Transfiguration

In Israel where half the enlisted men are women, the old cliché "I ran into an old army buddy" doesn't always mean a reunion of brothers. Once upon a Yom Kippur, I was a young Israeli soldier pulling guard duty on a base near Haifa. Left behind while our comrades were fasting with their families, we unhappy few sat at the gate to pass the time. A girl (soldier) became the center of attention. And not (only) because of her feminine wiles - which would only be natural, her being the only female stuck on base with a bunch of lonely young men. No, she had something much more interesting, more mysterious, going for her. She had Jesus.

Her name was Melody. Between snacks, a few self appointed defenders of the Jewish faith were poking fun, although not successfully, as their ignorance of her faith, not to mention their own, was painfully obvious. Nonplussed by her tormentors, Melody was radiant, even cheerful. Maybe that's why I remember her 25 years later. Her warmth. Heat.

I grew up in the Church. I'd heard it all before, and it left me cold. For me, Christianity was an institution, churches, theology, rules. So her message wasn't new to me, but I was impressed by her delivery.

25 years later, Melody is a guide to Christian holy places. Naturally, I was curious. Is she still a believer? No, she laughed, but it’s a good living.

She met us at the Catholic Church on Mount Tabor. No trouble finding it. You can't miss it; it's just next door to the Greek Orthodox church. Mount Tabor is where 'The Church' claims Jesus took Peter, James and John to witness His transfiguration, which was a cosmic coming out of the closet, with Moses and Elijah making a cameo appearance. The disciples, who had always suspected that Jesus had divine tendencies, were nevertheless taken back.

Peter was psyched. "Hey Jesus, lets build three tabernacles up here for You and your friends!"
Jesus was less than excited about the idea. "I don't know…."
But Peter was on a roll. "You're right. Why think small? Tabernacles won't do. We'll build a huge church right here on top of the mountain. People will see it for miles around and come from far and wide, from all over the world! Just think of the tourist income! Think what it will do for the local economy!"
Jesus: "Peter, you're starting to sound like Judas."
Moses (to Jesus): "What's going on? Nobody said anything about this when they told me to come down here!"
Peter: "If we make the church big enough, visitors will be able to celebrate mass!"
Moses: "Mass?"
Jesus had heard enough. "We're finished here, guys. Let's go!"
Moses and Elijah headed on up to heaven while Jesus hustled His favorite disciples back to join the others – but not before reminding them to keep His little secret. Peter promptly posted it on his blog.

Melody says that Mount Hermon looks like a more likely candidate than Tabor for the mountain where Jesus was transfigured, but the Catholic Church owns real estate on Mt. Tabor, so that's where they built the Church of the Transfiguration. Inspired by St. Peter, the Italian architect Antonio Barlucci designed the church to appear like three (very fancy) tabernacles, with two small ones on either side of a big one (for Jesus, of course). The ceiling over the sanctuary is inlayed with alabaster to create an effect of heavenly light streaming down on the worshipers celebrating mass, but has been covered with a lead dome because the alabaster roof turned out to be leaky.

The village of Cana is where Jesus performed His first miracle by turning ordinary water into fine wine. Today the locals turn cheap hooch into tourist dollars. The Roman Catholic church is right across the alley from the Greek Orthodox one. The reason that you find so many holy sites with Catholic and Orthodox churches next to each other isn't because Greeks and Catholics like each other so much; it's more like McDonalds and Burger King setting up shop in the same food court at the mall. Pure and simple, its good ol' fashioned American competition.

In Nazareth, St. Gabriel's (Greek Orthodox) marks the place where Mary became the first virgin in history to test positive with a home pregnancy kit. Unlike Catholics, who clutter their churches with statues, Greek Orthodox churches have icons. Icons are simply 2 dimensional versions of Catholic images which can best described as saints who have been run over by a steamroller. These icons have nothing whatsoever to do with the icons you see on the Internet. Everyone knows that images on the net are creations of the Geek Orthodox Church.

The Catholic Church of the Annunciation is a short walk down Main Street from (you guessed it) the Greek Orthodox establishment. Its all about Mary at Annunciation. It reminds me of the joke about the proverbial fat girl in 3rd grade – she was so big that no matter where you sat in the classroom, you ended up sitting next to the fat girl. Melody pointed out the Mary mosaics on the walls,

Mary statues on the walls,

Mary in the fountain,

Mary on the door, and so on. You can't avoid Mary at Annunciation. (They also worship Jesus. He's the baby being cradled by some of the Marys.)

Melody finished the day at a rather neglected church crammed between vendors' stalls in the market which (they say) is the synagogue where Jesus prayed. It was the only place we visited where I thawed a little. Maybe because it wasn't just another grand monument to human creativity and endeavor; maybe because it was the only place that took us back to Jesus' Jewish roots.

