church was completely destroyed above ground, but thankfully the below-ground structures survived).
So, underneath all these layers of churches, what is actually there? A house and a tomb.
I was delighted to discover a very cool website called Bible Walks, which has far excellent photos and maps and descriptions. Visit : Biblewalks website.
The Sisters believe that this was the house built by Joseph for Mary and Jesus after they returned from Egypt. It was then outside the town of Nazareth, the front door opened onto the path to a well a little up the hill from the town. It is a large doorway (perhaps Joseph was tall!) and you can still see the slot cut for the bolt for the door. Inside the door is a large room, which would have been the living and bedroom, with another smaller room to the side. You can see the stone fire pit. Up the side wall are steps leading onto the roof. The house was set into the existing rock, with carefully stacked stones forming the other walls.
A little further down the hill is a tomb, cut into the soft rock. Perhaps the most stunning thing is that the round stone door is still there, and still rolls across the entrance. Off a ‘crying room’ are two tombs. The Sisters believe that Joseph made these tombs, one for himself and one for Mary, but that only Joseph was buried there.
The house was only lived in for a generation or two. By the 2nd century more tombs had been dug, indicating that the family no longer lived in the house. This fits with the Bible record, which is that the family of Jesus moved to Jerusalem after his death and resurrection, forming the core leadership of the early church there. Mary herself was buried in Jerusalem. Jesus’ brother James led the church in Jerusalem until he was killed in 62. Jesus had sisters and brothers, so presumably nieces and nephews, who may have lived in this house, but I guess they set off, as did much of the early church, spreading the good news of Christ throughout the world. Or maybe some stayed in Nazareth. Anyway, I’m off on conjecture now.
Being there, in those ancient stones preserved by faithful people through 2 millennia, I found deeply moving. So different from the cluttered crowded decorated space of Jesus’ birth spot in Bethlehem. This was raw, rough, solid, incredibly untouched by the years. It was a very short step of the imagination to picture Mary sitting right there making bread, or Jesus climbing those stairs to pray on the roof in the dawn. Each morning I watched the dawn rise from the roof right above this spot, knowing that the light would have been just the same as what Jesus grew up with, and the birds, and the warmth of the sun, catching the hilltops. Here Jesus knew great intimacy and respect for his earthly father, and here Jesus came to know his heavenly father. Here Jesus grew in a loving home, caring for younger sisters and brothers, learning his Hebrew and scriptures, disappearing when he could to sit in quiet alone.
It’s worth commenting on the Byzantine church, which was completely awesome. It is built with a skylight which brilliantly illuminates the altar. It is built with a cistern, connected to the original well, from which water flowed down into the chapel, through a series of interconnected small pools. The Sisters believe this was important for baptism, to be baptised in flowing, ‘living’ water. It was built with beautiful coloured mosaics, but none of these remain.
A cacophony of religion and politics: The Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem
Far and away our most bizarre experience in Israel was the Church of the Nativity. Let me tell you the whole story and then try to make sense of it.
OK. Bethlehem is a Palestinian town, in Palestinian controlled territory. This means going through the wall, showing all our passports at the checkpoint. Like most of Judea it is built at the top of the hill, so you drive along ridge-lines from Jerusalem to get there. This photo is a view across the valley from the 'shepherds fields' site.
From the bus stop we fight our way through street vendors selling trinkets, up the street and into the big plaza in front of the church. The first thing we see is a tent of protestors in support of the political prisoners on hunger strike. The next thing obvious is the construction materials. We join the crowd and approach the door.
The door of the Church of the Nativity is unlike any other church door I've ever seen. The Crusader remodel of the church included a normal high peaked door, and you can still see the outline, but it's been filled in, so that you can only enter or exit the church single file, stooped over.
Inside is a large dark space, mostly filled with scaffolding, but looking up we can see glimpses of brilliant gold mosaics on the roof. We join the crowd queueing to get into the Grotto. We wait. It's hot and stuffy and I start to feel faint. The crowd is huge and tightly packed and we're told it could take an hour of waiting. I decide I'd rather wait outside. Bishara and Hector, our guides, are called away by some guards and John our chaplain looks worried. They come back a few minutes later with a guard and there are some tightly worded tense interchanges. The guard leaves and we look at each other as in 'What was that all about?' but they don't want to say. Then some different guards arrive and are decisive; 'Come' we are told, and suddenly we are being led pushing through the crowd following the guard, through a side door, back out around the back of the crowd, and then we're squeezing past the queue, down the little steps into the tiny grotto, trying not to bang our heads on the ceiling or the hanging glass things or curtains, and then we've pushed in to the line, I'm kneeling on the smooth stone, bending forward under a table thing and reaching for the silver star which is set into the stone underneath. And it is hot and smells of candle smoke and incense and packed close with people and paintings, then I'm staggering out again up the steps back out into the church hung with chandeliers and coloured glass globes and scaffolding.
