Third Sunday in Lent

3rd Sunday in Lent
February 24, 2008
John 4:5-42
Thomas Arth

Neil Alexander, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta,
tells a story about something that happened to him one day
as he was walking down the street in New York City.
"It was early on a weekday morning
and even though spring was just around the corner,
the night had been cold and the morning air still had a bite to it.
As I was walking to the church
to get there in time for an early morning celebration of the Eucharist,
I encountered a homeless man who had slept the night
on an old piece of cardboard.
He made his bed over a sidewalk grate
near the steam exhaust of an apartment building.
"It was the best he could do.
He was still shivering from the cold;
his clothes were thin.
He had no gloves, no hat, no topcoat.
I suspect he had not eaten in several days.
As I passed him on the sidewalk, our eyes met,
and when they did, I knew I would have to stop for a moment
to speak to him and ask if there was anything I could do.
He didn't ask for much.
He didn't want a coat or a better place to stay.
He didn't even ask if I had any food vouchers
from one of the neighborhood delis.
I reached in my pocket,
thinking I would give him a couple of quarters for a hot cup of coffee.
But he seemed not to want anything
that might make his life more comfortable
on this cold morning on the streets of the city.

"‘No, Father,' he said,
‘all I need for you to do is to give me a blessing.'
‘Give you a blessing?' I asked,
somewhat surprised by his request.
‘Yes, that's all,' he said, ‘a blessing.'
So I knelt down beside him on the sidewalk,
said a prayer with him and laid my hands upon his head
and gave him a blessing.
With a peaceful look upon his face,
like he had received a gift that he had been waiting for
for a very long time, he picked up his cardboard bed
and a little bag of belongings
and walked haltingly down the street in the opposite direction."

It wasn't a chilly early New York morning,
instead it was noontime under a hot sun.
Jesus sat near a well just outside a Samaritan town.
Noon on a hot day is no time to be out and about in that part of the world.
If you're going for water,
which meant lugging some heavy jars back and forth,
then you go in the cool hours of the morning.
That's what everybody does.
You meet all your neighbours around the well,
catch up on the latest news.
But at noon, you don't want to be doing that kind of hard work
not at that time of day.
That's the time for a siesta somewhere out of the sun.
At noontime on this day there are only two people at the well.
Jesus has been walking and he sits to rest while the disciples go
to replenish their provisions for the journey.
And there's a woman.
Why is she coming at noon?
Maybe she's tired of the way people talk to her
and talk about her when she approaches.
She'd rather suffer through the noonday heat
than suffer through their insults anymore.
Maybe she's not welcome in the circles of conversation
around the well in the morning.
We hear in the gospel reading that she's had five husbands already
and the guy she's hanging with now isn't her husband at all.
Ashamed. Shunned. It's just her and Jesus this day.

She wouldn't be too surprised if he avoided her like all the rest.
You see, because of certain Jewish purity laws most men and women
didn't have much contact with each other,
and certainly not if they were strangers.
Women of a certain age were considered unclean
for about 7 days out of a month
and if a man came into contact with her during that time
he'd become unclean.
The woman who came to the well was a Samaritan
and Jewish men considered Samaritan women unclean
the whole month long, their whole lives long.
Also, this man was a rabbi
and women weren't considered worthy of any sort of discussion
with a learned man like him.
But Jesus doesn't shun her, doesn't avoid her,
he asks her for a drink of water.
"You're a Jew," she replied, "and I'm a Samaritan.
How can you ask me for a drink of water
when Jews and Samaritans
won't have anything to do with each other."
Then this Jewish rabbi starts a theological discussion
with this Samaritan woman.
"You don't know what God wants to give you,
and you don't know who's asking you for a drink.
If you did,
you'd ask me for the water that gives life."

The disciples come back from their shopping
and find Jesus talking with this woman
and are surprised.
They don't say anything but surely they're thinking,
"This isn't right."
"What's he doing?"
But Jesus is always surprising them.
Does he surprise us anymore,
or do we have Jesus all figured out?

Pastor Kevin Powell who's a friend of mine
wrote this on his weblog this week:
I've met the woman at the well, several times.
Once, it was a woman in a dirty, smoke-filled apartment.
She had called the church for help and I went to go see her
armed with a bag of groceries.
As I was leaving she said,
"I want to go to church, can I come to your church?"
Those were her words but that wasn't what she was asking.
What she was really asking was
"Will someone like me be welcome in your church?"
I pictured her in our pews,
her gray greasy hair, her yellowed fingers, soiled skirt,
and her booze and nicotine stained breath,
mingling with men in ties and suit jackets,
women in dresses and children in jeans.
Nice, middle-class folks.
Nothing wrong with that.
It's who we are.
And I thought that like the woman at the well was to the disciples,
she'd be a challenge to our congregation.
But a challenge our congregation would definitely step up to.
"Yes," I told her,
"we'd love to have you worship with us."

