Choose life, that you may live.

Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 19, Year A), Sept. 11, 2011
Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church, Winchester, Tenn. (my field ed parish).

“I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.” (Exodus 15:1)

Thus sang Moses and the Israelites after they escaped from slavery in Egypt, in the Exodus story that we have been reading for the past several weeks. This morning we reach the climax of the story: Moses leads the Israelites through the Red Sea on dry land, the waters rush in on the Egyptians, and the people of Israel sing. They sing a song of deliverance, a song of joy at being freed from slavery. They rejoice that God has triumphed over the evils of oppression and begun to move them toward a home in the Promised Land.

This sacred story of a God who brings freedom from slavery and oppression is at the heart of both the Jewish and Christian faiths. It is a narrative that has given hope to millions of people in dark times, from Jews in Nazi-era Germany to African slaves in the United States to South Africans living under apartheid.

But despite the power and hope of this story, it is not only a story of liberation from oppression. It is also a story of revenge. It is a story of a God who “pays back” the Egyptians for the harms they have inflicted on the Israelites in captivity by “tossing them into the sea,” and of a people who rejoice in their deaths. It is a story of “us” verses “them,” a story in which God is clearly on “our side.”

I’ve often wondered what the story would look like from the Egyptians’ point of view. Unfortunately, the biblical accounts don’t give us much information about the Egyptians, apart from painting them as the “bad guys” opposing our friends and ancestors, the Israelites. The Egyptians are not “us,” they’re not part of our group, they don’t speak our language, and they don’t worship our god, so therefore they must be bad. But I’ve always felt that there must have been more to the story than that.

This summer, during my pilgrimage to Israel, I visited the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. There, I spent about two hours exploring the Archeology wing, which traced the history of all the peoples who have lived in “the Land,” as they called it, from prehistoric times to the Ottoman Empire. After gazing at ancient fossils of cave men and giant mastadons, I rounded the corner to enter a section of the exhibit called “The Land of Canaan.”

I wandered through cases full of jewelry and food bowls and even ancient women’s make-up cases. I saw statues of “Ba’al,” the Canaanite god who is so often pitted as the enemy of the God of Israel in the biblical texts. Even though I had learned about Canaanite religion and culture as a religion major in college, something about seeing the objects of their daily lives – the combs the women used to brush their hair, or the utensils they used to prepare their food – brought about an awareness of the full humanity of these people that had been lacking in my formation as a western Christian.

I found myself extremely saddened that my religious tradition and my sacred texts had essentially demonized this entire group of people, who got up every morning and ate their food and loved their children and praised God, whose only crime was that they happened to live in the land that the Israelites believed God had given to them, and that they had a different understanding of God than the Israelites did.

Learning the Bible stories as a child, and even as an adult, I’d come to associate the Canaanites with the “bad guys.” It was a process of cultural conditioning that was very similar to the ways in which I knew “Communist” was a bad word when I was growing up during the Cold War-era, even if I hadn’t the slightest idea what a communist was. Or the ways in which children today learn that “Muslim” and “Arab” are bad words, even if they don’t have any idea what Islam is or what Arab culture is.

As we are mindful today of the ten years that have passed since the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11, I find myself wondering about the other side of the story. I remember very clearly sitting in my dorm room in college in March of 2003 and watching President Bush address the nation about the war we were about to begin in Iraq. He concluded his speech with the promise that “God is on our side.” Immediately thereafter, the news channel showed a clip of Saddam Hussein addressing his people, ending his speech with the promise that “God is on our side.”

Of course, they were both right – God is on our side – but the “our” in that sentence is much broader than either of them were imagining. God is on “our” side in the sense that God is on the side of humanity – that God is for us – for all people – in the sense that God wills salvation for all people. God is not against us as someone who wills our destruction – or the destruction of our enemies.

But wait a minute, some might say, doesn’t God destroy the Egypitans and deliver the Israelites? Wasn’t God clearly on Israel’s side? Weren’t the Israelites justified in celebrating the death of the Egyptians, who had oppressed them for so long? Weren’t Americans justified in celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden? Isn’t there Scriptural warrant for rejoicing in the death of one’s enemies?

Well, yes, of course there is. We heard some of it this morning in the Song of Moses:

“I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.” (Exodus 15:1)

But there is also scriptural warrant against rejoicing in the death of those who sin against us and advocating for forgiveness instead. We see this in the parable Jesus tells in the Gospel of Matthew that we read this morning.

“Peter came and said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.’” (Matthew 18:21-22)

Granted, this passage is about reconciling with other Christians, with those who are “one of us” who have offended us, but there are many other passages where Jesus and the Apostle Paul both advocate for forgiveness not only of people who are “one of us” but of people we perceive as our enemies as well.

Contradictory as they may seem, both these motifs – the idea that we are the chosen people, that God cares for us but hates the other, that ultimately we are the only ones who will see salvation, and that we are justified in celebrating over the death and destruction of our enemies, and the idea that God has created and cares for all people, that God in Christ has redeemed not just those who believe, but the whole creation, and that “God does not rejoice in the death of a sinner” (Ezekiel 18:32) – are present in the Bible. We can’t make a respectable case that the Bible only proclaims one of them. And that means we have to choose which motif we will allow to take precedence in our interpretation of scripture.

Regardless of what some Christians may say, it is impossible to read the Bible without interpreting it – and people who think they are reading just the “plain sense” of the text are often unknowingly endorsing one particular interpretation without even realizing it. We will choose, either consciously or unconsciously, which of these two motifs we will allow to guide our lives as we read the Bible. And perhaps that isn’t an accident.

What if, just what if, the same God who created us with free will has implanted a free choice right smack dab in the middle of our Scriptures? What if the fact that the Bible contains these two seemingly contradictory messages is not an indication of the flawed human authorship of the Bible and a reason to dismiss it, but an opportunity for us to exercise the “reason and skill” with which God has endowed us?

In the story of the giving of the law in the Book of Deuteronomy, God presents the 10 commandments to the people of Israel with the exhortation that they can choose a life of blessing by following his commandments or a life of curses if they do not. “I have set before you today life and death, blessings and curses,” God says to the people. “Choose life so that you and your descendents may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Perhaps we have a similar choice in the way we read Scripture. We can choose to focus on the triumphalist, exclusive passages of Scripture that assert that only we are God’s chosen, or we can choose to focus on the more inclusive and generous passages that assert that God cares for all.

There is a passage in the Talmud, the main collection of rabbinical teaching on Jewish scripture and ethics, in which the rabbis assert that God rebuked the angels for rejoicing at the death of the Egyptians, saying, “My handiwork is drowning in the sea; would ye utter song before me!” (b. Sanhedrin 39b) In other words, “Stop celebrating. The Egyptians were my children, too.”