We sit and debrief in the cloister courtyard, in which there is a tacky life-sized nativity scene.
So what on earth do I make of all that??
First, the actual birth of Jesus. This crazy church does, I believe, actually mark the actual site where Jesus was born, which was in a cave. That's how people lived back then: a cave carved into the soft rock of the hill side, with stone walls built in front of the cave, with a roof. The animals would have been kept overnight in the cave for warmth and protection. Luke's phrase "there was no room for them in the inn" could simply mean that the one-roomed 'inn' was full of sleeping bodies, it was too cold to sleep on the the roof, and it best option was to doss down in the cave 'out the back'. It does not necessarily imply that they were rejected or turned away.
The church remembered and revered the site over the next 300 years, so when Helena arrived with her Roman builders and money (see my piece about her in the Lovely Ladies section) the cave was intact and honoured as a place of worship. Helena must have been delighted to find Jesus' birth place, and she commissioned a large and very beautiful church to be built over the cave. Over the next dozen years her pre-paid team carefully cut away the rock over the birth cave, and constructed an octagonal church, with the best mosaics money could buy, which included a 4m squared hole in the floor through which one could look down into the cave. A section of this original mosaic floor has survived to this day.
The church has been through various rebuilds and attacks, fires and earthquakes since, and been the focus of a good deal of church infighting, most notably when the then silver star marking 'the spot' was stolen in 1847 and the Russians blamed the Ottomans and visa versa and that helped spark the catastrophe that was the Crimean war! The current re-fit is costing billions, and is a credit to the churches' ability to work together occasionally, and the Palestinian Authority, that they have achieved so much, with plenty more to go. Read about it: here
But it's all still highly political. The business with the church guards and us was that one set of guards had challenged Bishara & Hector's right to be guides - did they have the right authorisations? Which one was the teacher and which one was the guide? Then it had gone higher and those further up the food chain had realised that they were dealing with St George's College, which has a very strong reputation, and they were deeply apologetic about it all, hence the 'fast track' treatment we received. Most of us in the group found it a most uncomfortable experience being pushed through the crowds to the front of the line, but there was no way we could have refused!
As for that moment when I touched the place where Jesus had been born? It was so fast and so surreal it is hard to make sense of it. The close space and thick air actually felt kind of womb-like to me. I was overwhelmed by heavy layers of intensity formed by 2,000 years of human devotion. It was like a funnel into which has been poured the heart-faith of an unimaginable number of people, all concentrated at that one spot. Trying to connect all that with a baby born in the simplest of circumstances was all too much for me. It seemed entirely beside the point to attempt to peel back all the candles and gold fabric and silver and worn marble to look for Jesus buried underneath it all. We can know Jesus born in a manger in any old place any old where, even in our own hearts and imaginings. This place, jam backed with adoration, is a tribute to God's work in the human heart, that despite the politics and the expenses and the decorations people deeply desire to connect with Christ.
What do you think? All pretty intense, ha, with political prisoners and stunning 1500-year-old artwork and crowds and reconstruction and baubles and guards and smoke ... nuts.
Far and away our most bizarre experience in Israel was the Church of the Nativity. Let me tell you the whole story and then try to make sense of it.
OK. Bethlehem is a Palestinian town, in Palestinian controlled territory. This means going through the wall, showing all our passports at the checkpoint. Like most of Judea it is built at the top of the hill, so you drive along ridge-lines from Jerusalem to get there. This photo is a view across the valley from the 'shepherds fields' site.
From the bus stop we fight our way through street vendors selling trinkets, up the street and into the big plaza in front of the church. The first thing we see is a tent of protestors in support of the political prisoners on hunger strike. The next thing obvious is the construction materials. We join the crowd and approach the door.
The door of the Church of the Nativity is unlike any other church door I've ever seen. The Crusader remodel of the church included a normal high peaked door, and you can still see the outline, but it's been filled in, so that you can only enter or exit the church single file, stooped over.