That's what that pastor wrote about his congregation.
Could we say the same for ours?
When I came here, nearly 6 years ago, I couldn't have asked
for a warmer welcome from the people of this church
and so far nobody is showing me the door.
But the reception a new pastor and his family receives
isn't always the same one
that another person coming into the church might receive.
In the meantime we've welcomed a few new people into our church family
and I've heard from some of them
that they felt just as warmly welcomed
by the people of this congregation
as I felt when I came here.
But when you look at our congregation
they're not all that distinguishable from the rest of us.
"Nice middle-class folks,"
as Pastor Kevin described his congregation.
But what if the woman at the well came among us?

Who might the woman at the well be for us?
Might it be the guy with the wild hair
who passes you on the street talking to himself?
You think to yourself, "What does he want here anyway?"
And since you've grown up in the same town
and know the kind of things he's been involved in
during his life you also know
that he's not the kind of person
that we normally get in this place.
Would he really fit in?
Maybe this is the only time he'll come here.
He'll soon see that this isn't the place for him.

Who might the woman at the well be for us?
Might it be the teenager who's never been in a church,
who doesn't understand the order of service
the way it's printed in our bulletin,
and who fidgets through the entire service
disturbing the people sitting behind her?
She probably didn't know that we have a traditional style of worship.
Maybe she was thinking this is one of those churches
with drums and a praise band.
Surely that's what she's looking for in a church.
She won't be back.

Who might the woman at the well be for us?
Might it be the gay couple who try to be inconspicuous,
but everyone can tell?
They've been shut out or have been made to feel totally unwelcome
in some of the other churches they've tried.
They're hoping that this church might accept them.
What do they want with our church anyway?
They're just going to stir things up and anyway,
their kind make a lot of people uncomfortable,
and the Bible is very clear that their lifestyle is sinful.
If we give them the cold shoulder
they'll move on soon enough.

Who might the woman at the well be for us?
Might it be the woman of questionable morals?
The last one out of the bar on many a night.
The one who's not too choosy about who shares her bed.
The one whose skirt is too short, whose blouse is too tight,
whose make-up is too bright, whose jewelry is too flashy.
This is no place for her.
She'll soon be back to sleeping in on Sunday morning.

Who might the woman at the well be for us?
Might it be the kid who's been suspended from school a few times
for bullying?
He's got no manners, doesn't respect his elders,
always talking back to teachers.
Do we want a kid like that in Sunday School with our sweet kids?
What kind of influence will he be
when we're trying so hard to raise good and polite children?

Who is the woman at the well for you?
How do you look at her?
Jesus could have seen a woman, an unclean woman,
a woman unworthy of conversation with a rabbi,
and left it at that.
But he didn't.
He saw a daughter of God.
He saw a troubled soul.
And he couldn't help but share living water with her.
"No one who drinks the water I give will ever be thirsty again.
The water I give is like a flowing fountain that gives eternal life."
After her conversation with Jesus
the Samaritan woman forgot what she even came for.
She left her jar by the well and ran back to her village
and told everyone about this Jesus.
This Jesus who didn't just follow rules.
This Jesus who showed love, showed compassion.
This Jesus who had the gift of eternal life to give,
to give even to a sinful Samaritan woman.

Bishop Alexander was on his way,
on that cold spring morning,
to serve as a priest, to preach the gospel,
to give Holy Communion to the people.
On his way a homeless man asked him for a blessing.
That's what priests do. It seemed so normal.
But the priest discovered that he was the one who received the blessing.
Instead of a well in Samaria, it was a steam grate in New York City,
but there the priest met Jesus who quenched his thirst
and gave him a taste of eternity.
Who is your woman at the well?
Could it be you?
Maybe you're the sinner
and maybe Jesus is the man with the wild hair,
the teenager who's never been to church,
the gay couple,
the woman in the short skirt,
the schoolyard bully.
When you think you've got Jesus figured out, think again.
He might just surprise you.
Jesus comes to us, Jesus meets us, and our lives are changed.
Then we might say,
along with the people from that Samaritan village,
"We have faith in Jesus because we have heard him ourselves,
and we are certain that he is the Saviour of the world!"
Amen

Tagged

Kevin tagged me for this meme:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five other people.