Over three thousand years later, the British government and other Western powers persuaded the United Nations to recognize a homeland for the Jewish people in the historic land of Israel, thereby displacing the Palestinian families who had lived there for centuries. In 1948, the Palestinians became the modern-day Canaanites, those who were “in the way” and preventing the Jews from taking ownership of “their” land. With the creation of the state of Israel, thousands of Palestinians were forced out of their homes and killed. The biblical texts that say that God gave the land to the Jews were used to justify severe violations of human rights against Palestinians. Some Palestinians fought back, and the violence from both sides has not stopped to this day, as we all know from what we see on the news.

But this summer, I visited the West Bank, and after meeting actual Palestinian people, I ceased to think of them as those “terrorist suicide bombers” we see on the news. I met these modern-day Canaanites, with very real, full, human lives, still living in refugee camps over sixty years later, wanting only to return to their family homes, but prevented from doing so by the Israeli government. I left Israel feeling very discouraged and disturbed about the way theology had been used to justify the violence that is so prevalent in that region, and the ways in which my own Christian tradition has perpetuated it.

On the plane back from Israel, I read the book Have a Little Faith, by Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays With Morrie. In it, Mitch writes about the relationship he built with his childhood rabbi, Albert Lewis, in the years before his death. One day, Albert, whom Mitch calls “the Reb,” shows Mitch an Arabic schoolbook he’d found in an abandoned home in northern Israel shortly after the 1967 war. The conversation that ensued between them went like this:

“There’s a reason I gave that book to you,” the Reb said. 

What’s the reason? 

“Open it.” 

I opened it. 

“More.” 

I flipped through the pages and out fell three small black-and-white photos, faded and smudged with dirt. 

One was of an older dark-haired woman, Arabic and matronly-looking. One was of a mustached younger Arabic man in a suit and tie. The last photo was of two children, side by side, presumably a brother and sister. 

Who are they? I asked. 

“I don’t know,” he said, softly. 

He held out his hand and I gave him the photo of the children. 

“Over the years, I kept seeing these kids, the mother, her son. That’s why I never threw the book away. I felt I had to keep them alive somehow. I thought maybe someday someone would look at the pictures, say they knew the family, and return them to the survivors. But I’m running out of time.” 

He handed me the photo back. 

Wait, I said. I don’t understand. From your religious viewpoint, these people were the enemy. 

His voice grew angry. 

“Enemy schemenmy,” he said. “This was a family.”

In our sacred texts, we have set before us life and death. Choose life, that you may live.

Ministry Fellowship Re-Cap

Earlier this week, I attended the "closing retreat" for the 2010 Ministry Fellows. The 19 other people who had the same fellowship as I did came together at a conference center just south of Atlanta to share with each other what we did with our summers.

The projects were wonderfully diverse, addressing issues including modern-day slavery (sex trafficking), treatment of undocumented immigrants on the border in Arizona, acceptance of LBGTQ people in the Black Church, healing "moral injury" among returned combat veterans, farm-church relations in rural Vermont and New Hampshire, developing multi-cultural community in churches, the inclusion of Asian-American or Pacific Islanders among the clergy in different churches, and issues of God's presence during the "dark night of the soul" and healing of mental illness.

Eight of us traveled internationally, with visits to Spain, Hungary, Greece, Albania, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, Nigeria, South Sudan, South Africa, and China. The fellow who traveled to South Sudan was there when South Sudan was declared an independent country this summer and got to witness "the birth of a nation." The projects that were not specifically issues-focused were mostly centered on addressing personal needs for healing, pilgrimage, prayer and renewal, providing a model for the importance of self-care in pastoral ministry.

Hearing my fellow Fellows' stories and their journeys was inspiring and gave me hope for the future of the church. But the best thing that came out of our conference, in my opinion, was that our group covenanted to continue meeting with each other in the future, maybe bi-annually, as a support system for one another as we go forward into church leadership.

In preparing for my presentation, I wrote the following reflection on the development of my project and the outcomes of it. I spoke on these themes and then shared the book of images and poetry I created with the group, and also posted an "exhibit" of some enlargements of my photographs on the wall in the conference room. I was surprised to find that many people asked if my book or the enlarged images would be available for purchase, so I am working on how to make that possible. I will post information about that on this blog when it is available.

Here's my "re-cap" of my Ministry Fellowship experience and what I presented to the group this week. Thanks to all of you who followed my journey this summer.

Ministry Fellowship Re-Cap

The issue I engaged with in this project had to do with participation in and with people of other religions in religious practice. It started with a story about an interfaith conference I attended where we all participated in worship services from different traditions. Rather than try to plan a generic, “interfaith” worship, they opted to offer many different worship services that were very specific – a Muslim Friday prayer service, a Jewish Sabbath service, Hindu meditation practice, and a Christian Eucharist, which was led by an Episcopal priest. I found that Eucharist very moving because all these people of different faiths were participating in the most sacred ritual of my tradition. I learned later that it is against the official rules of the Episcopal Church to offer communion to non-Christians, so what the priest did that day was in violation of her ordination vows. This all got me thinking about the value of boundaries between traditions as well as the ways in which we can experience God in and through religions and religious services other than our own.

My original idea for the project was to make an interfaith pilgrimage with my friend Valarie Kaur, who is a Sikh and who has been to churches with me and has received communion in the Episcopal Church. The idea was for us to visit each other’s holy lands – for me to go to India with her and for her to come to Israel with me. She was not able to travel with me, however, so I ultimately chose to make the pilgrimage alone, and to travel just to Israel instead of India – because I could not afford to travel to both places and from what I could gather, it would be safer and more manageable for me to travel alone in Israel than in India.

I still planned to make an “interfaith” pilgrimage by visiting sacred sites from different traditions – Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Baha’i – and by meeting and talking with people involved in interfaith work in the Holy Land. The “dissemination piece” of the project was to chronicle my journey on my blog and to document the trip artistically through photography and to create an exhibit of my photos for display at my seminary and my home parish once I returned.

Although I did visit sites from different religious traditions, there were often restrictions against non-Muslims or non-Jews or non-Baha’is visiting except during certain hours or under certain circumstances, and I found that I spent most of my time visiting and meditating on Christian sites. I found myself more shy or hesitant about just walking in to a mosque or a synagogue (the ones that WERE more open and less restricted). I did visit the White Mosque in Nazareth, which was open to the public, but no one was there except one man praying in the corner and I felt very out of place and feared it would be obvious I wasn’t a Muslim and people someone would wonder why I was there if they came in and saw me. I walked through the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem but did not enter any of the historic synagogues I came across, even though they were likely open. I simply did not feel comfortable just walking in to a religious place of another tradition like I did walking into any of the churches I visited. On a visceral level, I felt that I did not belong there, that it wasn’t my holy place.

