Transformation....Again

It's almost here. Just another few days and I will be taking off from Toronto on a plane bound for Istanbul, and from there to Amman, Jordan. After three days in Jordan, I'm moving on to Israel for another ten days. I can hardly wait.

Yesterday, I took the day off. I had to. I had been feeling anxious and irritable and unable to concentrate on anything because I want to be gone and I have to wait until Saturday. So I busied myself with a number of things I could do in preparation for the trip and I felt a great deal better. I probably shouldn't be all that excited because I've been there before. Everywhere but Istanbul and that hardly counts since we have only a brief lay-over to change planes. I've seen Petra and Mt. Nebo and Bethany (the Jordan version). I've been to Israel a half-dozen times and seen some of the same sites (sights) every time. Masada and Bethlehem and the old city of Jerusalem and the Garden Tomb. I always see something new but there IS a lot of repetition. Not only that, but being the Tour Leader, though it has it's perqs, is no vacation. People ask the most remarkable questions and have expectations that are often far from realistic. I can understand it. They're spending a lot of money on a journey that they are only going to do once in their life, so they want it to be perfect. However, it makes the life of a Tour Leader a constant strain as you try to balance all the needs and desires of fifteen or twenty people in a strange country and in the midst of a strange culture. The strain is so great that the last time I was there was in 2007, just before I began working at SCUC, towards the end of the trip, I begged a close friend who was travelling with us to shoot me if I ever considered doing this again. Within a year, I was already eager to go back.

So why am I eager? Because a journey to Israel changes you. It has a mystical and magical effect on everyone who takes the journey. I'm not fanatical about the devotion to "things" in religion, as anyone who reads this blog will know. I'm enough of a student of history and archaeology to understand that the "traditional" site that something happened and the actual site are often two very different places. I understand that my faith is not based on any association with places, dates, or even events. My faith is based on my relationship with God. However, I defy anyone to go to the Garden Tomb and not be moved by the spirit of the place. I can't see how anyone can stand on the Mount of the Beatitudes and not hear the echoes of Jesus' words. Blessed are those who can recite the whole passage. I was hushed in my very soul when I visited a small synagogue in Nazareth with stones worn smooth by the passage of sandals for more than two thousand years and realized that it was on these very stones that Jesus walked. Even the less "Christian" sites have great power. Petra is amazing. Masada is incredibly sad. Yad Vashem reduces a human being to a silent, introspective and profoundly depressed and angry state simultaneously. I can remember thinking, on my first trip in the late eighties, that this land had seen so much sorrow, anger and bloodshed since before the beginning of recorded history.

In Israel, when new soldiers are inducted into the armed services, they are marched out into the desert and up the snake trail to the top of Masada where they hear the story of the zealots who killed their family members and who died by their own hands rather than be captured by the Romans. Then they vow that such a price will "never again" be paid. Despite the similarities to the Nuremburg Rallies that were such a highlight of the very regime that gave modern meaning to the phrase "never again" for the Jews, there is a lesson to be learned.

If it were up to me, I would have a denominational fund to pay for every candidate who is about to graduate into ministry so that they could spend two weeks in Israel. I would be brutally frank about the archaeological record so that they would know that there are very few places where we can assume that Jesus actually walked. I would be crystal clear about the inherent and systemic racism that is the unfortunate by-product of Israeli-Arab friction. I would point out to every one of them that history did not stop in 30 C.E. when Jesus died. Neither did engineering, science, medicine, or the baser ambitions of people for power and money. I would let the area cast its spell over them and, hopefully, open their eyes to the harsher realities of life as well as the sweep of history and the beauty of what has been achieved by the human race in many areas, even in this pain-wracked land. Maybe then they would discover the humility of service instead of the arrogance of authority.

I have recently woken up, once again, to the fact that faith is about one's relationship with God; that I am here at God's whim; that God is for my growth, but also for my pruning. I am a servant. God is the Master. I am the hands and feet and not the mind of God. I feel priveleged to be considered worthy by God of whatever service I can do on God's behalf. I have a feeling that if more ministers subscribed to the same point of view, we see more saints in ministry and a lot fewer charlatans.