Church Hopping

And now we finally come to the subject of Christianity. Yaki, our guide and instructor is Jewish and I suspect an atheist to boot, so his take on Jesus and the New Testament is a bit different than the one I recall. (To remind the reader, I did 19-20 years of hard time paying my debt to society in Sunday School.) Naturally, if Jesus is the subject de jour, a day in the field on the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee is mandatory. This was Jesus and his gang of disciples' stomping ground, where he spent most of his ministry and performed the majority of his miracles.

We started at an octagonal Roman Catholic church run by grumpy Italian nuns on the Mount of the Beatitudes. Yaki took us off to the side, hopefully out of the evil nuns' earshot, to explain at length about the Sermon on the Mount. Yaki thinks that even if Jesus existed, he never said or did the things 'they' say he did and in fact 'they' made it all up. He says that the Sermon on the Mount is a Christian invention meant to copy Moses giving the Torah on Mount Sinai. Yaki has a point; Jesus would have been a lot more original if he would have given the sermon in a bar. Jesus didn't really say anything new (Which is to be expected, him plagiarizing the Torah and all.); he just said that it's not enough to be good, but you have to really mean it. The nerve.

(In the meantime I'm on the lookout for angry nuns. Seeing how nasty they are to Catholic pilgrims, I can only imagine what they would do to a bunch of Jews bad mouthing Jesus.)

Despite my aversion to all things Catholic, I had to admit that the place is breathtaking. A short shower cleared the haze over the Sea of Galilee and freshened the gardens around the church. I decided to keep a safe distance from Yaki while he was Jesus-baiting and wandered in the grounds.

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It was a Sunday and groups from Brazil, Mexico, Germany and England had arrived in the meantime and finding quiet corners here and there, were celebrating mass. The Church has recently built a hostel for visitors, although this is misleading as from appearances it deserves at least four stars. As appealing as it looks, spending a night under the same roof with the cranky nuns isn't my idea of fun.

If I had the guts, I'd ask the nuns why they planted a big ol' church (with a big ol' plaque honoring the Pope that donated the funds to build it) smack on the spot where Jesus told his followers to (1) pray in private and (2) give alms in secret. As we were leaving, I wondered aloud if very many non-Catholics visit the place. I mean, the church and the bougainvilleas and the view are really swell, but they came all this way to see a hillside where Jesus spoke to the masses. You see lots of Catholicism, not much Jesus. Yaki is convinced that Evangelicals like the place, but my bet is that if they come at all, the first thing they do is cut through the garden and around the church, and head for the fence on the other side overlooking the lake.

Our next stop was at the bottom of the mount on the shore at the Church of the Primacy of Peter at Tabgha. This is where the Catholics say that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he rose from the dead. He asked Peter, who was apparently sitting on a rock at the time having lunch, to feed his sheep. The disciples, none of them being the sharpest tool in the shed and all of them being Roman Catholics, immediately set to work and built a church over the rock and made Peter the pope. In the meantime, a flock of sheep in Nazareth starved to death.

Yaki sat us down behind the church on the beach for yet more heresy, but coming in I noticed that the priest in charge of the place was being distracted by a couple of giggling (female) Filipinos that couldn't get enough of him, so I was pretty sure we were safe.

Next door to the Church of Peter's Primacy is the Church of the Multiplication. This is an odd name, as the Catholics are notoriously poor in mathematics. This is where the Church has decided that Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes, although anyone who has read the New Testament and is familiar with the local geography knows that the miracle could have taken place at any number of places around the lake except for Tabgha.

Unlike most churches which are closed all week and open only on Sundays, the Church of the Multiplication is open all week and closed on Sundays, so we didn't get to visit. Rats. Yaki says the place is worth a visit in our spare time if we get a chance. He explained that when the Church started building churches (After being legalized in 324 by Constantine the Great.), they built structures using the blueprints of pagan temples and simply translated the symbolism of idolatry to a Christian message. The Church of the Multiplication, built recently but on the guidelines of the ancient structures, is a standing example of what almost all churches looked like after Christianity came out of the closet.