This was strange for someone who usually feels very comfortable visiting places of worship of many different traditions and has spent a good bit of my adult life working in interfaith work. I realized, however, that I had not often visited other religions’ places of worship entirely on my own. I was either going to do research and had an appointment to speak with someone, or I went with friends who were followers of that faith, to accompany them to a service or event. I had visited mosques and synagogues in Turkey and Greece and Italy on my foreign study trip in college, but I was with a large class and a guide every time I entered the places. Although I know some people draw from many different traditions in their own personal spirituality, for me as someone deeply grounded in one particular faith, I came to the somewhat obvious but still very insightful observation that I can’t be “interfaith” by myself – that a crucial element of “interfaith” is actually engaging with a PERSON of a different faith and encountering that faith through that other human – and that without that personal engagement, my encounter with sites from different religious was less meaningful and even intimidating.

This pilgrimage raised awareness for me about the importance of developing interfaith friendships and relationships, and how that really has to come through person-to-person engagement, not just through learning about other religions in a book or visiting other places of worship. While I think it’s great that some churches participate in interfaith “tours” of their cities or towns, where a group from the church will visit the local synagogue or mosque, I think these trips are largely in vain if they are not also accompanied by very real opportunities for the people from those two congregations to develop relationships with each other – which doesn’t happen naturally when they’re both serving in an “ambassador” or “host” role for their house of worship and their tradition. Programming social and outreach events with other religious communities where Christians can interact in more “normal” settings with Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Baha’is, and others is crucial for the future of interfaith leadership in the church, in my opinion.

My encounter with Palestinians in the West Bank through a one-day trip I took to Bethlehem also opened my eyes to the very real dangers of “exceptionalist” theology that asserts that we are God’s chosen and either implicitly or explicitly justifies degradation and violence toward other groups. I wrestle with how to preach certain passages from the Old Testament about Israel as God’s chosen people and God giving the land to the Jews in light of the ways that theology has caused the suffering and subjugation of the Palestinian people.

My encounter with the injustice in the West Bank made me question the significance of my original plan to produce an exhibit of photos as the "outcome" of this trip. Who cares about my "pretty pictures" when there are people suffering in the world? I wondered. I felt like my presentation and the outcome of my trip should be entirely about Palestinian advocacy -- to focus solely on an artistic response seemed not important and serious enough.

A poetry reading in Sewanee this summer after I returned helped to change that response. Nick Flynn's integration of his experiences traveling to Turkey to meet with Iraqi people who had been imprisoned at Abu Ghraib into his poetry made me realize that art can be used for advocacy, and the two need not be mutually exclusive. (I know I had known this before, but that poetry reading was a helpful reminder and example of the ways in which advocacy can be done through art.) This helped me to move forward with my plans to create an exhibit and I even decided, at the suggestion of my husband, to try my hand at some poetry myself to accompany the images.

Re-engaging with my creative side through this project also reminded me of the importance of nurturing the creative arts among the clergy. Seminaries are very good about teaching students book knowledge and even hands-on knowledge of ministry experience, but overall are not so good about teaching the creative arts, at least not from what I’ve seen. Since the Bible itself is largely poetry and literature, and many essential religious truths cannot be expressed in rational prose but are communicated best through art, I think clergy have an obligation to nurture their own creative sides and think about how to use art to preach the Gospel. My exhibit of photographs and my book of images and poetry that came out of this project is one small step towards doing that in my own ministry.

Friday in Jerusalem

Even though I'll be in Jerusalem for over a week, I'll only have one Friday here. And after this Friday, I'm extremely grateful I had a chance to experience Friday in Jerusalem, which is certainly a religious extravaganza!

Friday is the Muslim prayer day, and Friday evening marks the beginning of the Jewish sabbath. Friday is also the day of the week that Jesus was executed, and so has particular significance for Christians as well, even though our day of worship is Sunday, the day of the Resurrection.

Unfortunately, due to tensions between Muslims and Jews, non-Muslims are not allowed on the Haram Ash-Sharif, the "Noble Sanctuary," on Fridays. Jews call this area the Temple Mount -- the top of the area where the Jewish Temple once stood until its destruction in 70 CE by the Romans. After Jerusalem came into Muslim hands in the 7th century CE, the Dome of the Rock (pictured at right) and al-Asqa mosques were built on what was formerly the Temple area. This was not just a case of the Muslims marking their conquest of the area; the Temple area was sacred to Muslims as well, since there is a story that Muhammad was transported to the Temple area in Jerusalem during a vision and from there, ascended into heaven, where he conversed with Moses and Jesus and other Jewish prophets, who confirmed the validity of his message. The Dome of the Rock marks the spot where Muhammad is believed to have ascended into heaven.

The tension around the Temple Mount/Haram Ash-Sharif comes from the fact that some Jews want to rebuild the Temple and think that that is in fact God's will for Jerusalem -- to see the Temple re-established as the center of Jewish worship in a Jewish state. Obviously, this large Muslim shrine sitting smack dab in the middle of where the Temple should be is considered a problem by Jews of this bent. After several outbreaks of violence against Muslims at prayer by Jews who want to rebuild the temple and thus destroy the Dome of the Rock, the Muslim community in Jerusalem decided to not allow non-Muslims on the Haram Ash-Sharif area on Fridays, the Muslim prayer day.

As a result of this troubled history, I was not able to attend Friday prayers at the Dome of the Rock, or even go to the Haram Ash-Sharif area to observe Friday prayers. So much for my "interfaith pilgrimage." But part of my "guiding question" for this trip was a question about the value of clear boundaries between traditions, spurred by my internal conflict over the issue of open communion in the Episcopal Church. If it's ok for Christians to restrict communion to only Christians, why shouldn't it be ok for Muslims to restrict attendance at Friday prayers to only Muslims? But more on this later, when I tell you about my actual visit to the Haram Ash-Sharif/Temple Mount, on Sunday morning.

I'd asked around when I arrived about doing the Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa, and was told that a group of Franciscan monks lead a public procession of the stations every Friday at 4 p.m. -- which seemed an odd time to me. I wondered why it was not at noon, the traditional hour of Jesus's crucifixion. When Friday arrived, I got my answer.

The Muslim call to prayer echoes from the loudspeakers every few hours throughout the Old City, and just before Friday noon prayers, the main time Muslims gather together at the mosque to worship and pray together, sure enough, the call to prayer came like clockwork. But afterwards, the broadcast continued -- with a very long spiel in Arabic over the loudspeakers. I couldn't tell what was being said, but I could only assume that perhaps the Friday khutba (sermon) at the mosque was being broadcast over the loudspeakers for the entire city to hear, whether you chose to attend Friday prayers or not. Although I don't know for sure that this was behind the later time for the Stations of the Cross, I can only imagine that it would be difficult to lead a public procession in the streets of Jerusalem in the middle of a very loud sermon being broadcast over loudspeakers.

