Yes, friends, Steve and I are back from our trip to Israel-Palestine. We left on Monday, July 3rd, and returned on Saturday, July 15th. We were part of a Charlotte-based cohort of The Ministry Collaborative, an organization that serves and supports clergy on this challenging journey of church leadership. They create three-year cohorts, and during those three years, the members of each cohort gather several times each year for conversation, prayer, support, and learning how to survive the demands and celebrate the joys of ministry. One part of the three-year commitment is what they call an “immersion.” Our immersion was this trip to the Holy Land.
After our red-eye flight from New York’s JFK Airport, nine couples and our fantastic Atlanta-based leader named Ryan Bonfiglio met up with a Palestinian Christian guide and bus driver at Tel Aviv-Yafo Airport on the 4th of July. We spent our first night in Natanya, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
The next morning, we left for Tiberias, where we spent five nights at a lovely hotel on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. From that hotel, we visited several churches, took a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee, took several walks along roads and paths in the area where Jesus carried out his ministry, and visited the town of Magdala – where, Mary Magdalene, one of my greatest Biblical heroines hailed from.
After our time there in the region of Galilee, we spent two difficult and beautiful days in Bethlehem, the town where our Savior was born. No longer a small town, the modern city of Bethlehem now stands on “the wrong side” of the dividing wall between Israel and the West Bank. The protest art on the Bethlehem side of that wall impressed us with its beauty and its pain, its horror and its hope.
Surely it is no accident that Jesus chose to be born in an occupied land over 2,000 years ago. The sorrow of the ongoing occupied status of that land was palpable to us. My tears flowed freely during our time in Bethlehem. I hope to always recall the sight of that horrible wall in that holy place – and to always pray for the peace of that wounded and beautiful land and those wounded and beautiful people.
Our final three nights were spent at a hotel just inside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. Surrounded by ultra-orthodox Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Armenians, we came to experience the four quarters of that ancient city up close and personal. We walked in and out of several churches, down the Mount of Olives, and made our way to a place called “The Garden Tomb.” Was it the tomb in which Jesus was placed? Probably not, but it could have been. Our wise and thoughtful guide said, “It’s not about the place. It’s about the message. And the message is that the tomb is empty.” We joyfully and tearfully celebrated communion in a small underground chapel there near the tomb.
On our second to last morning there, a small group of us left the hotel at 6 am to walk the Via Dolorosa, fourteen stations that are meant to describe the gruesome journey of Jesus as he carried the cross. We heard readings from Henri Nouwen’s book, Walk with Jesus: Stations of the Cross, and stood in silence at each of the stations, pondering the passion, the pain, the suffering of Jesus as he made his way through those ancient streets to the hill on which he was crucified. I was stunned by the solemnity of that walk, sorrowfully aware of the ongoing strife that divides that land and its people. The sound of an Israeli soldier spitting as a Muslim woman walked past him was an auditory, external reminder of the ongoing, internal tension that hangs low in the narrow streets and alleys along which Jesus carried that old rugged cross.
In my sacred imagination, when Jesus prayed over Jerusalem just days before being crucified, he was praying not only for that city as it was then but also that city as it is today. In my sacred imagination, Jesus still moves through and along those narrow lanes, offering himself, his love, his grace, his mercy, his forgiveness, and his peace to everyone he encounters. The need for God’s love there has never wavered. The needs for Christ’s presence there has never wavered. The need for Spirit’s power there has never wavered – from that day until now, from those agonizing moments of our Lord’s passion until today’s agonizing moments there in that land.
War rages within them and around them. So does peace.
Wi’am, a group of courageous peacemakers, is intentionally waging peace in Bethlehem and beyond. We had the high honor of sitting with their founder and hearing his story of the challenges they face and the hope they cling to as they engage with people of all ages in the work of healing and reconciliation on “the most tear-gassed street in the world.” We drank tea and coffee with them. We listened to them. We prayed for them.
The work they are doing is hard work. It is relentless work. It is frustrating work.
And it is soulful work. It is resilient work. It is hopeful work.
It is God’s work. It is their work. It is our work.
Yes, we’re back. I’m back. I brought back several reminders of my time there, including a small vial of water from the Sea of Galilee and a few stones from a few seashores. But also I left more than a few tears to soak into the soil there. I left a piece of my heart there. I hope and pray that, because of that trip, I will never be the same.
Peace, Gail
PS. Steve and I have far too many photos and videos and stories to share in a blog. We are planning to tell a few more stories and share a few more photos on Sunday, July 30th, at 9:30 am in the Shelby Room. Please plan to join us for that conversation. That Sunday is also the final Sunday with our Hope Social Justice Interns, so please plan to be in worship that Sunday. And stick around for a reception following worship to celebrate their time with us.