Inside is a large dark space, mostly filled with scaffolding, but looking up we can see glimpses of brilliant gold mosaics on the roof. We join the crowd queueing to get into the Grotto. We wait. It's hot and stuffy and I start to feel faint. The crowd is huge and tightly packed and we're told it could take an hour of waiting. I decide I'd rather wait outside. Bishara and Hector, our guides, are called away by some guards and John our chaplain looks worried. They come back a few minutes later with a guard and there are some tightly worded tense interchanges. The guard leaves and we look at each other as in 'What was that all about?' but they don't want to say. Then some different guards arrive and are decisive; 'Come' we are told, and suddenly we are being led pushing through the crowd following the guard, through a side door, back out around the back of the crowd, and then we're squeezing past the queue, down the little steps into the tiny grotto, trying not to bang our heads on the ceiling or the hanging glass things or curtains, and then we've pushed in to the line, I'm kneeling on the smooth stone, bending forward under a table thing and reaching for the silver star which is set into the stone underneath. And it is hot and smells of candle smoke and incense and packed close with people and paintings, then I'm staggering out again up the steps back out into the church hung with chandeliers and coloured glass globes and scaffolding.
We sit and debrief in the cloister courtyard, in which there is a tacky life-sized nativity scene.
So what on earth do I make of all that??
First, the actual birth of Jesus. This crazy church does, I believe, actually mark the actual site where Jesus was born, which was in a cave. That's how people lived back then: a cave carved into the soft rock of the hill side, with stone walls built in front of the cave, with a roof. The animals would have been kept overnight in the cave for warmth and protection. Luke's phrase "there was no room for them in the inn" could simply mean that the one-roomed 'inn' was full of sleeping bodies, it was too cold to sleep on the the roof, and it best option was to doss down in the cave 'out the back'. It does not necessarily imply that they were rejected or turned away.
The church remembered and revered the site over the next 300 years, so when Helena arrived with her Roman builders and money (see my piece about her in the Lovely Ladies section) the cave was intact and honoured as a place of worship. Helena must have been delighted to find Jesus' birth place, and she commissioned a large and very beautiful church to be built over the cave. Over the next dozen years her pre-paid team carefully cut away the rock over the birth cave, and constructed an octagonal church, with the best mosaics money could buy, which included a 4m squared hole in the floor through which one could look down into the cave. A section of this original mosaic floor has survived to this day.
The church has been through various rebuilds and attacks, fires and earthquakes since, and been the focus of a good deal of church infighting, most notably when the then silver star marking 'the spot' was stolen in 1847 and the Russians blamed the Ottomans and visa versa and that helped spark the catastrophe that was the Crimean war! The current re-fit is costing billions, and is a credit to the churches' ability to work together occasionally, and the Palestinian Authority, that they have achieved so much, with plenty more to go. Read about it: here
But it's all still highly political. The business with the church guards and us was that one set of guards had challenged Bishara & Hector's right to be guides - did they have the right authorisations? Which one was the teacher and which one was the guide? Then it had gone higher and those further up the food chain had realised that they were dealing with St George's College, which has a very strong reputation, and they were deeply apologetic about it all, hence the 'fast track' treatment we received. Most of us in the group found it a most uncomfortable experience being pushed through the crowds to the front of the line, but there was no way we could have refused!
As for that moment when I touched the place where Jesus had been born? It was so fast and so surreal it is hard to make sense of it. The close space and thick air actually felt kind of womb-like to me. I was overwhelmed by heavy layers of intensity formed by 2,000 years of human devotion. It was like a funnel into which has been poured the heart-faith of an unimaginable number of people, all concentrated at that one spot. Trying to connect all that with a baby born in the simplest of circumstances was all too much for me. It seemed entirely beside the point to attempt to peel back all the candles and gold fabric and silver and worn marble to look for Jesus buried underneath it all. We can know Jesus born in a manger in any old place any old where, even in our own hearts and imaginings. This place, jam backed with adoration, is a tribute to God's work in the human heart, that despite the politics and the expenses and the decorations people deeply desire to connect with Christ.
What do you think? All pretty intense, ha, with political prisoners and stunning 1500-year-old artwork and crowds and reconstruction and baubles and guards and smoke ... nuts.
Baptism Site
I found the visit to the Jordan River baptism site very moving. It is overlaid with current political levels, as it has only recently been opened to pilgrims by the Israeli government. In the 1967 war it was part of the military zone, and laid with land mines. After many years of requests from church leaders finally the Israeli government agreed to open it, and there is a narrow path of land to a narrow piece of the Jordan river, well patrolled by well armed soldiers, and the fences around it warn of land mines. So standing at the river the Kingdom of Jordan is 3 metres away, on the other side of the river.
