Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land

by Ruth Everhart

  Since my childhood days, I’ve known that “living stones” refers to people who make up the church — not physically, in the way that stones construct a building, but spiritually. In Sunday school we had a song with hand motions: “I am the church. You are the church. We are the church together!” But now, after spending just a handful of days in Israel and Palestine, it is time to see living stones with grownup eyes. On the one hand, we are surrounded by buildings constructed of gorgeous stone hewn from this holy ground, which seems poignant and powerful. Yet, because of politics and religious rivalry, the church work is handicapped, and Christians are encouraged — both directly and obliquely — to leave this Holy Land. If that happens, the beautiful stone buildings that remain will be nothing more than dead stones, a memorial to what was once alive.

  After Father Barhoum’s Amen, the congregation sings the Lord’s Prayer in Arabic. My heart wells up. What do I know of their experience, really? I happen to be sitting in a pew beside an aged grandmother. Her cheek can barely contain all the wrinkles that crisscross each other. On the other side of the grandmother is a woman who sings the prayer with absolute conviction, as if she has sung it countless times and believes every word. She’s holding a young girl on her lap. The singer reminds me of a member of my congregation who sings the same way. The young girl reminds me of myself, growing up. I always felt so at home in church. I used to sit snuggled against my mother with my arm linked through hers while the minister preached. Does this young girl feel the same connection to her mother? I smile at her, my sister, as she sings in Arabic and I sing in English.

  It’s time for communion. After extending the invitation to the table, the priest gives the words of peace and asks us to share the peace with one another. I sit down beside the grandmother so I can more comfortably grasp her hand and say “Salaam.” She leans forward and wobbles her cane next to me. Wordlessly, she leans her face against mine, cheek to cheek. Despite the maze of wrinkles, her cheek is as soft as cashmere. I remember my own grandmothers, long gone, and the elderly women I have been pastor to. I love the wisdom etched in wrinkles. They are testimony to both sorrow and joy, which feel so permanent but pass. While I’m thinking these things, the grandmother turns her face to me and kisses me full on the lips. I feel as if some saint has descended to confer a blessing. Fresh tears spring to my eyes as she pats my knee. It’s time to pass the peace to others. I blink and shake hands with the pilgrims on the other side of me, and behind me, and in front of me. We were strangers not ten days ago, and now we are each part of this Holy Family.

  “Ephphatha! Be opened!” Jesus commands, and we must respond. He does not say, “Be opened if you feel that your personal history will allow you to be comfortable with that level of vulnerability.” He simply commands us to “be open.” The commands are not difficult to understand, but they are difficult to follow. I wonder how I might respond to this command, and what it will cost me. Should I become more politically involved with the people of Palestine? Should I risk finding an outlet for my writing, an audience beyond the congregation I preach to each Sunday? It’s easier to stay trapped behind my eyes, seeing what I have always seen.

  I get in line to receive communion, letting the priest lay the wafer in my hand so I can slip it on my tongue, then take a sip from the common cup. The organist begins the closing hymn, which is deeply familiar, even though I haven’t sung it in decades. The congregation sings in Arabic, which makes it challenging for my memory to match words to tune, but eventually I do. It’s a child’s hymn from my Sunday school days called “How Shall the Young Direct Their Way?”:

  Sincerely I have sought Thee, Lord,

  O let me not from Thee depart;

  To know Thy will and keep from sin,

  Thy Word I cherish in my heart.

  Singing these words, I am reminded: This is the rock from which I am hewn, this Reformed faith with its emphasis on the Word of God, and on knowing the will of God, and on keeping from sin. Yes, there are some good things about this familiar rock!

  After the worship service, there is coffee hour — just like back home. We’re served scalding Turkish coffee in miniature plastic cups. I can manage to hold mine only by the rim. It’s both challenge and delight to get the thick brew down. Plus, there are trays of pastries with various fillings, including my favorite, poppy seed.

