Religious Sites or Tourist Traps?

Yesterday, I visited many of the religious sites along the Western shores of the Sea of Galilee: the ancient city of Capernaum, with the remains of what may have been Peter's house and the synagogue where Jesus taught; Tabgha, the site where Jesus may have fed the five thousand; and the Mount of Beatitudes, the top of a hill overlooking the sea of Galilee where Jesus may have delivered the Sermon on the Mount.

None of these sites are historically verifiable as the places where these events occurred (with the exception perhaps of Capernaum, which in all likelihood is the remains of ancient Capernaum), and the Gospel accounts themselves do not even agree about where these things took place: Luke has the feeding of the five thousand in Bethsaida (Luke 9:10), which is on the north end of the Sea of Galilee, not the West side, where Tabgha is. Matthew recounts the "sermon on the mount" ("When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain…" Matt. 5;1), but in Luke it is a "sermon on the plain" ("He came down with them and stood on a level place…" Luke 6:17). In my initial planning for this trip, I had written in my itinerary for my time at the Sea of Galilee: "Spend the weekend around the Sea of Galilee. Enjoy just 'be-ing' in this space rather than trying to visit all the 'historic sites.'"

There certainly was a wisdom to my instinct about this region. I felt a greater sense of awe and wonder on Friday afternoon when I arrived and went swimming in the Sea of Galilee at a camping and picnicking spot of no "religious significance" than I did in visiting these so-called "Holy Places," with their signs prohibiting shorts and dogs and guns and cigarettes. The "religious sites" were teeming with tourists, and the hillside dotted with huge charter tour buses blazing down the highway. The buses pulled in and deposited their passengers at the sites, and the groups filed out like obedient cattle, adjusting their backpacks and sunglasses and cameras and snapping pictures of everything in sight, speaking loudly and pointing. Tour group leaders stood by railings holding up some identifying marker, like a white plastic rose, to mark their spot and gather their group, and then began to give lectures on the significance of these sites, in Hebrew, English, German, Japanese… you name it. It was suffocating.

In some sense I am glad I visited these places, particularly Capernaum, but in some sense I could have done without ever having been to these spots. Just knowing that I am in the general region where Jesus spent much of his time teaching is significant enough for me. The sites themselves did not add anything to my "religious experience" of being in this place.

Most disappointing was Tabgha, which was a rather plain church centered around a large rock underneath the altar -- supposedly the rock on which Jesus performed the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. As I stood there staring at this rock and watching the spectacle of people climbing over the chains that were supposed to keep people out of the area and going up to the rock to have their picture taken with it, I felt nothing. No sense of awe that Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish at this spot -- because I didn't really believe that it happened AT THIS SPOT, on THAT ROCK. (I don't even remember there being a mention of a rock in the Gospel accounts of the story!) And the obsession with which these people disregarded rules of proper decorum just to get their picture taken with this ROCK seemed nearly idolatrous to me. Are all these people who are so anxious to get next to this rock and have their picture taken also just as anxious to get next to the poor and feed them, to perform their own 'feeding of the five thousand?" I wondered.

This lady climbed over the chains to get her picture taken with the rock.

As was the case at many of these Sea of Galilee sites, the gift shop was a bigger deal at Tabgha than the actual "religious site." The mosaic of the loaves and fishes that is on the floor in front of the rock was for sale as a t-shirt, a cup, a mug, a pin, a magnet, and anything else you could imagine at the gift shop just outside the exit to the church -- and had been prevalent in souvenir shops all over Israel. You could also buy shiny jewelry in the shape of crosses that had been "blessed" by placing it "on the rock where our Lord fed the five thousand." To take home such a piece of holiness with you will cost you 45 U.S. dollars. I started to understand Jesus's outrage at those who were selling things in the temple: "My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers." (Luke 20:46).

Something about the fact that the prices were listed in dollars or euros instead of shekels in many of these gift shops bothered me as well. It was like, we're not even going to TRY to make these people realize they're in another country; we'll just cater to their every need and make them feel right at home, right down to making sure they don't even have to exchange their money for the local currency.

These sites were the first sites I'd visited so far on this trip that actually charged an admission fee as well. The Greek Orthodox church at Capernaum did not charge, but the archeological site of Capernaum where the Roman Catholic church was located did, as did the Mount of Beatitudes. Granted, these were not huge fees (the equivalent of about 85 cents at Capernaum and $2.80 at the Mount of Beatitudes), but there was still something off-putting about charging admission to a place of prayer. (I could understand Capernaum charging an entrance fee, being an archeological site and all, but the Mount of Beatitudes had nothing archeological about it.) The charge (and the guards sitting at the gates to collect money) certainly discouraged me from wanting to return another day to just sit and pray.

No, I felt more embraced in a sense of the presence of Jesus and his ministry in the Galilee region as I sat at dinner with the geologists staying at my guesthouse who are examining a fault line near the Sea of Galilee, or as I watched my hostess Yael make breakfast in the morning, scurrying about and making sure everyone ate well. It is in community that I find the presence of Christ, and the flow of tourists in and out of these largely abandoned sites seemed to lack a feeling of community -- at least for me, since I wasn't part of any of the groups.

Today I decided to stay put, spending the day in this retreat-like spot that is the guesthouse where I am staying, sitting in a hammock with a gorgeous view of the Sea of Galilee and reading the entirety of the Gospel of Luke. This feels more like a pilgrimage than the hecticness and commercialism of yesterday's "pilgrimage sites."

(Despite all the negativity here, I did get some decent artistic shots at some of these places... see my Picasa albums for more photos from the Sea of Galilee sites: http://picasaweb.google.com/twellsmiller/IsraelTrip)