Chris Howlett

A Pilgrim’s Progress in the Holy Land, II

Friday, April 13, 2018 – Day Three

We opened the morning on the bus with a devotional which I led based on Genesis 12:1-2 which relates the story of God calling Abram to leave his homeland to go to a land that God will show him, Canaan, what we today call Israel or the Holy Land, the Land of Promise. God made a covenant with Abram to bless him and to bless all the families of the earth through him. The Land was a key component of this plan. As we travel this land, we’re reminded of the physicality of God’s blessing. God is Creator and he sends himself on a mission to undo the curse of the Fall which has corrupted his good creation. The blessing of Abram and his wife, Sarai in this particular land is the means by which he will carry out this mission. As we spend time here, we see pilgrims from all over the world, speaking many different languages. Indeed, all the families of the earth are being blessed. We want to be a part of blessing others.

Beit She’an, the only one of the ten cities of the Decapolis located on the eastern side of the Jordan River. Huge archaeological site and National Park that helps us understand the urban life of the Roman culture. Because it was destroyed by an earthquake and subsequently abandoned, the ruins, which have been partially restored by archaeologists, give insight into daily life in a city. There’s a huge theatre, colonnaded streets, bath houses, and amazing mosaics. The site is significant from a Biblical standpoint because it is the place that King Saul’s body was displayed, along with the body of his son, Jonathan, following their defeat to the Philistines.

Megiddo is a large tel. A tel is a hill that’s been built up over centuries, even millennia, of city after city being built and destroyed, built and destroyed, again and again. The remains of the past city become the new ground upon which the new city is built. This city was important because it overlooks a strategic choke point on the Via Maris, the connecting road between Africa and Asia Minor. Because of it’s key location, battles have been fought repeatedly by successive world powers to ensure control of this important trade route. A place that has witnessed many bloody battles makes a great background for a writer of an apocalyptic account of the Final Battle that will be the battle to end all battles and usher in God’s ultimate reign. You’ve heard of this place before. Har Megiddo is Hebrew for Mount of Megiddo. When transliterated into Greek, it becomes Armageddon. Megiddo is a rich archaeological site with a commanding view of the Jezreel Valley and Mount Tabor.

Today, Megiddo is an Israeli national park and we enjoyed a lunch of falafel pita bread sandwiches with various Mediterranean salads before heading to Nazareth.

In Nazareth, the village where Jesus grew up, we first stopped at the Mount of Precipice, where the events of Luke 4 took place after Jesus read from the Isaiah Scroll in the synagogue and claimed that the prophecy was being fulfilled in his ministry. The people thought Jesus was getting too big for his britches and tried to throw him off this precipice. He slipped through the crowd and headed off to Capernaum, by the Sea of Galilee, never to return to his hometown.

We made our way to the Church of the Annunciation, where the angel, Gabriel, announced to Mary that she would miraculously give birth to the Messiah, Jesus.

 

Saturday, April 14, 2018 – Day Four

Beginning the day with a wonderful breakfast at the Royal Plaza Hotel in Tiberias, we then departed the Galilee region and rode to the Judean Wilderness. Pastor Bob Kaylor led us in a devotional and we traveled to a spot very near the Dead Sea, to visit a site that wasn’t discovered until 1947. Qumran is the settlement scholars believe was inhabited by a Jewish sect named the Essenes before and during Jesus’ time on earth. They are important for a couple of reasons. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in eleven different caves in the immediate vicinity of the settlement ruins. These scrolls contain Old Testament texts, commentaries on the Old Testament, and various theological and practical documents dealing with the community’s life and hopes. It is a critical site for the study of the Old Testament because the texts found there dating back to the second century B.C. confirm the accuracy of the previously oldest manuscripts available to us that dated to the eighth century A.D. The sectarian documents also shed light on how Jewish sects operated and understood themselves at the time of Jesus.

After Qumran, we visited Jericho, one of the oldest cities in the world, dating to 9,000 B.C. It was the first Canaanite city to be conquered by the Israelites after they crossed the Jordan to enter the Promised Land. There’s not a ton to see, as the Tel, or hill, that is the ancient part of the city looks to the untrained eye like a big pile of dirt and rocks. So, we enjoyed a very pleasant lunch of chicken and lamb with various Mediterranean salads and shopped at a nice shop where I picked up a package of dates. Yum!

Then it was up and out of the Judean wilderness (otherwise known as desert) to climb out of the valley and up to Jerusalem, the eternal city. 

Our first stop was the Mount of Olives. This is the place Jesus began his triumphal entry into the city on Palm Sunday. At the base of the Mount of Olives is the Garden of Gethsemane. We took our group photo from the top of the Mount because it offers a commanding view of the city. The Garden of Gethsemane is home to the Roman Catholic Church of All Nations, which we visited. We also spent time in a private courtyard of the monastery for a time of worship and reflection led by Pastor Bob Kaylor.

After boarding the bus, Hana, our guide, asked if we wanted to head to the hotel or were ready for another stop. We opted for the latter and visited the traditional site of the Upper Room, which is just outside the Old City. In Jesus’ day, the Upper Room was inside the city walls, but the current city walls were built in the 16th century and don’t perfectly trace the walls as they existed in the first century. At the Upper Room we witnessed one of the amazing things about this land and that is the presence of pilgrims from all over the world. There was an Orthodox group from Eastern Europe, us, and a group from Asia. The command of Jesus to make disciples of all nations is being fulfilled.

After a long day we traveled the short distance to the Olive Tree Hotel, our home in Jerusalem for the next several days.