The nearest book is one I bought simply because the title intrigued me and it was in the bargain bin. I haven't read it yet. It's called The Christian and the Pharisee: Two Outspoken Religious Leaders Debate the Road to Heaven by Dr. R.T. Kendall and Rabbi David Rosen. Here it goes.

"Most of them became either universalists, annihilationists, existentialists, or all the above. Some of them left the ministry they had come to train for since they came to regard the Bible as a faulty and unreliable document and saw no reason to uphold the faith they once thought they believed. I was exposed to the same evidence they had examined, I read the same books they read and explored the same higher criticism of the biblical documents that so many of my friends took on board."

Now, who to tag...
LutheranChik, Andy, Kelly, Beth, and Melissa, you're it!

Books I've Read

So, Kevin listed all the books he read last year. I don’t read that much but I thought I’d share about the books I’ve read so far this year.

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

This book must have received a lot of media hype last year because I ended up with 3 copies of it. I was at a local discount shop, a place that gets a lot of one-off stuff, remaindered stuff, stuff with a torn box but the contents are perfectly good. I’ve noticed a lot of Costco stuff in that store. And they sell it at a great price. It’s our favourite store in town. But I digress.

Just before Christmas we were in there and I saw this book, read the jacket, and it looked interesting to me so I bought it. Well, it’s true that you shouldn’t buy yourself anything just before Christmas because I got it as a present from a sister-in-law, explained that I already had it, and passed it on to my brother-in-law. Then, just after Christmas, at a 12th Night Party a parishioner gave it to me as well. I explained that it was now my third copy and passed it on to someone else at the party and said she could just pass it on when she finished with it.

It’s a really neat book. It’s interesting. It’s funny. It makes you think. Jacobs admits that he’s an agnostic but it started to sound like he was discovering something profound as the year went on. The Holy Spirit? I noticed it the most when he wrote about prayer. He prayed because it was commanded but his praying seemed to change the way he thought about people and things. It’s like if you pray for someone you can’t help but start to feel godly toward them.


Living Lutheran: Renewing your Congregation by Dave Daubert

I find this to be a very practical book. Daubert is now part of the A.R.E. (A Renewal Enterprise) team of Kelly Fryer and Tana Kjos. If you read Fryer’s Reclaiming the "L" Word: Renewing the Church from Its Lutheran Core then you might remember the "Five Guiding Principles" that she and her congregation came up with during their renewal.

Daubert writes about developing and using a Purpose Statement as well as developing Guiding Principles to help with congregational renewal. He even gives a sample day-long retreat agenda for developing the statement and principles. I’m hoping/planning to do this in my congregation.
An example that I found enlightening and (hopefully) encouraging refers to an ELCA study that found that after a decade-long churchwide evangelism strategy, membership and attendance overall had declined. The study found that declining and growing congregations had tried some of the same evangelism techniques and tactics but the growing congregations were almost always clear about two things. "First, they were clear about their purpose or their vision for ministry. They had an understanding of what God was doing and how they could be a part of that. It was known and shared by the membership. It was as important to many in the pews as it was to the pastors in the pulpit. Second, these vibrant congregations showed an openness to change in order to be faithful. ‘We’ve never done it that way before,’ was replaced with, ‘What do we need to do to be effective for God?’" (p. 15).

When I mentioned this to our council earlier this month I was greeted mostly by silence but at least no opposition.


The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

I received this book from another sister-in-law who got it used herself and then passed it on after reading it. I really liked it. It’s rather sad at times, but there is redemption as well.

This is a screwed up family because of one decision that turned into a secret that snowballed into an unhappy marriage, an unhappy family. The truth does finally come out in a way but it doesn’t make everything better all of a sudden. It’s realistic. Even though it doesn’t end "happily ever after" I found it to be a happy ending.


Reclaiming the "C" Word: Daring to be Church Again by Kelly Fryer

This was a re-read. I love the stuff Kelly Fryer writes. I’m a regular visitor to her blog. Her next "reclaiming" book is supposed to come out this week, Reclaiming the "E" Word: Waking Up to Our Evangelical Identity. I look forward to getting it and reading it. Fryer is challenging to me. I get excited by the possibilities that I see for our churches. But I like some of what the church is and does and sometimes she says, or implies, that what we’re doing is holding us back from being all that we can in God’s mission.

I’m kind of a fan of the vestments, the ceremony, the liturgy, the organ, the old hymns. Can’t we keep that as we renew the church, as we dare to be church again? It might take a while for me to let go of some things and take others up.

Crappy TV

We've become more and more disappointed with what's on TV. I admit that I'm something of a TV junky. But there used to be much better stuff on the tube. What ever happened to sitcoms? There used to be stuff on there that you could watch with your kids. There are still sitcoms on TV but very little that I'd consider suitable for watching as a family. Most of them seem to be about sex. I find some of them funny but only watch them once the kids are in bed.