Churches still leave me cold, but in 25 years I've warmed to Jesus. So it’s a bit ironic meeting Melody again. "Back then, I loved the story about a God who loves us so much," she recalls. "I wanted it to be true, so I believed it." Now she's not sure if Jesus ever existed. Still, when she talks about churches and their stories, its with warmth. I guess she's just a warm person.

When we started the day on Mount Tabor, Melody explained that "transfiguration" is a change in perception, how someone is percieved, not a change in being. Jesus didn't take on a different form on the mountain, rather his disciples saw Him for who He is. For 25 years Melody had existed in my mind as the glowing, red hot follower of the Messiah. But Melody isn't a memory, and in the course of that day she was transfigured back into person. A person with a life, a human being who's on a journey and has yet to arrive. But for at least for now, I see her for who she is.

A lot of things change in the space of a life time, so I guess it shouldn't be surprising that after 2000 years the Church that erupted with a simple, beautiful story about God's love has frozen solid into an icy institution carved by men. I don't think that Jesus has been transformed by the Church, but there has been a definite change in how He is presented and perceived.

Kind of like a transfiguration in reverse.

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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………

It Ends Here

We visited Megiddo on one of the few rainy days we've had this year. Megiddo's claim to fame is Armageddon (Hebrew: 'Har Megiddo') - the battle between the forces of good and evil that is prophesied to take place in the valley below. All the kings' horses and all the kings' men will gather in the North and come down the Via Maris, that ancient highway of armies, to make war on the good guys (Revelations 16:16).

Every now and then the clouds would break and the sun came out over the Jezreel Valley, green and pastoral – no sign of those evil kings.

Whew.

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Back in the good ol' days here in the Middle East, it wasn't easy to find a water source, arable land and high ground to defend yourself all in one spot, so the few places that had theses essentials became cities. Unfortunately, the ideal conditions that made a place attractive to build a city were also good reasons to conquer it. Over the years, a city would rise, be conquered and destroyed and a new one built on the ruins of the old. This phenomena unique to the Fertile Crescent, layers of civilizations built one on top of the other, produced small manmade hills called 'tels'.

Megiddo is the most visited tel in Israel. It used to have more than 25 strata of civilization dating back to prehistory. "Used to have" because a bunch of American archeologists peeled off a few layers in the roaring 20's of the twentieth century. Fortunately they either got tired of digging or realized that they were destroying the very subject they were researching and only excavated two or three civilizations that nobody cared about anyway. The Americans left the really good stuff for tourists. In the tourist season, probably more people visit Tel Megiddo than lived there at any one time, but hopefully their guides won't drag them out in the rain like our instructor did to my group.

Today the tel is just a hill smack in the middle of Israeli hick country, but in the Bronze Age (Which the local Canaanites called 'the Canaanite Period' for obvious reasons.) Megiddo was a major player in world politics and corresponded with then superpower Egypt. Some of this diplomatic mail has survived (see Amarna letters) and been deciphered by archeologists in spite of their notoriously terrible handwriting. The king of Megiddo complained to Pharaoh about riffraff called 'Hipiru' that were making life miserable. Pharaoh responded by sending Megiddo state of the art military technology – chariots and spears which were Bronze Age equivalents of modern day F-16 fighters and machine guns.

(We visited Megiddo only a week after the war with Hamas in Gaza, and I couldn't help thinking to myself, "This sounds familiar." Little Middle East country fighting terrorism with modern weapons provided by a superpower far away. Hmmm……..)

According to historians, one of these groups of Hipiru called the Israelites eventually whipped the Canaanites and burned down Megiddo. (You will find an entirely different version of the story in the Bible, but since they didn't find any Bibles in Megiddo, archeologists don't buy it.)
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One of the Israelites named King Solomon was very smart and decided that the reason the Canaanites lost the war wasn't because their defense strategy depended on chariots, but rather because they didn't have enough chariots. With this in mind, he rounded up all the Israelites and threw them into forced labor gangs to rebuild Megiddo into a chariot city. (I Kings 9:15) The Israelites were less than excited by this. Like one of them noted, "If we would have known that we were going to have to rebuild Megiddo, we wouldn't have done such a good job of wrecking it in the first place." (Archeologists don't have problems with the Biblical account because they found remains of the stables, which also come in handy when taking notes.)

After King Solomon died, the Israelites divided the country up into two kingdoms; Judah in the south for every one related to Solomon and Israel in the north for everybody else. With lots of chariots and spears, the Israelites felt so confident that they even built a winter palace for their king at Jezreel, not far from Megiddo. (We visited the palace, but take it from me, you need a very active imagination to see any similarity between the pile of rocks our instructor showed us and a palace.)

Solomon was very wise, but his theory that lots of chariots could save the Israelites proved mistaken. One fine day the king of Assyria showed up with something beyond even Solomon's imagination, namely lots and lots of Assyrians. The Assyrians looked at the Israelites old fashioned chariots, just laughed a little and sacked Megiddo (Not again!).