I ventured out around 12:45 or 1 p.m. to get some lunch, and the place I wound up eating was right on El Wad (Hagai), one of the main thoroughfares of the Old City. Sometime after 1 p.m., I started to notice a steady stream of Muslim women in hijab (the headscarf) and Muslim men in taqiyah (the skullcap) all walking northwest down the street, away from the Haram Ash-Sharif area and towards the Damascus Gate, one of the exits from the Old City. "Ah," I thought. "The prayer service must have just let out." As I finished my lunch, I sat people-watching as this parade of Jerusalem's Muslim population went by. I was amazed by how long and continuous the stream of Muslims was -- I must have sat there for 30 minutes watching people walk by. There was virtually no one walking in the other direction, against the "flow of traffic," so to speak, except a few lost-looking tourists here and there, easily spotted by their shorts and backpacks, their water bottles and maps in hand, and slightly confused looks on their faces. Even though I didn't get to actually experience Friday prayers, I felt like I had gotten a slight flavor of the energy of it from this post-prayer parade.

After lunch, I visited St. Anne's Church near the Lion's Gate, just a few steps away from where I'm staying at the Ecce Homo Convent. St. Anne's is a 12th century church built by the Crusaders, but I went to see the archeological excavations they have on site of some pools believed to be the site where Jesus healed a paralytic (see John 5:1-15). However, it was the church, and not the archeological site, that had the most impact on me.

I wandered in to the church almost as an afterthought; I'd come really just to see the archeological site since it was a "biblical site," a place mentioned in the Gospels. I'd never heard of St. Anne's Church, and who cares about some Crusader church anyway -- that's a part of Christian history I'd rather forget. But as it turned out, the church was an amazing oasis of beauty and sound in the middle of the city. I had no idea before visiting St. Anne's that it is known for its acoustics, and pilgrims make special trips just to sing in the nave there.

I wandered in to the church, which was rather simple overall, nothing extremely striking visually, and found my way to the chapel where the Reserved Sacrament (bread and wine left over from Communion) was kept. I decided to sit there for a while with the Sacrament, where Christ's presence is believed to reside. I sat for a while, then knelt, and finally went face-down into a full prostration, something I had never done before but had seen my colleagues do at ordinations and on Good Friday services. Something about that posture of utter humility -- laying completely flat on one's face before the glory of God -- had always struck me and I had always felt drawn to do it myself, but I never had -- not even in private prayer in my own home.

As I lay there on my face, my eyes closed, my nose touching the rugs that were spread out in this area and smelling the musty smell of wool, my hands stretched out above me and my running shoes baring into the floor behind me, suddenly I heard a voice. A crystal clear, angelic voice, letting out the first few notes of a chant that echoed and rang throughout the church. Then a whole host of other voices joined hers, producing a beautiful chorus that rose and fell, bouncing off the rafters and wafting down to envelop me in a palpable caress. It was the tour group that I'd seen outside at the archeological site, I realized, whose tour guide was pointing and lecturing loudly in German. I'd been irritated and annoyed at their presence, standing all huddled around the main observation point and making it impossible for me to get there to read the informational signs and see the view. I'd mentally written them off as more irreverent tourists, but now, they were bringing me some of the sweetest religious music I'd ever heard.

They sang for a long time, and I lay there in a position of humble adoration of God, listening to them and allowing their prayers to become my own. Although I could not understand what they were saying because they were singing in German, I recognized some familiar tunes in the mix -- Amazing Grace, and some songs from Taizé, including "Bless the Lord, My Soul." When I knew the songs, I started to sing along in English, but always stopped myself, feeling led instead to allow myself to experience the music from the outside rather than to try to join in and participate. After nearly an hour spent in that sacred place, I felt I was in a perfect state of spiritual preparation for the Stations of the Cross, which were scheduled to begin in about 20 minutes.

I left St. Anne's and walked down the road to the area near the convent where the Stations begin. The first Station of the Cross, where Jesus was condemned to die by Pilate, is now enclosed within an elementary school for Arab children. As the group began to gather to await the start of the stations, the kids were leaving after school had let out for the day. There was something interesting about standing in front of classroom doors with Winnie the Pooh on them and watching kids walk out of school with their backpacks, dodging groups of pilgrims and monks and nuns and priests as they just tried to make their way to the exit of their school. But this wasn't an entirely unusual occurrence for them, I realized, since this spectacle happened every Friday afternoon. They were probably used to seeing all the religious people gathering in their courtyard as they left school for the weekend.

The atmosphere before the stations started was less than spiritual. A bunch of opportunists were walking throughout the crowds, selling brochures on the Via Dolorosa for "One dollar, one dollar! Five shekels, five shekels! One euro, one euro!"One particular man with a very gruff voice kept approaching people and guessing their language based on their appearance. "Chinese, one dollar!" He shouted in English at a group of Asians, who walked on by, ignoring him. (If they were Chinese, perhaps they didn't speak English, and they might not have even been Chinese!) "Deutsch, one euro! Deutsch, one euro!" he yelled at a bunch of blonde tourists with backpacks. When he got to me, he started to yell, "English, one --" but I held up my pamphlet, showing him I already had one, which I had purchased from a boy on the street who was standing there at the entrance to one of the churches, handing them out like an usher handing out programs for a service, and then said, "Five shekels" after I'd already taken one.

Finally, the circus atmosphere faded away as the Franciscans gathered and started the stations, with a booming, "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti," to which the crowds responded, "Amen!"

One of the brothers was carrying a wireless speaker, which was connected to the microphones that the other brothers were using to read the stations at each stop. Each station was read in Italian, then in English, then in Spanish, each brother passing the microphone down to another for the translation into the next language. It was quite a sight to see this crowd of people from all over the world walking together the Way of the Cross, re-tracing Jesus's steps in the actual city where he was crucified.

The stations were created in the 15th century as a substitute "pilgrimage" experience for those who could not afford to travel to Jerusalem and visit the actual sites of Jesus's crucifixion, death, and resurrection, but eventually it became a prominent practice within Jerusalem as well, to re-trace Jesus's steps from his condemnation to his crucifixion. Although the stations are not all specifically associated with historical events, if the area where Pilate's governor's palace once stood is correct (where the Arab school and the Ecce Homo convent now are), and if the place of the crucifixion at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is correct, then the path between the two would be roughly accurate in terms of the path Jesus walked, carrying the cross -- even though the locations of the streets are different now than they would have been in Jesus's time.

