People, like great novels, have themes.
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Thirteen explorers from five U.S. states met at the opening of 2017 to walk the Jesus Trail. The Trail is a blazed course that passes through urban and rural regions of northern Israel-Palestine. Many sites of significance were encountered by the group; these give testimony to the deep and diverse history of the area known as Galilee.
Maps produced at the start of the 16th century reflect the ongoing struggle between ancient, medieval, and modern perspectives. The surge of incoming data challenged traditional thinking. Mariners found themselves blinking at fresh charts under the Atlantic sun even as mapmakers in Europe scrambled to update graphic blends of fact and faith.
It may seem odd to be thinking about pilgrims at Christmastide. But it is fitting. Pilgrimage is for every season. There is never a wrong time to undertake a journey for the purpose of encountering God. Most pilgrimages are unexpected and topsy-turvy experiences. Sometimes they get messy. Ask Paul the Apostle. Whom did he expect to meet on the road to Damascus? Or ask the Christmas shepherds. After they heard the angelic announcement, they said:
"Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened" (Luke 2:15).
When the baggage carousel stopped, I thought: Welcome back to “Exploring Bible Lands.”
The reason the carousel had stopped, of course, is because there were no more bags to spit out. All the bleary-eyed travelers had yanked and been yanked by that cruel machine empowered to deliver the final punctuation to the experience of air travel. One middle-aged woman (with a bag twice her size) was determined to pound her experience into an exclamation point. She was dragged no less than three times around the loop before she finally arrested the oversized beast. The crowd went from a collective gasp to a cheer as she rose unsteadily to her feet, one fist on the handle, the other, in the sky. She was the unseated rodeo rider who survived a runaway.
She looked like a good pony: short, but sturdy and footsure. Her lines were pure economy. Not even Todd, whose appreciation of such things ran ahead of most, would call her elegant. The icon proudly worn on her chest indicated that General Motors played some role in weaving together her DNA, although as I pondered her scruffy coat, I couldn’t remember seeing a breed like this before. We tested her throughly as hardened Westerners are wont to do: I kicked her tire. She didn’t flinch. Satisfied, Seth signed the rental papers and we we climbed aboard.
I hold Josephus by the hand and squint into the wind.
Our view is good, but Herod’s was better. I sit with students on the stump of a tower (or “keep”) estimated to have been 120 feet tall. Herod could climb the stairs of this structure (now tumbled downslope) and scan the horizon from a lofty perch. Looking north along the Judean backbone, he could pick out the Mount of Olives. It cast a shadow over Jerusalem every morning. Looking south, he could see, or almost feel, really, the opening up of a vast desert.
No two trips are the same. If this statement is true when traveling internationally, it is a steely reality of travel in Israel-Palestine. Embracing this truth can be scary. However, if attempted, it can free the curious explorer from the tyranny of the timetable. What is more, it suggests another, perhaps wiser, tack: stop dictating and begin engaging a culture other than your own.