  After we’re given some time to mingle with the members of the congregation, we have the chance to hear Father Barhoum’s wife, Susan, tell her story. The first thing Susan says is that she can trace her family tree to the fourth century. Every branch of that tree is Christian. In fact, her family has been Christian since the time of Jesus.

  I try to digest this, wondering how many centuries of my family have been Christian. Maybe too many to count — though we wouldn’t count generations since Jesus, as Susan does. We’d perhaps count from John Calvin, some five hundred years ago. Or from Abraham Kuyper, who was credited with the birth of neo-Calvinism in the Netherlands just over a hundred years ago. How would it change things if we counted from Jesus instead?

  Are the Reformers, with their complicated histories, even the right heritage to claim? Should we, for example, claim John Calvin, who labeled Michael Servetus a heretic for rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity and who supported the latter’s burning at the stake? Kuyper was an intellectual giant, but his views were claimed as support by the Afrikaner Broederbond in South Africa, which in turn shaped the great evil of apartheid. At the same time, Reformed church members in the Netherlands sheltered Jews from the Nazis. Religion is complicated stuff, peopled by tragically flawed humans who are, nevertheless, capable of great courage and theological insight. I can’t claim just my favorite pieces of this history. I have to claim it all.

  Susan’s family members were displaced from their home by Israeli soldiers and put in refugee camps. They never returned to the family home, though her grandfather carried the key to that house for the rest of his life. She shows emotion as she shares these powerful stories of past suffering. Yet her passion intensifies as she describes her current work. She pours her energy into various peace initiatives for businesspersons and for children.

  How powerfully our religious history shapes us. Yet it can shape us in different ways. We choose our response. Susan could have become bitter and let the painful history of the Palestinian Christians poison her; instead, she chooses to follow Jesus in the way of peace. Her story challenges me to learn more about my own religious history. Before I came on this pilgrimage, I thought I was done exploring my faith history and was concerned only with the future, bright and shiny, but now I see that the past is never gone, that it becomes the seedbed for whatever new thing might spring up.

  Mount Tabor

  CHAPTER 17

  Transform

  We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain.

  2 PETER 1:18

  MOUNT TABOR IS easily visible from a distance. The mountain rises abruptly from a flat plain, as conical as a breast. Stephen tells us that pilgrims often spend hours hiking up the steep mountain. We won’t, of course. We may be pilgrims, but we’re doing pilgrimage North American-style — in comfort and in a hurry. Our itinerary allots a half-day for this mountain and its glory.

  Our bus arrives at the foot of the mountain, and we must switch to taxis because the road becomes a series of hairpin turns, the angles too acute for a bus. I climb into the back seat of a cab between two friends. We’re wedged tight, but, as it turns out, not tight enough. The taxi charges up the incline and, as it takes the first turn, throws the lot of us against the left side of the taxi. As the taxi doubles back, we squash to the right side. Then left. Then right. The windows are open to the rushing wind. The mountain drops away just beyond the apex of each turn.

  “You wanna get high?” Michael yells from the front seat.

  We zigzag up the mountain, careening back and forth across the seat. When a taxi passes in the opposite direction, the dr
ivers yell to each other out their open windows. We laugh at the same time that we cry out and hang on. Maybe distress and delight are not so far apart. Wasn’t that the lesson of the cable car?

  At the top we emerge from the cab, breathless and rumpled, into a serene garden. A wide gravel path is bordered with trees and flowering shrubs, and worn by the footsteps of thousands of pilgrims. The path leads to the Church of the Transfiguration, sitting on the mountain’s tip-top. The basilica was built over the very rock where Jesus was transfigured. Our group gradually gathers as taxi-loads of pilgrims arrive.

  The Transfiguration story is one of those dramatic narratives that feels slippery, like there’s some vital point we humans miss. Jesus took a select few of his disciples — Peter and James and John — to this mountaintop and became radiant like the sun, his clothes whiter than any bleach on earth could make them. The long-deceased prophets Moses and Elijah materialized on either side of Jesus, also dressed in dazzling white.* Imagine what that was like for the plain-clothed disciples.