After the 7th Station, there was a bit of a traffic jam at an intersection in the Old City, as a group carrying a cross and singing loudly in Spanish proceeded in the opposite direction that we had been traveling. I thought the Via Dolorosa continued in the direction they were coming from, but when I got to that intersection, there was a man there waving everyone on in the same direction as the cross procession was going. Somewhere along the way, I lost the Franciscans and wound up inadvertently joining this other group, which was a group of Spanish-speaking people with some priests dressed in albs and red stoles (as opposed to our group, led by the Franciscan monks in their brown habits). The group stopped in front of the Church of the Redeemer, near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and recited some things and read some Gospel passages in Spanish. Although I couldn't follow all of it, despite the class I took in pastoral Spanish last fall, I was able to recite the Lord's Prayer in Spanish with them at the end of the station. (Thanks, John Solomon, for making us say the Lord's Prayer at the end of so many of our Spanish classes!)

As the group moved on toward the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, I moved ahead of them to try to catch up with the Franciscans, having realized once the group came to a stop and was speaking only in Spanish that this was not the group I started with! Inside the Holy Sepulcher, I realized that the Franciscan group was up top, on the hill of Calvary, doing the stations of Jesus's crucifixion and death up there. As they came down the staircase, I joined them, and followed them to the site of Jesus's tomb for the final two stations, "Jesus is laid in the tomb," and "Jesus is raised from the dead." As I stood with that group of pilgrims before the site of Jesus's tomb and heard the Franciscan brother read in a heavily-accented English, "Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here, he is risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where they have laid him," tears filled my eyes and I felt a shiver run through me.

"Come and see the place where they have laid him" -- a phrase I had heard so many times on Easter Sunday morning, as the pastor read the Gospel passage about the Resurrection -- and now I was standing at the actual place where they laid him. Now the invitation was real and literal, "Come and see the place where they have laid him."

So I did. I waited in the long line of pilgrims gathered behind police barricades around the side of the tomb area, waiting for their turn to go in and see the place where they have laid him. As I walked around the outside of the structure built around the tomb and saw people praying and leaving candles along the railings on the outside of the tomb, I felt a sense of excitement, anticipation, and joy, realizing and recognizing that, unlike the other tombs I'd visited on this trip so far, this tomb was empty! Jesus was not here! The spot was sacred for the fact that he had once died and laid here, but his body was not here. We gather around an empty tomb, and that makes all the difference. I was reminded once again of the reason that I find my spiritual home in Christianity, of the thing that distinguishes Christianity from all other religions to me -- the Resurrection.

The line for entrance to the tomb was moving right along, when suddenly it was halted due to a procession of Orthodox monks coming through to chant and sing and pray at the tomb. The Franciscan Catholic monks had come through just 30 minutes before, and had moved on to a chapel beside the tomb area, where an organ was now playing loudly, drowning out the sounds of the Orthodox chant. Many different sects of Christianity share this most sacred site, but unfortunately they don't really share it. Instead, they co-exist, each doing their own liturgies, not worshipping together. I had a similar feeling to the one I'd felt at the Mosque of the Ascension on Thursday morning: a sense of gladness at seeing the different Christian communities in one place together, but a sense of sadness that they felt they could not worship together as they commemorated the death of their Savior on that Friday in Jerusalem so many years ago. I remembered Jesus's prayer for his followers in the Garden of Gethsemane: "…that they may be one, as we [Jesus and the Father] are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me" (John 17:22-23). I thought of all the songs we sing in church about being "one body in Christ." And I looked at the competing liturgies around me, sighing and mourning that we as the Christian community have not lived out Jesus's prayer that we all be one, and in that way, that we are not witnessing to the world in the way that Jesus prayed we would.

Finally, it was my turn to enter the tomb. I walked in, placed my hand on the shelf where Jesus's body once lay, and knelt in silent prayer. "Ok, come on, let's go," barked the monk in charge of regulating traffic, hurrying me and the three or four other pilgrims out so the next set of five or so could go in. I sighed, wishing for something like the silence and quiet and calm that I'd found at the tomb of Baha'u'llah in 'Akko. How do they expect anyone to have a religious experience on a timetable?

The Stone of Anointing, with Franciscan monks praying at it

Surprisingly, one of the most powerful parts of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for me was one of the least historically verifiable spots. The "stone of anointing," which commemorates where Jesus's body was laid after being taken down from the cross and where it was anointed for burial before being placed in the tomb, is right at the entrance to the Holy Sepulcher, and was only placed there in the 19th century. But when I knelt there and placed my hand on it, I realized that the stone was covered in anointing oil -- rich, smooth, fragrant oil, which soaked into my fingertips. I rubbed it on my hands and made the sign of the cross on my forehead with it, and the smell of the oil stayed with me for the rest of the day, transporting me back to this sanctuary of holiness. Whether or not this was the actual spot where Jesus's body was laid for anointing, the memorial to it that has been created was very moving to me.

Jews gathering to pray at the Western Wall

After exploring all the chapels and levels of the Holy Sepulcher complex and spending time in silent meditation and prayer there for around an hour and a half, I left the Christian Quarter of the Old City and made my way to the Jewish Quarter and joined the throngs of Jews headed to the Western Wall to pray to usher in Shabbat. As I walked past historic synagogues and tons of shops tightly closed up for the Sabbath, I saw a group of Jewish schoolboys pouring out of a building (maybe another synagogue?) and singing and clapping joyously, galloping and jumping down the stairs to the courtyard and forming a circle, dancing and clapping together as they prepared to go to the Wall. I went on ahead of them, and as I entered the Western Wall plaza, I was aware of the fact that I was one of about only five women total in the sea of people there who was wearing pants. Women in long skirts and head scarfs surrounded me, pushing strollers, talking with one another, carrying their prayer books, rocking slowly back and forth while reciting their prayers. I walked down to the Wall on the women's side (which was about one-third of the Wall, while the men's section took up two-thirds of it) and walked through crowds of Jewish women, some singing joyfully in a group, some gossiping and socializing, some praying individually and silently.

After sitting and watching the festivities for a long while, a man approached me and asked where I was from, and if I wanted to get a drink with him "after." So prayer time at the Wall is apparently a time to pick up women??? I decided to make my exit, discreetly, after this encounter, disappearing into the crowds so he wouldn't see me again.

I walked down El Wad (Hagai) back toward the convent, and stopped for dinner at a restaurant just a few doors down from the place I'd had lunch earlier that day. From that spot, I watched a different parade -- this one of Jews in yarmulkes and Russian-looking fur hats and broad-rimmed hats, dressed mostly in black, the Orthodox men with their long curls hanging down their faces -- as they all walked toward the Western Wall, and later, after dark, as they all walked back out toward the Damascus Gate exit of the Old City, walking the exact same path the Muslims had walked earlier, after noonday prayers.

Just another Friday in Jerusalem.

