Nothing Has Changed About Israel. Except Everything.

This was my first post from Israel during my recent visit.

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I was here 26 years ago and everything is the same. Nothing has changed in 2,000 years, in fact. Except, well... everything...

Let me back up. I'm in Israel, sitting at a computer in the library of the Scots Hotel, St. Andrews Galilee. The window in front of me overlooks the Sea of Galilee. In the morning the sunrise is spectacular (not that I've actually seen the sun, actually rise), but the water glimmers as daylight breaks over the Golan Heights, visible on the eastern shore. After a fabulous breakfast we board the bus and head out. Our Palestinian Christian guide, Claudia ("cloud-ia"), who was raised in Germany and has a Jewish husband and two beautiful Hebrew-speaking, Palestinian-Roman-Catholic children, is our guide. As that last sentence might hint, her insight is fascinating. She speaks as we drive... Kafer Nahum (Capernaum), the Mount of Beatitudes, the traditional sight of the feeding of the 5,000 and the site of Jesus' breakfast with his disciples (on the shore of the Sea following his resurrection), Magdala (home of Mary Magdalene), the Jordan River, Nazareth (the cave which was Mary's home and the spring where she undoubtedly drew water)... So far...

26 years ago I saw many of these same "traditional" sites. Archaeologists and biblical scholars recognize that many of the sites hardly even purport to be authentic locations – it was not until the conversion of Constantine in the 4th century (and especially the "Holy Land" pilgrimage which his mother, Helena, took) that these sites began to be venerated. But for the 16 centuries since, churches have marked virtually every miracle, every significant moment in Jesus' ministry, and Christian pilgrims have visited these sites, paying homage, saying prayers, making commitments, reflecting... wondering... doubting... genuflecting... offering the whole range of spiritual responses you might expect to come when you stand in the shadow of such (sometimes gaudy) edifices, built on some "holy ground." Nothing has changed. And for 26 years one of the lasting impressions left me not remembering a trip to the "Holy Land," but remembering a quite unholy place – a land marked by bitter divisions, between warring factions of Jews and Christians and Muslims (and warring factions within each of those religions, themselves), and the trinkety excesses that commercialism has made of some of the sites. (You should just see "baptismland," as one of my traveling companions dubbed the amusement park which honors Jesus' baptism by John! And I'm sorry that we couldn't stop at the "First Miracle Souvenir and Wine Shop" in Cana – I was hoping they might actually have one final bottle of that original wedding wine left on a shelf – just for me!) No, it hasn't changed. In 26 years. Or in 2,000...

But I have.

Strange, you know... with the journey that has been my life since 1985, I approach Israel much less devotional in my piety than when I traveled here as an enthusiastic, ministry-bound college junior. I would have expected to have trembled with more excitement, "walking today where Jesus walked," 26 years ago. But even looking at the whole world with a more critical eye, a product of what scholars have called a "hermeneutic of suspicion" (come on, did this really happen...), as the pastor of a progressive church and one who now possesses a distinctly interpretive understanding of scripture (I read virtually none of it now as "just black and white")... I stood in the excavated town of Capernaum, which the gospels say became Jesus' hometown during his ministry in Galilee, walked in and out of the synagogue which he undoubtedly knew, stood over the site which even skeptical archaeologists agree may very well have been the actual home of Peter... and I had a sense of the old song, which betrayed me 26 years ago: "I walked today where Jesus walked – and felt his presence there."

All I can tell you is that my experience is common with millions who have sought to follow that strange and challenging and life-changing "man of Galilee." What I need most is precisely what he gives me – when I need it.

The land is the same. So are the sites. And so is Jesus, after all this time. Strangely, though, I've only been here four days, and think I'll be coming home changed.

That's still my prayer...