  On this day the view of the valley is hazy and tinged with blue. Stephen tells us about the imposing stone basilica we can see behind his shoulder, and I jot down the facts: “Church built in three sections in the Roman style in 1924. . . .”

  Kyle whispers to me, “Are you still being so compulsive?”

  “What? This is sermon fodder.”

  “You’re telling me you visit this mountaintop” — he gestures expansively to the vista — “where Jesus shone like the sun, and your people want to hear” — he glances at my notes — “ ‘Roman style, 1924’?”

  “Maybe I like facts.”

  “No doubt.” Kyle’s Canadian accent gives both vowels their due even as he laughs. “Facts are easy. Pilgrimage is hard.” He taps my still-open page. “Go ahead. Write that down.”

  I snap my journal shut. I know he’s right. We’re not here for facts. We’re here to be pilgrims, to move from one place with God to another place with God. I don’t know where my pilgrim path leads, exactly, but I suspect it will be somewhere I’m afraid to go. Yet I do want to arrive at a wider world. I prefer this pilgrim way over the constrained way I grew up. This more spacious pilgrim way leads to a mountaintop — literally, but also metaphorically. I’m having glimpses of the kingdom of God, moments when my heart overflows with love. This isn’t just an idea. It’s not a thought process or a doctrinal position; it’s trying to see with the eyes of Christ. It’s the cells in my body knowing I’m connected to every other person on the planet. Not just because we share biology, or the Internet, but because we share grace. We come from the same Creator and someday will return to that One. And in between we share the same Spirit. These are notions that belong to mountaintops, where the veil between heaven and earth lifts.

  We’re still standing in front of the Church of the Transfiguration, and now I’ve missed most of Stephen’s facts about this building. But why is there a building on this mountaintop at all? Scripture records that Peter, ever hopeful, ever awkward, offered to build booths for the three resplendent beings who shimmered before him, a suggestion that hung in the air until it was brushed away for the irrelevant comment it was. You can’t nail down glory, Peter!

  But later crews of workers attempted to do just that, of course. They built a stone church in three parts: a central nave to honor Jesus, with a chapel on either side, one for Moses and one for Elijah. We’re told that there’s a stunning central mosaic, and each prophet has his own mural depicting a mountaintop moment.

  “There’s a trapdoor in the floor of the nave,” says Stephen, “and underneath that door is the bedrock of the mountain. People leave prayers there. You get fifteen minutes.”

  The central mosaic is indeed gorgeous, sparkling in gold. It shows Jesus in shining raiment, flanked by the prophets, with the disciples looking awestruck. I take this in, then step into the side chapels. I catalog each mural rather than experience it, the way you do when you’ve been in too many museums but know you may never return to this one. You want to be able to say, “I saw that.” Moses’ mural shows him receiving the Tablets of the Law on Mount Sinai. Elijah’s mural shows him on top of Mount Carmel, managing the cosmic duel between the God of the Israelites, Yahweh, and the Canaanite god Baal.

  I notice the other pilgrims investigating the chapels, but I don’t want to take the time. I’m mainly interested in the bedrock. I hurry to the open trapdoor and peek inside. Scraps of paper litter the rock. I glimpse words in many languages, very few in English. Still, some words jump out at me, and I comprehend their meaning: “illumine,” “capacity,” “adore.” I want to join this company of pilgrims and entrust my words to this rock. I take a seat in the nave and write a prayer in my journal:

  Yahweh, Transform me. The moments of glory are all around. May I have the eyes and heart to see them, then let them go, trusting they will come again. Open me.

  I write it out again and tear the scrap of paper from the binding. I kneel and reach through the trapdoor to place the torn paper on the rock. My fingertips graze the slips of paper laid by other pilgrims, then touch the bedrock itself, rock that is smooth and cold, rock that Jesus stepped on, rock that witnessed Christ’s glory when heaven opened. The contact, for a moment, is like brushing up against a presence both ephemeral and eternal, something beyond time.