Ascension Day on the Mount of Olives

The traditional site where Jesus is believed to have ascended into heaven is located on top of the Mount of Olives, just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. The building there is actually a mosque; the site of the ascension is the only Christian site in Jerusalem over which Muslims retain control. Although Muslims do not believe Jesus actually died on the cross or was resurrected, they do believe that he ascended into heaven, without ever having died. (They also believe that Jesus will return at the end of the world, as Christians do.) Thus, the site of Jesus's ascension is a holy site for Muslims as well, and they retained control of this site. One day a year, on Ascension Day, they allow Christian liturgies to take place in the mosque.

When I read about this before traveling to Jerusalem and realized that I would be in Jerusalem on Ascension Day, I really wanted to attend one of the Ascension Day liturgies. Ascension Day is one of the principal feasts of the Episcopal Church, along with Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, All Saints' Day, Trinity Sunday, and Epiphany, and I was very excited to be in Jerusalem on this day and to get to worship at the very site where Jesus is believed to have ascended into heaven.

I asked about the service times at the front desk of the convent's guest house, figuring that they would likely know the details about the liturgies. (I'd been unable to find any information online.) They said that the Catholic masses would begin at midnight and go through 5:30 a.m., and then the Orthodox liturgies would start. Each group only had so much time allotted to use the sanctuary at the Ascension Mosque, and so they staggered the different Christian groups throughout the night and day. The woman at the reception desk told me that a group would be leaving from the convent at 10:40 p.m. to head up to the Mount of Olives for the services. I decided to go with them, since I didn't feel comfortable walking that far at night by myself.

As it turned out, I'd probably have been fine walking there by myself, because there were TONS of Christians in the streets all walking toward the Mount of Olives for the services. It was really awesome to see these streams of people all walking in the same direction from all over the city and realize that they were all going for the Ascension services as well.

After a long, steep walk up the Mount of Olives, we arrived at the Mosque of the Ascension, which was fairly bare and unadorned. In the middle of the courtyard area was a large minaret (tower from which the call to prayer is issued), and inside the circular base of the minaret was the piece of rock that supposedly has a "footprint" of Jesus in it from his ascension (it didn't look much like a footprint to me, but whatever). There was a red cloth around the perimeter of the inside, an altar set up in the middle, and one painting of the ascension hanging above the altar. I assumed these items had been brought in just for tonight's festivities. (I decided not to bring my camera on this outing, so that I could be entirely present for the worship and the spiritual aspects of this event, so I have no visuals to share of this event -- I'll just have to rely on creating pictures with my words.) Above the cloth and the paintings, on the inside ledges of the minaret, were unsuspecting pigeons, nesting and trying to get some sleep, when suddenly this whole hoarde of people crammed into their home and started chanting.

We arrived around 11 p.m., and I thought the mass wasn't supposed to start until midnight. A service started at 11, though, which was a long service of the Word, with lots of chanting of psalms and versicles and responses, entirely in Latin. That service concluded and many people left, and then a bishop came in to preside over the mass. Unfortunately, not too far along into the mass, I started feeling light-headed and dizzy and had to step out (I was privileged enough to be actually INSIDE the tower, instead of standing outside and trying to hear, like many people were). I don't know if it was all those people crammed into such a tiny space -- lack of air and claustrophobia -- or if it was the cumulative effects of the day I'd spent wandering around the city in the heat, or if it was just sheer exhaustion (I hadn't been staying up much past 11 p.m. since I'd been in Israel), but I wound up sitting outside the tower and listening at a distance instead of really being there for the service, which was rather disappointing.

I'm glad I went, though, because it was certainly a very interesting scene. All the different groups -- Roman Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, etc, etc -- had these tents (like the kind you'd see at a crafts fair, not the kind you'd camp in) set up inside the mosque's courtyard where they stored all their vestments and went in to change and whatnot, and there were several different altar areas set up for the different groups. On the one hand, it was cool to see all the different Christian communities worshipping in and sharing the same space; on the other hand, it was sad that we couldn't just have one liturgy that all could participate in, that we couldn't worship TOGETHER as the body of Christ, that each group got their "time slot" to do a Mass or Eucharist or Divine Liturgy, whatever they call it, right after one had already been done by another group.

As I took it all in, I was keenly aware that this might be the first and last time I'd ever have the opportunity to take part in such a gathering in Jerusalem on a principal feast of the church. As a priest, I will have liturgical duties in my own parish on the church's principal feast days, and unless I'm a member of a church with many priests on staff and somehow manage to have sabbatical time during a principal feast (unlikely!), this may well be the last opportunity I'll have to do something like this. It made me all the more glad that I decided to take this trip with the funds from my Ministry Fellowship, and all the more grateful to FTE for making it possible.

"Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem"

I was glad when they said to me:

‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’

And now our feet are standing

within your gates, O Jerusalem.

 - Psalm 122:1-2

I arrived today in Jerusalem, that great city at the heart of the Jewish and Christian faiths, and to a lesser extent, the Muslim faith (the holiest cities in Islam are Mecca and Medina, but Jerusalem ranks as #3). After praying about Jerusalem and Israel in the psalms and reading about them in the Scriptures for my entire life, finally, I was here, standing within the gates of the Old City, walking the very land that Jesus and the prophets walked. 

I will be staying at the Ecce Homo Convent, run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Zion and the Chemin Neuf community. I'm looking forward to being in an explicitly religious lodging environment, after staying in generic secular hostels so far for this journey. Although I've enjoyed my time in the hostels and met some great people, it's been harder to carve out space and time for prayer, or to just sit on the grounds reading Scripture or saying the Daily Office without getting weird looks and questions from the staff about what I'm doing and why I'm not out doing something. 

Ecce Homo has a wonderful chapel and a larger basilica where I can go to pray at any hour of the day, and their idea of "dorm-style accommodations" are not the large room full of bunk beds that the hostels provided, but a small private room, lacking total privacy only by the fact that its walls do not reach all the way to the ceiling, and that it has a cloth curtain instead of a door. (Pictured at right.) It's amazing to have this kind of privacy for $24/night. (Pilgrims, take note! This is a wonderful place to stay on your pilgrimage to Jerusalem!) 

I'm also glad to know that this is the last move I'll have to make before my departure for the U.S. a week from Thursday. After moving to a different city every few nights for the past 11 days, I'm looking forward to settling in a bit here. There's a closet in my room and I actually hung my clothes up in it! It's nice not to feel so much like I'm living out of a suitcase as I have been.

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)

Nazareth: Basilica of the Annunciation

I admit that after reading about the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth and learning that it was consecrated in 1969, I wasn't expecting to be blown away by the "sacredness" of the place. I don't know, something about "modern" construction in areas where there are places and things that are so old somehow makes them seem less desirable in my mind. I suppose I have a prejudice toward the modern and a preference for the ancient when I'm traveling in places with a history that goes back more than 2,000 years. And as I passed by the basilica on my walk to the hostel, it seemed a large, massive structure with a not-particularly-attractive dome towering above it. I thought visiting this place might be a case of what my religion professor at Furman called "ADC" -- "Another Damn Cathedral" -- as we visited church after church after church on our foreign study trip to Turkey, Greece, and Italy.