The river itself is very brown here, and a lot lower than it used to be, but I was expecting that. It is so rich with history and metaphor that it is hard to encounter the actual river, winding its way unceremoniously between the tall reeds.
My historical imagination can see Joshua leading his people down into it to cross over into the Promised Land.
My spiritual imagination rings with the gospel songs of the slave peoples, singing with longing of crossing the Jordan, a metaphor of release from slavery, of finding freedom in a spiritual reality almost more real to them than the pain and oppression of their daily lives. The water of the Jordan almost defined their identity more truly than any earthly power could.
My faith imagination pictures Jesus meeting John on the banks of this river, out of crowds of people recognising each other, and John (after some persuasion by Jesus) walking out into the deeper water and pushing Jesus under the water. Then that astonishing moment which helps to define my own faith, of Jesus standing in a beam of light, a flash of wing, a ringing voice which fuses together a new identity, one of utter love (“beloved”) and spirit power. I love that this was a shared experience; others there saw and heard it and testified to it.
So actually being there, at that very place, thousands of years later … I asked one of the others in the group to splash water on me, and she did, three times, “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”, and my tears mixed with the water. I was baptised as a baby, and I am proud of that. This was not a ‘re-baptism’ (I am Presbyterian after all!), just a nice thing to do when you are actually standing in the river Jordan. It felt … significant, a blessing, an affirmation.
I found the visit to the Jordan River baptism site very moving. It is overlaid with current political levels, as it has only recently been opened to pilgrims by the Israeli government. In the 1967 war it was part of the military zone, and laid with land mines. After many years of requests from church leaders finally the Israeli government agreed to open it, and there is a narrow path of land to a narrow piece of the Jordan river, well patrolled by well armed soldiers, and the fences around it warn of land mines. So standing at the river the Kingdom of Jordan is 3 metres away, on the other side of the river.
The river itself is very brown here, and a lot lower than it used to be, but I was expecting that. It is so rich with history and metaphor that it is hard to encounter the actual river, winding its way unceremoniously between the tall reeds.
My historical imagination can see Joshua leading his people down into it to cross over into the Promised Land.
My spiritual imagination rings with the gospel songs of the slave peoples, singing with longing of crossing the Jordan, a metaphor of release from slavery, of finding freedom in a spiritual reality almost more real to them than the pain and oppression of their daily lives. The water of the Jordan almost defined their identity more truly than any earthly power could.
My faith imagination pictures Jesus meeting John on the banks of this river, out of crowds of people recognising each other, and John (after some persuasion by Jesus) walking out into the deeper water and pushing Jesus under the water. Then that astonishing moment which helps to define my own faith, of Jesus standing in a beam of light, a flash of wing, a ringing voice which fuses together a new identity, one of utter love (“beloved”) and spirit power. I love that this was a shared experience; others there saw and heard it and testified to it.
So actually being there, at that very place, thousands of years later … I asked one of the others in the group to splash water on me, and she did, three times, “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”, and my tears mixed with the water. I was baptised as a baby, and I am proud of that. This was not a ‘re-baptism’ (I am Presbyterian after all!), just a nice thing to do when you are actually standing in the river Jordan. It felt … significant, a blessing, an affirmation.
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Lulu the Camel
Lulu the camel arrived in the car park somewhat unimpressed the palm trees were shady, the fountain was pretty the peacock gave a squawk a colourful pile of beautiful rugs was laid down on the ground and Lulu agreed to fold up his long legs sit and stare and chew I couldn’t resist the chance for a ride this strange exotic beast paid over my shekels and followed instructions though Lulu not amused Swing over one leg, hold tight to the handle Lulu grumped and heaved rocking me sideways and forwards and back Lulu stepped and lurched We only walked a few steps around the carpark not the grandest trek my bus driver was yelling it’s time to go Too bad, I’m up now! Sorry dear Lulu there’s no time for adventure so back to the mat he walked Lulu consented to fold himself up again down lurch tip I said goodbye to Lulu the camel somewhat reluctantly I loved his rough hair and opinionated eye and hump, of course and twitching ears and colourful saddlebag for me it was a thrill to be high off the ground on a camel in Jericho |
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Photos from Dan, an ancient Canaanite fortress in the far north of Israel, destroyed at various times, then settled by the Israelites.
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