  So I stumble to a pew, instinctively realizing that in order to hold onto this glory I must make room. I must leave something behind. I must let go of the baggage I carry around with me, the wounds, the resentments, the grudges. The only way I know how to do that is to pray, so I pray for forgiveness, for myself and for those who have wronged me. I repeat: Open me, open me, open . . .

  Someone is tapping my shoulder. We pilgrims must leave. I notice that Ashley is sitting on the floor, her face tear-streaked. I wonder what’s going on for her, but don’t ask. This pilgrim journey is hard to process, let alone share. We all need space.

  The group of us walks back toward the spot where the taxis will pick us up. We pass brown-robed Franciscan friars who live on this mountaintop. Some are reading beneath flowering trees, haloed by pink and white. One monk plays a recorder and one a small harp; another stares into the middle distance. We call out “Shalom!” Each monk looks up and returns our greeting with a rapturous smile.

  What do these monks know that we don’t? Although we might wish we could reside on a mountaintop of glory, wouldn’t we miss our lives, our actual lives down on the ground? Someday we will all live on a mountaintop, so to speak, in that juncture between heaven and earth, in the kingdom of God. But for now we must settle for the briefest encounter with the holy, a brushing cheek to cheek. I remember worshiping beside the grandmother in Reine, her wrinkled cheek against mine; swimming in the Sea of Galilee, the velvet water against my skin; praying beside the Jewish mother and her baby at the Western Wall, our cheeks against the ancient stone.

  JoAnne and Kyle are chatting as we walk along. Kyle says, “The Transfiguration accounts are really similar in the different Gospels. I was comparing them last night.”

  “It’s the timing that changes, isn’t it?” JoAnne asks.

  “They all use the word ‘bleach,’ don’t they?” I add. “But did they have bleach back then?”

  “I think they used urine,” JoAnne says.

  “Matthew doesn’t say ‘bleach,’ ” Kyle says.

  “Maybe Matthew thought of a better word,” I say. “Maybe Mark had already written it down, verbatim, so Peter got stuck with his bad choice of words.”

  “Peter and his words!” JoAnne exclaims. “Hey, let’s build some booths!”

  “That’s what proves the dialogue is authentic,” Kyle says. “Otherwise, you could think that Peter made the whole story up just to make himself look good.”

  “But he doesn’t look good,” JoAnne counters. “And I’m glad. You gotta love a disciple who says the wrong thing.”

  “I feel for him,” I say. “Even more so after today. So he wanted to hang onto the
moment of glory. Wouldn’t you have?”

  “Of course. Look at the documentary,” says JoAnne. “What’s Brian trying to capture with — ”

  She stops in her tracks, staring overhead into some low-hanging tree branches. “Aren’t those peppercorns?”

  Kyle reaches up and breaks off a twig and hands it to her. The sprig has a cluster of little pink balls, some plump and some withered. JoAnne inhales deeply, then smiles broadly at me and Kyle. “Now this is what will remind me of glory.”

  As we arrive where the taxis will pick us up, I remember something. “About those murals — did you get a good look at Moses? It proves something I’ve always wondered about.”

  “What’s that?” Kyle asks.

  I let a delicious moment pass before replying. “Did you notice? Moses really does look like Charlton Heston.”

  The Mount of Olives

  CHAPTER 18

  Weep

  Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!

  MATTHEW 23:37

  THE TEN DAYS of our pilgrimage began with an introduction to Jerusalem, then roughly followed the chronology of Jesus’ life as we traveled from Bethlehem to Galilee. Now we’re back in Jerusalem to journey the final lap of Jesus’ story.

  Today we will explore the Mount of Olives, just outside the walls of Jerusalem. We begin in the courtyard of the chapel at Bethphage, where Jesus began his journey by donkey on Palm Sunday. Even though it’s very early, the sun is already bright. We’re all slouched under hats and sunglasses as if we could protect ourselves against the sun’s rays. The air is intensely dry. Stephen begins to talk about Jesus’ dual nature, human and divine. I’m tired of squinting while he lectures, but I’m ready to look anew at old questions.