A Pilgrim's Progress in the Holy Land

Day One & Two

We arrived at Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport a little after 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, April 11. The flight over was a bit of a challenge, even though it was comfortable, a Boeing 777-200, the flight time made it difficult to sleep. So most of us were fuzzy-brained at the first stop along this wonderful pilgrimage journey, Caesarea Maritime.

Caesarea Maritime, or Caesarea by the Sea, was a port city along the coast of the Mediterranean, envisioned and built by Herod the Great between 22 and 10 B.C., to serve as a deep harbor for commercial traffic, connecting the Mediterranean world with the Via Maris (the Road of the Sea), a major trading route connecting Africa, Asia, and Europe, running through the coastal plain of Israel.

Caesarea was a very “Roman” city, complete with baths, a theater, and a hippodrome. It served as the home of Pontius Pilate and other Roman officials. It was also the home of one Cornelius, a Roman military officer and a “God-fearer.” God-fearers were Gentiles who worshiped the God of Israel, but didn’t fully convert, as that would entail circumcision.

Peter was in Joppa, in 37 A.D., when God gave him a dream concerning what was clean and unclean to eat. God told him to not call anything he made unclean. At the same time God gave Cornelius a dream to send a messenger to bring Peter to Caesarea.  Cornelius invited Peter into his house as his guest and Peter shared with Cornelius and his household the Good News about Jesus. As he was speaking the Holy Spirit filled Cornelius and members of his household. The professed allegiance to Jesus and Peter baptized them. This is all recorded in Acts 10. This pivotal incident served as the genesis of the Gentile mission, the beginning of the fulfillment of Jesus’ command to his followers to make disciples of all nations, all ethnic groups, seeking to bring all of God’s lost children back into the family of God.

 

Day Two

The first stop this morning was at a church that’s been built in the traditional location of Jesus’ breakfast with the disciples following the resurrection along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It’s called the Church of the Primacy of Peter. From there we visited Capernaum, the town that became the home base of Jesus’ ministry on the shore of Galilee. It was also Peter’s adopted hometown. In the ruins of the town, scholars have located what they believe to be Peter’s mother-in-law’s house, where Jesus is believed to have stayed in Capernaum (or Kafr Naum, the Hebrew name). Also in this town are the ruins of a rather large synogogue that was built in the third century A.D. on top of the remains of the first century synagogue where Jesus attended and taught. It’s truly amazing to be in this place, this land where Jesus first proclaimed the Good News about the Kingdom of God.

The Church of the Multiplication was built on the site traditionally associated with the Sermon on the Mount. The modern church was built on top of the remains of a church that dates to Fourth Century. Pilgrims had been visiting this site since the earliest times. On the floor of the Fourth Century church was a beautiful mosaic, much of which is still intact. I have a chalice and paten from this church decorated with the beautiful pattern that sits on the floor beneath the altar depicting two fish and loaves of bread in a basket.

At each site one of our fellow pilgrims read the Scripture associated with the events which took place there, then Pastor Bob or I share a brief devotional. Our guide, Hana Kessler, also shares from her wealth of knowledge concerning the biblical events that we have learned from history and archaeology. It makes for both a learning and spiritually enriching experience.

In 1986 an amateur Israeli archaeologists discovered a boat submerged in the mud in the Sea of Galilee. It was excavated, preserved, and is now on display in a special museum on the shoreline. The boat dates to the time of Jesus. It’s not hard to imagine that Jesus at the very least, saw this boat with his own eyes while he was proclaiming the Kingdom of God around the Galilee. The Sea of Galilee is not particularly large, and the area in which the boat was discovered is an area Jesus frequented. Who knows? The boat may have belonged to Simon Peter or one of the other fisherman who left their nets to become fishers of men and women, boys and girls.

Our group then hopped aboard a modern boat for a cruise along the Sea of Galilee. We paused out on the lake as they captain shut down the motor. The calm out on the water was amazing. We read the story of Jesus calming the storm and remembered that the Lord is here in the midst of the storms of our lives to bring peace and rest.

After the boat ride we enjoyed a lunch of fried whole St. Peter’s Fish. Yummy!

Off on the bus again to take the short ride to Magdala. Magdala was a wealthy town on the Western shore of the Sea of Galilee which was destroyed in the Jewish War with Rome in the late first century and was never rebuilt. Thus the ruins, which were only discovered twelve years ago, are the actual ruins of the hometown of Mary Magdalene (Mary of Magdala). Jesus was here after he made his way down to the Sea when he left his hometown of Nazareth.

The Jordan River was our last destination of the day. We participated in a Baptismal Remembrance service and I was privileged to baptize my cousin, Jessica Ellenwood, who is a fellow pilgrim on our journey. What a joy to participate in this wonderful occasion. God is good!

 

 

An Emptiness Full of Promise

“Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won’t stay there.” – Clarence W. Hall

A pastor made the following observation on Easter, “The world offers promises full of emptiness, but Easter offers emptiness full of promise.” At Easter, there’s an empty cross, an empty tomb, and empty grave cloths that are full of promise.

The world offers a lot of promises. They’re smoke and mirrors, mostly. The world’s promises are frantic, cartoonish attempts to distract us from the gaping void in the middle of our souls. The promises of Madison Avenue desperately seeking our dollars have no life in them.

The promise of Easter assures us there’s more to life than what we immediately see. Death, the great enemy, has been defeated, a new way of living is breaking into the fallen world and that world is being remade. Jesus broke through the veil that separates us from God, the very source of life, and this new life can be ours, if we’ll simply trust him.

Whose promises are you trusting this Easter?