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In the
last fifteen years, I have made four visits to Israel. On
the first of those occasions, I traveled with a group of clergy
and had relatively little responsibility (thereby allowing
me a fair amount of time on my own). On each subsequent occasion,
I led a tour, giving me a great amount of responsibility.
And very little time on my own.
In asking
other people to evaluate their "Holy Land experience,"
I often pose the question: "What do you remember most
fondly?" More often than not, I am told: "The time
I spent by the shores of Galilee."
I can
understand why. Galilee is very pastoral. The lake is lovely.
And it is a lake, really. A generous measurement would list
it as eight miles wide and fourteen miles long. The hills
stretch skyward from the shore itself. In Galilee, nature
speaks with voices all her own. And the pace of Galileen life
is such that there is both room and time to hear the voices.
The towns are all on the small side, scarcely more than villages.
Only Tiberius is of any magnitude. Which means that most mornings,
you can still see fishermen put their boats in the water,
and you can watch them bring them in at night. Anywhere along
the shore, you can order the St. Peter fish for lunch, knowing
that it is native to no other waters than those of the Sea
of Galilee. Upon eating the fish ... which is served unboned
... you can see for yourself the grotesque size of its misshapen
mouth, so that (at the instruction of Jesus) Peter could have
actually found a Roman coin there. When people talk about
Galilee, they use words like "calm," "serene"
and "peaceful." Galilee is the kind of place where
one expects to meet Jesus.
From time
to time, I find myself in a groups led by individuals with
expertise in spiritual formation and meditation. Invariably,
I will be told to put my feet on the floor ... get comfortable
... loosen my tie ... stretch my limbs ... and breathe deeply.
I am then taught certain techniques, the better to let tensions
drain from my fingertips and other muscle groupings of my
body. Following which, the voice of the leader will become
hypnotic and rhapsodic. Then slowly ... ever so slowly ...
I will be led to a meeting (in my mind) with Jesus.
I have
been through this half-a-hundred times. And although specific
directions differ with each meditation, one thing is always
the same. My meeting with Jesus always takes place in the
country. Either I am led to a mountain or a meadow ... to
the woods or the seashore. The setting is always natural ...
pastoral ... rural. I have concluded that the choice of a
rural meeting ground reflects a bias on the part of the leader.
In order to meet Jesus (via a meditational invitation), I
need to block out everything that is potentially distracting.
Which explains why I am led to a Jesus who can seemingly be
real, only when the rest of the world flakes away. Which seldom
happens in town. But which often happens in the country.
Perhaps
this is why Jesus is not very real to most of us. Perhaps
this is why we view religion as being antithetical to the
world as we know it ... and have a difficult time thinking
that Jesus might belong to the world as we know it. As concerns
meeting Jesus, we are locked into the mindset of Galilee.
Don't
get me wrong. Galilee is lovely. I love it. You would love
it. Once there, one hates to leave it. Galilee is many things.
But most of all, it is intimate. You can be alone with Jesus
there. It represents that school of thought that is comfortable
with the old hymn: "I come to the garden ... alone ...
while the dew is still on the roses."
By contrast,
you will not be alone with Jesus in Jerusalem. The world will
not "flake away." Which is exactly the reason you
ought to go there. For it is in Jerusalem that you will meet
a Jesus you do not already know, and the one place to which
the meditation leaders will never direct you. I don't know
about you, but I have never found it difficult to get a religious
"buzz" while I am standing atop mountains ... walking
along sun-kissed beaches ... or looking skyward on starry,
starry nights. But I have a harder time feeling "religious"
in places that are more crowded than they are solitary, and
where the sights, sounds and smells overwhelm me in ways that
are more corrosive than they are caressive. But the fact remains
that it is in the latter places where I spend most of my time.
So drop
back with me several years. I am walking through the Moslem
quarter of the old walled city of Jerusalem. It is midday
on a Saturday and I am very much on my own. Because it is
Sabbath (Shabat) for the Jews, there is no action in the Jewish
quadrant of the city. Which serves to double the size of the
crowd in the Arab sector. Shopkeepers and street-sellers are
out in force. It is like an old-world bazaar ... carnival-like
in nature. Yet, in spite of the gaiety of the day, there is
still a need to keep watch over one's wallet. Not every brush
of bodies is accidental. And not every face in the crowd is
friendly.
By now,
I have a fair number of packages in tow. I am slightly giddy
about the fact that, in less than half a day, I have mastered
the art of "haggling" and have paid an excellent
price for my goods. I am lugging around some olive wood, several
ceramic plates, a camel's hair rug, not to mention a dress
that I am not sure anybody in my household will ever wear,
but which I got for an unbelievably low price. Moreover, my
belly is pleasantly full of a ground chickpea sandwich ...
deep fried in oil ... garnished with vegetables ... and stuffed
into a pita pocket.
Suddenly,
I turn a corner and realize I am once again walking the Via
Dolorosa ... literally "the way of the cross." The
crowd is body-to-body. The street is narrow, ten feet wide
at best. Shops line its edges, there being no sidewalks. Merchandise
is displayed in every vacant space available. Runners move
through the crowd delivering Turkish coffee to shops ... .such
coffee being offered by the owners if they surmise that you
are on the verge of dropping a little bit of money for their
goods.
The Via
Dolorosa also includes nine of the fourteen stations of the
cross (the other five being located in the cavernous innards
of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre). But the nine roadside
stations are scarcely more than sculpted inlays in the facades
of the buildings. You have to search to find them. Then you
have to look up to see them. And the only people who pay any
attention are those traveling with a formal tour. Every now
and again, the mass of humanity walking the street parts like
the waters of the sea, the better to allow a donkey to pass
while pulling a fruit cart.
It is
the most unspiritual setting you can imagine ... a ten-foot
wide city street ... in the Moslem quarter ... with produce
and people ... packages and pickpockets ... donkeys and dress
shops ... diamond cutters and dung droppings ... the smell
of chickpea balls frying in olive oil and baklava dripping
with honey ... women carrying bread trays on their head ...
dirty little boys trying to sell you 40 postcards for one
American dollar ... and shills trying to divert you into their
stores with promises of a wonderful deal on "the best
merchandise anywhere inside the Wall."
Which
was when it hit me. That here ... in this most unholy-seeming
place ... I am walking down the street where Jesus walked,
in a city that looked, when he was walking through it then,
as it looks when I am walking through it now.
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Walking
through the noise to a place where "he never said
a mumblin' word."
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Walking
to a fate more lonely than any "lonesome valley."
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Carrying
a cross ... through the midst of this ... because of this
... to die for this.
And suddenly
it occurs to me that, while Galilee may be very lovely, if
Jesus does not come to Jerusalem, Jesus must not die ... and
I am not standing here in the middle of the street that leads
to his dying, drinking it all in.
Which
causes me to smile. Because, in that moment, the city is incredibly
precious ... Jesus is incredibly real ... and I do not have
to give up either Jesus or the city to find the other. I suppose
it is inevitable that a city boy should prefer Jerusalem to
Galilee as a place for meeting his Lord. Galilee is private
... pristine ... and pastoral. But Jerusalem is so much more
alive.
In the
music of the black church, one can hear the soprano sing:
"You can have this ol' world, but give me Jesus."
But maybe we don't have to make a choice. Could it be that,
sooner or late, the Lord of Life will gravitate to the center
of life ... responding to the heartbeat of life ... affirming,
even in death, the sweetness of life? Or, as we sing in the
much beloved hymn:
O Master
from the mountainside
Make haste to heal these hearts of pain,
Among the restless throngs abide
And tread the city's streets again.
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