But my preconceptions were very wrong. The church was magnificent, gorgeous, a truly sacred and holy space. Just stepping inside the courtyard, it was amazing the sense of awe and peace that came over me as I made the transition from the hectic, busy streets of the market to this oasis of space and quiet. At least, it seemed quiet... I'm sure it wasn't actually that quiet -- the walls that surrounded the courtyard and basilica were not soundproof. But somehow there was a sense of quiet -- perhaps a spiritual quiet, an emotional quiet -- in that place.

The basilica's facade towered above me, massive and impressive in its stately white starkness. I watched as groups of people came and went from the entrance: tourists with their backpacks and cameras, pilgrims crossing themselves as they left the church, nuns in full habit with baseball caps to shade themselves from the sun. I stood in the courtyard for a while just taking it all in. I'd expected to sort of pop in and see the place and move right along to the next site, but I wound up spending the better part of an hour and a half or maybe two hours in this place, much longer than I'd expected.

Before I entered, I walked the length of the outer courtyard, looking at all the mosaics that adorn the walls -- representations of the Virgin Mary (and often Mary with the child Jesus) from different countries and cultures around the world. There were the traditional Roman and Eastern Orthodox style representations of Mary and Jesus, but mixed in with them were a Chinese Mary and Jesus, a Philipino Mary and Jesus, a Chilean Mary and Jesus, a Korean Mary and Jesus. I loved looking at all the different representations and the diversity of cultures represented here. This was certainly something that wouldn't have been there had these walls been decorated 1,500 or more years ago. Ok, ok, maybe "modern" isn't all bad.

Finally, I entered the church, on the ground level, where the "grotto" is that is believed to be the cave where Mary's house was 2,000 years ago and where the Angel Gabriel appeared to her. I was actually surprised by how well-done the arrangement was: the cave was central to the entire floor, which was mostly open space, with the cave in the center. In front of the cave was a courtyard area with an altar and space for celebration of Eucharist. Up on the main level, there was a fence-like barrier encircling the lowered courtyard and the cave, with kneelers all along it so the visitors could approach and watch and kneel as services were going on. The lowered area was closed off, with a sign that said "Closed for religious service." Down in the courtyard, there was a group of pilgrims with their priest in the midst of a service. The priest was sitting in the presider's chair and talking, presumably giving the sermon. It was in Italian, so I couldn't understand much of it, but I picked up a few words here and there: "Aqui," he kept saying, "aqui…!" (Here, here…) And I heard the word "familia" quite a bit. Presumbaly, he was talking about the fact that HERE, Mary received the message from the angel, HERE, the Holy Family lived, etc, etc.

I decided to hang around for the Eucharistic celebration, which I could not participate in since I wasn't one of the group and since I'm not Roman Catholic, I'm not supposed to receive communion in their services anyway. But remembering the time I attended a Catholic mass in Athens during my foreign study trip in 2003 and how powerful it was to realize that I could follow along with the service even though I couldn't speak Greek, because it was so similar to the structure of the liturgy of the Lutheran church of my upbringing, I decided to stick around.

That experience was repeated, but even more powerfully this time -- since I basically have the Eucharistic prayer memorized after attending Episcopal churches for eight years now, I was able to follow along even more closely than I was back in 2003, when I'd been attending a Baptist church and non-denominational churches, and it had been a while since I'd been in a more "high church," liturgical service. This time, I knew exactly what was going on -- from the sursum corda (the opening sentences, named for the "Lift up your hearts/We lift them up to the Lord" exchange that is part of it) to the sanctus ("Holy, holy, holy") to the elements of the Eucharistic prayer itself -- thanks to Jim Turrell's liturgics class that I just finished this spring, I could even recognize and name and elements of the prayer -- the anamnesis or remembering of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection, the epiclesis, or invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine, the oblation, or offering of the gifts to God, and the institution narrative, or the recitation of the famous words from St. Paul about how "On the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread, and when he had given thanks…" etc). And I even recognized that the priest, being a Roman Catholic, did the epiclesis part of the prayer BEFORE the words of institution, which is the "Roman position" of that aspect of the prayer. (Most liturgies in the Episcopal Church follow the West Syrian pattern of putting the epiclesis AFTER the words of institution.)

I know, more than you probably wanted to know about Eucharistic liturgy, but it was really cool to be able to pick all those things out even when the prayer was in another language -- mostly through the order and through the "manual acts" (that is, the hand motions that accompany each step of the prayer, which were almost identical to the ones we do in the Episcopal Church).

As I was sitting (and standing) there watching the service, a priest in an alb and a purple stole who was standing around in the open area where I was came over to me and asked, "Where are you from?" I told him I was from the U.S. and was in seminary to become a priest. "Ah, bless you," he said, and stepped back to let me continue watching the service. After it was over, I noticed that another group had gathered and as the first group filed out one side of the courtyard area, another group was coming in from the other side and filing in to the seats. Someone in this group had a guitar they had brought with them for musical accompaniment.

I walked over to the priest, who was still standing in the upper courtyard area, and asked him, "So, do different groups reserve this space so they can have a Eucharist here when they come visit?" He nodded. "From all over the world," he said. "This is where it all started, you know. Who knows, maybe it was this spot here, maybe it was that spot there, but in Nazareth -- it is where it all started."

"Yes," I said, nodding. "It's amazing."

I spoke with him for a while and found out that he was from Italy but had been living and working as a missionary in Sierra Leone in Africa for many years.

Then I went upstairs, to the main church area (pictured above), which is where the local Arab Catholic community worships on Sunday mornings. It was a more "traditional" church layout, with the altar near the spot where the cave was below, and a glass window in the floor so that you could look down to the grotto below from the main church area. There were more mosaics in here of Mary and Jesus. I took my time in here, too, sitting for a while with my scarf wrapped around my head (I don't know, something just compelled me to do it) and reading some of the passages from the Bible about the Annunciation and about Jesus in Nazareth.

I felt deeply comfortable here, like I could spend a lot of time in this place. It felt like a spiritual home to me. If I lived in Nazareth, I thought, I would come here often just to sit and pray and meditate.

When I left Nazareth on Friday morning for Tiberias, I stopped by the basilica on my way out and slipped in to the grotto area, with my backpack on and everything, and made my way up to the railing. Another group was there, in the middle of a Eucharistic celebration. There was something very powerful and comforting about knowing that there is an almost perpetual celebration of the Eucharist in that place. Here, where the Word was made flesh 2,000 years ago, the Word is continually being made flesh in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. I bowed in reverence and slipped out the door to my next destination, carrying with me the sacredness of that space.

