Our Visit to Israel

We have returned from an outstanding visit to the nation of Israel. (See map of Israel here.) The trip far surpassed our expectations. The Spirit of God has put a love and commitment to that land and its peoples in our hearts in a deeper way than before this trip.

It was a 10-day Clergy Educational Tour and, boy, were we educated! Our tour guide gave us excellent information about the topography, history, politics and religions of the land. Of course, the most meaningful part for most of us was connecting our Christian faith to land where Jesus walked. For me personally, that was surprisingly more impacting that I had thought it would be.

One reality that I was immediately impressed with was how small Israel actually is. It is 350 miles long and 80 miles wide at the widest point. If there were a Canadian freeway you could drive the length of the country in 5 hours, and the width in just over one hour! And yet, century after century for millennia all kinds of civilizations have fought for ownership of that land. Wars, genocides, crusades, intifadas and terrorist activity have continued over the generations for this tiny piece of real estate.

I was not prepared for how stunningly beautiful the land is. I did not expect the mountains to be so mountainous or for there to be so much variety in the terrain. And of course, in the last 60 years or more the people have re-vegetated the land and it is no longer – in the north anyway – a barren and arid desert.

Here are some of the highlights of the trip for me:

1. Baptising the 4 people in our group who wanted to be baptised in the Jordan River – in frigid temperatures! Boy, was it cold! It was the first thing we did that morning so that didn’t help! I even tried to baptise myself but that didn’t take.

2. A boat ride on the Sea of Galilee. Elsie sang a song that the Holy Spirit had given her when she was first a believer; one of the lines was, “walking on the water by faith.” The boat owner was a Hebrew believer who also happened to be a worship leader. He sang a couple of songs and the presence of God filled that boat and our hearts. It was a special moment; some of us were visibly moved.

3. Nazareth Village, a Christian-run, open air museum that takes us back in time to the era when Jesus walked this earth. It was fascinating to see the kind of lifestyle that he would have lived. More than that, I was struck afresh by the fact that Jesus would have used everyday items and situations as analogies to make his point. So, for example, we saw the fours kinds of ground (pathway, rocky, thorny and fertile) that Jesus would have used to illustrate his point in the Parable of the Sower. There was little that was esoteric or abstract in what he said; everything he spoke about was grounded in everyday life of the people of his day. I’m gonna have to change my way of teaching! Be more like the master communicator... enough abstract, conceptual stuff...

4. Floating on the Dead Sea at 7:30 in the freezing cold morning was a definite highlight - although, it was not as cold as the Jordan. For a guy who can’t swim, floating in water was an amazing experience.

5. Jerusalem – the eternal city of God! Acres and acres of history, biblical and otherwise, and acres and acres of animosity, hatred and strife. The Western Wall, the Jewish quarter, the Arab quarter, the Christian quarter, the City of David, Hezekiah's tunnels were all fascinating. Further, make no mistake about it ALL the claims on Jerusalem are at the core based on religious understandings. Each group believes that they have a God-given right to that city to the exclusion of all others, so keep your eyes on Jerusalem because that is God’s eternal city and he calls the shots. Not the Jews… not the Arabs… not the Palestinians… not the Muslims… not the UN. He does. And he has made a covenant with the Jews, never mind how faithless and secularised they have become in large part. He is a covenant keeping God.

6. Yad Vashem, which means memorial. It was a “we will never forget” and “never again” to the Holocaust. Very moving, painful, sickening, perverse, depressing, evil. And it continues to happen in various parts of the world. I don't know if there is any group of people that has been so hated throughout all their history. It seems like every generation they is someone or some group that wants to exterminate the Jews. And yet, they are here only because of God's committment to a man a long time ago. Wow!

7. Being at the Garden Tomb and Golgotha was a precious moment as well. Our Christian guide for this part of the tour helped us bust a couple of myths about the death of Jesus. Jesus didn’t die on a “hill far away” on “an old rugged cross”. He died on a busy thoroughfare nailed to a tree that was growing beside the main road so that the populace could see and be terrified. That is what the Romans were after with their crucifixions. We had communion in that place near to where they would have laid his body and it was rainy and damp and cold and it was powerful.

As I write this I realise that most of the highlights I have written here have to do with experiences that I had in locations that relate to my Christian faith. And I realise now that this trip was actually a pilgrimage to the Holy Land of my Faith.  I would have shied away from that kind of language or concept before this trip, but now I can see that Israel has its most profound meaning to me not because of the covenant God is keeping with the Jews in returning them to the land, or the beautified nature and terrain, but primarily because I touched in some mystical way the reality of the historicity of my Christian faith. Jesus really walked this land from Bethlehem to Nazareth, to Capernaum, to Cana, to the Sea of Galilee, to Caesarea Philippi, he suffered, died and rose again in Jerusalem. And though it was 2000 years later in some inexplicable way I touched the historical reality of my faith in a way that I never expected. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t add to my faith (now I really, really believe!) but as I said in some way that I can’t articulate it was a profoundly meaningful experience.

There is so much more that I could say about the other dimensions of the trip but this would become much too long… it’s getting long as it is.

If you’ve never been I would highly recommend that you take a trip to Israel – add it to your Bucket List if its not there already. At the very least it is going to make your Bible reading more interesting because you’ll now know where the Sea of Galilee is in relation to Capernaum and Migdal (where Mary Magdelene was from). You’ll understand why it talks about the dew of Mt Hermon. Fascinating!