June 16, Monday - Jesus' stomping grounds

We are in Nazarethin a convent about 25 feet from the Basilica of the Annunciation and we can hear the evening Muslim call to prayer in the distance which seems natural in this mixture of cultures. But back to this morning.

The shore of the Sea of Galilee

John asked us to meet him down by the shore to the Sea of Galilee at 7 in the morning.  We came down there to find he had made a small fire right on the water’s edge.  We began our day by reciting the Sh’ma – first in Hebrew and then in English.  It is a short prayer/declaration of what Jesus said were the 2 greatest commandments – Love God with all your heart, soul, and might, and love your neighbor as yourself.  We then read the bible passage where Jesus meets up with his disciples in the Galilee after his resurrection.  They are just off shore fishing and he is on the shore.  They have not caught anything and he tells them to fish the other side of the boat.  They immediately catch a huge amount of fish, recognize him, and rush to the shore.  There they find he has built a fire and has some bread and fish for them.  This is where he tells peter to ‘Feed my sheep’.  John explains that this happened about 100 yards from where we are.

After breakfast we head to our first biblical site for the day.  John likes to either start with the big hike for the day (while it is still cool) or go to a place likely to get crowded later in the day.  Today it was the later as we found ourselves at Capernaum.  This is where Jesus lived during most of his ministry – possibly with Peter who also lived here.  This was also one of the two places Jesus would have read from the Torah in the synagogue (the other being in Nazareth) since you had to be a member of the community in order to read scripture.

More rabbis came from this village than any other place and so it was not surprising to see that the school house portion of the synagogue was probably 4-5 times as large as any we had seen so far.  The synagogue faced toward Jerusalem – indicating it had been rebuilt at some point but the foundation and general scale is the same it would have been when Jesus lived here.  Peter’s house is less than what we know as a block away from the synagogue.  They are certain that this is his house since as far back as the first century there was a church surrounding it.  Today a catholic church stands on top of it.  There is a glass floor in the church so that you can look down into Peter’s house, but there was a private mass being said and we could not go into the church.  I went down along the shoreline and (wait for it…) picked up some rocks to bring back.  Security is going to really wonder about me when they x-ray my bag!

Our faith lesson from here centered on how it often says things in the bible like ‘they were amazed at how he spoke because he spoke like one with authority and not like the scribes’.  John explained how only certain rabbis were had the authority to add to the teachings and most rabbis just explained the teachings of other rabbis.  But in order to get the authority to do this at least 2 other rabbis had to give you that authority.  So while Jesus was recognized as a rabbi, they questioned who had given him the ‘authority’ to teach on his own rather than just quote other rabbis.  Jesus’ authority came from John the Baptist and God.  We also have authority given by Jesus to ‘go out and make disciples of all nations’ and spread His word throughout the world – starting in our communities.

Our next stop was Susito, also known as Hippos.  It was one of the 10 cities in the Decapolis which was an area primarily of Roman and Greek influence known for pagan worship.  It was a city which was very wealthy.  They did not have a source of water up on the top of the mountain so they built a stone aqueduct to bring water up from the spring below.  The water pressure was so great that the fountain at the end of the aqueduct (where people came to get water) shot 100 feet into the air.  They also had stone columns made from granite from Egypt.  How they got them all the way up here is a marvel and testament to how much extra money they had here.  It is believed that this is the place where Jesus drove the demons (called legion) from a man and into a heard of pigs.  The pigs then ran off the cliffs into the sea and drowned.  The man who had been tormented by demons asked to come follow Jesus but he told him to stay and tell his story to the people in the region.  (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%205&version=NIV) He did this and when Jesus returns later to the area thousands of people come to listen to him and he ends up feeding the 4000 after teaching them for 3 days.  Evenutally this area became such a site for Christianity that they had a cathedral up here and the bishop from there was part of the first Nicene council debating the relationship between God and Jesus when they decided they were consubstantial (sound familiar to fellow Catholics?) and wrote the Nicene Creed we say today throughout the world.

The faith lesson was that by telling the story of what God has done for us we can bring others to Jesus just the way this man did.  We each though of someone who we would like to come know Jesus or even just become stronger in their faith.  We picked up a rock to represent that person and placed them all in a pile here.  We then prayed together for all these people and we will continue to pray for these individuals for the next 40 days.  We heard stories from John about how people who were prayed for in the past eventually ended up coming on this trip – not realizing that they had been prayed for in the past.    

Beth She’an is another city in the Decapolis.  All of the cities in this area were eventually destroyed in 749 by a massive earthquake.  So when you see pictures of pillars on the ground all lying in the same direction – that is a sign they were toppled during an earthquake.  The Jordan River valley actually marks/follows the boundary between the African and Asian crustal plates.  Beth She’an was the 3^rd largest city in the Decapolis and very Hellenistic in that everything was all about celebrating what man can do.  They had large ornate buildings and elaborate mosaics.  When the earthquake hit it was all gone within minutes.  The faith lesson was that even as we become successful we need to acknowledge that it is God which has given us our talents and what we do should honor Him rather than do things just for our personal glory.

Our last stop for the day was in the fields around Nazareth.  These are the places where Jesus grew up.  He would have spent a lot of time working with Joseph, his father, to learn a trade.  We traditionally show Joseph and Jesus as carpenters.  Stop reading now if you don’t want a different thought.

There are very few trees in Israel relative to the amount of area, and very little was made of wood.  The early bibles describe Joseph and Jesus as builders and people who translated the bible changed that to carpenter.  However, the area is full of limestone which even today is used for building most structures.  It is fairly easy to cut into blocks and shape as needed.  During the time of Jesus all the stone masons in the area were commissioned to provide stone for Zippori which was just a few miles from here.  The existence of old quarries in area also supports the thought that Jesus was a stone mason rather than a carpenter.  This would also explain references he made to cornerstones, etc.  However, in the greater scheme of things it does not matter so much if he was a carpenter or a stone cutter but that He lived and died for us.  Our faith lesson was to ask Him to chisel us as needed to fit into His plan so that we can use our talents the best way possible.

Our hiking total is now 33.5 miles (over 100,000 steps!).

(NOTE: Text is finished and links and photos still need to be added.)