Haifa: Stella Maris Carmelite Church & Monastery

After my time at Elijah's Cave, I took the cable car at the base of the mountain up to the top of the mountain, where the Carmelite Monastery is located. This was my first visit to a church on this trip so far. As I walked in to the church, I was struck by the familiarity of it all. A monk sat by the door in his brown robes, and statues of Jesus and Mary adorned the altar area. Beneath the altar there was a cave-like area with a place to light candles and a picture of someone -- I couldn't tell who it was supposed to be since the signs were only in Arabic and English. (Maybe Elijah?) But I lit a candle anyway, and said a prayer.


It was about 5:30 p.m., so I sat down in the church in a pew and said Evening Prayer, whispering to myself in the hush of this sacred space. I'd started the morning chanting Morning Prayer aloud in the silence and stillness of my room in Akko, and in the space of time between then and now, I'd visited a Baha'i sacred site, been given a ride to the train station by the Jewish hostel owner, who was on his way to a Hebrew lecture in biblical studies at a university in Tel Aviv, talked to several people on the train to Haifa, including a young boy who told me in English, "If you want to see the REAL Israel, go to the beach!," visited a site sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike (Elijah's Cave) -- although it was certainly Jewish-centric, and now found myself at the top of Mount Carmel in a church attached to a monastery, saying Evening Prayer.

Afterwards, I treated myself to dinner in a restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean from the top of the hill and then walked back to the hostel, talking the scenic Stella Maris Road down Mount Carmel and passing locals running up the mountain, out for their evening exercise. I passed by the base of the Baha'i World Center in Haifa on my way back and got my first glimpse of the magnificent structure, much larger than the center in Akko.

Haifa: Elijah's Cave

The organization and structure of the Baha'i gardens, both in the careful and meticulous landscaping and in the way visitors were managed, was a stark contrast to the somewhat chaotic site of Elijah's Cave in Haifa that I visited next.

First of all, there were no signs in English directly at the site of Elijah's cave; the woman at the hostel had warned me that it was "not obvious" where the entrance was. I saw several tour buses parked by the side of the road and crowds of Jewish people with yarmulkes walking down the mountain on an elevated pathway. "Well, that must be it," I thought. I found my way to an entrance to a walkway and made my way up the mountain, following the flow of people.

As I neared the top of the ramp, I heard loud Middle Eastern music playing (it wasn't clear if it was Hebrew or Arabic to me) and smelled food cooking. Suddenly I worried that I was in the wrong place; perhaps I was headed to a restaurant or some kind of park area where these folks were all having a big cook-out party! I cautiously continued up the last flight of stairs, and spotted a small plaque to the right of the gate that had an English translation: "Elijah's Cave," it said. "O-kaaaay," I thought, and headed on in.

The courtyard area indeed looked like it was a public picnic area, with kids running up and down and a large grill area with some kind of food smoking on it and lots of people sitting down eating at tables. I followed the stairs up to the next level and saw a large elaborate chair with Hebrew written all over it -- "Ah!" I thought, "This must be Elijah's chair -- the chair that is left empty at every Passover dinner with the expectations that the prophet might return." There were stations for lighting memorial candles, although I'm not sure for what, since everything was in Hebrew.

I followed the steps up to the entrance to the cave area, and saw a large room with a divider down the middle of it. "Women Side / Men Side" said the sign, in Hebrew, Arabic, and English -- and that was the extent that there was anything written in anything other than Hebrew in the entire place. There was a box of scarfs by the entrance, and since I'd forgotten to bring mine (it was in my backpack back at the hostel), I picked one up and put it on and entered the women's side.

The area where the actual cave space was was covered with a thick velvet cloth, with a Star of David on the front of it. I assumed this meant that it was off-limits, that people weren't allowed to go in there. I looked at the displays on the dividing walls, since there were many pictures, even though I couldn't read the descriptions. There were depictions of Elijah from various biblical stories, and against the wall where the cave was, several tablets with the tetragrammon -- the four consonants of the Name of God in Hebrew.

Off to the left side of the large room was a smaller nook with an area where there was a Torah scroll, with a curtain drawn in front of it as well. Women were going into that space and resting their hands and faces against the curtain, saying prayers. There were pieces of paper shoved into the cracks in the walls -- like at the Western Wall in Jerusalem -- representing prayers offered by the pilgrims who had visited here. There were also all kinds of scarves and hair pieces -- clips, rubber bands, etc -- tied to the metal wires in the ceiling of this cave area. I wasn't sure what the significance of that practice was, but clearly it was a "thing" that people did here.

I sat down in the Torah nook area to read the story of Elijah fighting the prophets of Ba'al from 1 Kings, along with the prayers and reflections in my Jewish pilgrimage guide. After a while, a young woman in an Israeli military uniform joined me, sitting on the rug facing the Torah area and reading her prayer book, rocking back and forth in the methodical way Jews do at prayer. On the other side of the dividing wall, a group of men were praying together, loudly, a leader shouting phrases in Hebrew punctuated by the group's vigorous "AMEN!!"s. In the background, the blasting music from the courtyard drifted in on top of it all.

As I sat, some new women walked into the larger room area, and I watched them walk up to the curtain that I had assumed was sacrosanct and untouchable and grab it and fling it back with all the hutzpah and casualness as if they were pushing past someone that was in their way in a shopping mall, and step right inside the cave. "Oh!" I thought. "I guess we CAN go in there after all!" I watched as a whole group of women came in, a few at a time, paying their respects to this place where Elijah was said to have stayed, some with deep reverence, others casually, with a plate of food in one hand even as they stepped inside the cave.

After the crowd cleared away, I went and stepped in the cave myself. It was just me and one another woman, who was leaning against the wall and praying with her Hebrew prayer book or Bible. As I placed my hand on the wall, I felt the same shiver of holiness that I had felt as I stood beside Baha'u'llah's grave in Akko.

I was struck by how opposite this was from the utter silence and stillness that the Baha'is were so careful to protect around the shrine of Baha'u'llah in Akko. In place of structured, beautifully manicured and landscaped gardens, there was dirt and grime and trash and the scent of food. Instead of silence, there was shouting prayers and throbbing music. The Baha'i site reminded me of the "frozen chosen" denominations of Christianity -- valuing silence and stillness and order and beauty -- and Elijah's Cave reminded me of the Pentecostal or more spirit-led denominations of Christianity.

In reflecting on one of my "guiding questions" for the trip -- "How do I experience God in the sacred spaces of other traditions?" -- I found that I experienced both places to be sacred, in their different ways. The structure and order and meticulous attention to detail were beautiful, but so was the chaos. Just as I am not satisfied with one kind of liturgy or experience of the Christian faith, I would not have wanted to have visited all sites like the Baha'i gardens or all sites like Elijah's Cave. I like both… I need both.