Now, after Peter became the first pope they hadn't built Vatican City yet, so Peter had to live with his mother-in-law in Capernaum, which is just down the road from Tabgha. Not only was Peter the pope, but he was known for cracking great mother-in-law jokes from the pulpit. It wasn't long before they had to remodel the place to contain the ever growing congregation in Capernaum, and after Christianity was legalized they flattened the house and built an octagonal church instead. Unfortunately, in the meantime Peter had got fed up with living with his mother-in-law and had moved to Rome where he was crucified upside down.

Our visit to Capernaum was the first place in the day that smacked of authenticity and not Catholicism. A modern, round church has been built suspended over the ruins of the ancient one. Yaki fondly calls it "the flying saucer". The ruins which can be seen from under the church and from an opening inside are probably the first church built ever. They reflect the development of the Church from Jewish roots to an underground movement to an established state-recognized institution. An average home like any of the others on the site was renovated internally to allow large numbers of believers to congregate (but not externally lest it draw the attention of the authorities), and then in the fourth or fifth century was turned into a place of pilgrimage.

A fifth century synagogue a stones throw from the church, built of white limestone while the local stone is black basalt, was obviously imported. The Christian Byzantines prohibited the building of new synagogues, so it's possible that the local Jewish community purchased an existing building elsewhere, transported it here and reassembled it on its present site. Or perhaps the Church wanted a standing synagogue for pilgrims who wanted to see the synagogue where Jesus preached (John 6:59). Anyway you look at it, the white synagogue in Capernaum is a product of the Church.

While the Catholic church may have reinterpreted the pagan architecture, they didn't succeed in sterilizing the interior decorating of idolatry. It's hard to pick out Jesus among the host of images in a Catholic Church. I've been to quite a few churches over the last few months, and save for notable exceptions like the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the nun's church on the Mount of the Beatitudes, all of them are dedicated to saints, not Jesus.

The little girl with the doll caught my eye in the Greek Orthodox church at Capernaum. She was fascinated by the Madonna and child, and repeated approached the icon and imitated Mary cradling her doll like baby Jesus.

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We ended the day at the baptismal site at Yardenit. Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, but probably quite a bit downriver at Kassar el Yahud near the Dead Sea. Today the water flowing in the Jordan is for the most part treated and untreated sewage, so this spot near the Sea of Galilee where the water is still fresh is favored by Christians that want to be baptized in the waters that Jesus was. This is a site oriented to the Protestant crowd, and we came just in time to witness the baptism of a physician from California by Pastor Bob. He told his friends and family gathered around about his life since he had come to faith as a young medical student, then joined Christ symbolically under the water as Pastor Bob dunked him.

For me this underlined the difference between the Evangelical experience and Catholic pilgrimage. The Evangelical comes here seeking a closer relationship with Jesus. They want to see where he grew up, trace his footsteps and follow his ministry unobstructed by changes in the scenery, including beautiful churches, over the last 2000 years. And they want to meet his people, the Jews that live here today.
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For Catholics, it's all about the Church. They want to see the "Church Triumphant", and are perfectly willing to accept the interpretations they are spoon-fed by their clergy regardless if it contradicts historical research or even common sense. As the Pope's last visit to Israel made clear, the Catholic attitude towards Israelis is that they are trespassers, in both definitions of the word, in the holy land.

During the day Yaki mentioned the three towns Jesus cursed – Korazim, Bethesda and Capernaum (Luke 10:13-15). The first two are deserted ruins, but before Christians get too smug with this knowledge, consider this. The same earthquake that flattened the cursed towns also destroyed Christian Hippos known for the number of churches out of all proportion to the number of inhabitants. And Jesus' prophesy hasn't been totally fulfilled. There's still a small community of Franciscans living in Capernaum.

Better watch out………