By afternoon the clouds had cleared and the sun came out. We went to Maayan Harod. It’s a natural spring that flows out of a cave at the foot of Mount Gilboa.

Gideon was a prophet that farmed for a living in the valley a few years before Solomon came along. Gideon wasn't as smart as Solomon and his military strategy was very different. He gathered up all the Israelites for battle, but then God told him, "Gideon, you got too many Israelites. Choose 300 and send the rest home, and get rid of those silly chariots while you're at it." This made sense to Gideon, because his strategy was based on trusting God. Gideon and his 300 sneaked up on the enemy at night, broke some pottery and waved torches and chase the bad guys away. (Archeologists don't believe this story, but I do because there's a lot of broken pottery in Israel.)

We finished the day at a look out point on Mount Gilboa. The sun was setting and we were supposed to be listening to our instructor, but something else caught my eye. A reservist returning from the fighting in Gaza, a modern day Israelite, was standing on a rock overlooking the valley. And it struck me that nothing's really changed here in 3000 years.

We twenty first century Israelites are fighting the same kind of battles Gideon fought 3000 years ago. Sometimes the other guys destroy our cities, and sometimes we destroy theirs. We have the latest in military gadgetry. Tanks and planes and guns every bit as good as those chariots that used to dominate the battle field. Lately we have been pretty sure of ourselves.

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But now they say Iran is cooking up something beyond our imagination, and if they're right our tanks will be no better than a bunch of silly chariots. And after the latest round with the Hamas, the question everyone's asking, 'When is it going to end?"

I was talking about it with one of the guys I study with, a believing Jew that's got a little of Gideon in him. He said, "Yeah, it's pretty scary. But you know, when it comes down to it, it's this: you just got to trust in God."

When is it going to end? Nobody knows.

But according to the prophet of Revelations, it ends here.

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An Irresistable Force

What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?

Modern Israel's northern border meets the Mediterranean at a place called Rosh Hanikra. A coastal plain separates the range of mountains that form the backbone of Israel. Stone rarely meets the sea in Israel, so the range of limestone cliffs that marks the frontier is unusual here. For thousands of years water has pounded on stone. Here and there cracks caused by seismic activity have been widened and carved into caves and grottos by the force of the waves.

Just over the hills are Hezbollah terrorists. This isn't just a border. 'The front lines' would be a better word for it, and the Navy patrol boat standing guard is a reminder of that.

In the 1930's Arabs rose up against the British masters of the Palestinian Mandate as well as the Jews living there. The local town of Nahariya was back then an isolated outpost in a sea of hostility. The response to this was to establish 55 new settlements. Since any new Jewish presence would immediately provoke a violent response from the locals, the settlers would arrive in the morning with prefabricated buildings complete with a bullet proof perimeter and guard tower and by nightfall a new kibbutz was an established fact on the ground. Today's Kibbutz Hanita was one of these "Wall and Tower" settlements, founded 21st of March, 1938.

After the Holocaust it was clear that living in exile was no longer a option for Jews. But exhausted by World War II and Arab resistance to a Jewish homeland, the British had caved in to pressure to prevent immigration of Jewish survivors of Hitler's final solution to Palestine.

On the night between 16 and 17 of June, 1946 the Palmach (the Jewish Agency's underground elite resistance unit) was dispatched to blow up 11 connecting Mandatory Palestine to the surrounding countries. The idea was to get the British Foreign Service's attention, no more. The plan was designed to involve little or no loss of life, but when the force approaching Achziv bridge near Nahariya was discovered before planting explosives, a fire fight broke out and 13 palmachniks were killed. Their bodies were taken away and buried by the authorities in a mass grave. Recently their families recovered the remains and today they are interred together in the ground where they fell in 1946.

In the hills near Hanita is the Rainbow cave. It's actually an arch. According to the Bedouins that live near by, a Muslim holy man gathered everyone in the area to the cave for 'revival meeting'. The locals were hardened sinners and laughed at the preacher when he told them to repent of their ways. The preacher called on Allah to punish the hecklers, and so he did – bringing the roof of the cave down on the evil, leaving only an arch over the head of the preacher.
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Geologists say that the roof of the cave collapsed long before Islam. Water slowly eroded the soft chalk stone underneath the limestone forming a cave in the cliffs and eventually the roof caved in, leaving only an arch. Regardless of whom you believe, the Bedouins or the scientists, standing on the arch at the end of the day and watching the sun go down over the Mediterranean is breathtaking. (And I didn't poke fun at Allah until I got off the arch.)

When the time came for the Jewish nation to return to its homeland, it proved to be an irresistible force, like the relentless waves that carve channels into stone, patient as raindrops eroding opposition. Arab resistance and the British Empire, as immovable as they were, were no match for the tides of destiny that carved out the modern Jewish state called Israel.