The problem is all of the "reality" shows. You don't have to pay actors. You don't need very talented writers. You just need some idiots who want to make fools of themselves by singing badly, by locking themselves into a house with a bunch of strangers, by doing stupid stunts

A few years ago we started buying some of our old favourite programs on DVD. We've got the entire series of M*A*S*H, we've got some seasons of Home Improvement, some seasons of I Love Lucy, some Happy Days, some Cosby, some of the britcoms like Vicar of Dibley, Bless Me Father, As Time Goes By, Ballykissangel, All Creatures Great and Small.

What's annoying is that we bought the first three seasons of Boy Meets World and the first season of Murphy Brown and now we've found that they're not releasing any more of either of those series because sales were less than they hoped for the ones they did release. AAARRRGGGHHH!

If I Were American

I took a quiz here and it told me how closely I agree with the different presidential candidates in the U.S. It turns out I’m a Hillary fan. Here’s how the numbers came out for me.

Clinton — 90.31%
Obama — 88.02%
Huckabee — 70.69%
Romney — 68.10%
McCain — 67.19%
Paul — 64.57%

I know I’m on the left side of the political spectrum. I haven’t followed the races in the U.S. very closely so I didn’t really know who I favoured based on issues or personalities. This quiz puts only 2.29% between Clinton and Obama when it comes to my agreement with them.

I find it very strange how different candidates seem to get support from different segments of society. For instance one gets more hispanic/latino support, another black support, another women’s support, another union support, then the various religious factions and their support. Then it often hinges on personalities and endorsements by various politicians and celebrities.

I wish elections were held, and people's votes were cast, based on a real platform and real issues rather than soundbites and fragmenting the population into various interest groups. Tell me what you're going to do for me, for my country, for my planet. But more importantly tell me what you're going to do for those who can't speak up for themselves, for the ones who need a lot more help than I need, for future generations.

Lent?

The season after Epiphany was too short. Now it's Lent already. Lent is supposed to mean spring. But Lent will end just as spring starts.

So, what do I give up for Lent? In years past I've tried giving up pop and chips. I managed to do it but was miserable about it. Is that the point of fasting from something?

This year I decided that instead of giving anything up I'll take up a few things. I'll be more intentional about reading the Bible (other than what I have to read to prepare a sermon), setting aside time for prayer (besides the anytime, anywhere prayers), and I'll add some physical activity into my routine. So:

• I'll read the daily scripture readings suggested in my desk calendar.
• I'll pray the Great Litany (LBW p. 168 or ELW 238).
• I'll get out the skipping rope and get my heart rate up and try to gradually increase the time I spend at it.

How does that stack up to the discipline of Lent that contends against evil and resists whatever leads us away from love of God and neighbour? Self-examination and repentance, prayer and fasting, sacrificial giving and works of love? Maybe part of that is in there.

I'm preaching tonight about alms-giving, fasting, and prayer (Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21). Really I'm quoting a lot from Walter Wangerin Jr.'s Whole Prayer: Speaking and Listening to God where he talks a bit about those disciplines. Maybe I'll slip some fasting into my lenten discipline. I don't know how, yet, or when. But I'll have to find some way to do it without it making me miserable.

Have a blessed Lent everyone.

Sick Sucks

I have been sick for a week and a half. It started after church on the Second Sunday after Epiphany (Jan. 20). I just couldn't keep warm so I wore my coat through the soup lunch that our Evangelical Lutheran Women served and through the annual congregational meeting that followed. After the meeting I went home and fell asleep on the couch under a blanket. I woke a couple of hours later and went up to bed. That evening I had a fever of 103 ("hot blooded, check it and see").

That week our local ministerial was having services for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and I was scheduled to preach on the Tuesday (Jan. 22). I dragged myself out of bed to preach there and then got back in bed for the rest of the week. I started feeling better by the weekend but didn't have time to write a sermon so I downloaded one from textweek.com that I thought was pretty good. I wasn't as impressed on Sunday when I read it from the pulpit. Sunday morning I was having sweats again so I didn't shake hands with anyone and asked someone else to distribute Holy Communion in my place.

This week I'm a bit better but somehow not 100%. I don't know what I had or have. It's not really a cold, not really flu either. It was a fever that came and went, I'd alternate between chills and sweats, I'd have a headachy, light-headed feeling at times that I'd take Tylenol for. This week I wake up feeling fine but as the day progresses I feel more and more crappy.

Now I'm trying to catch up on things I didn't do last week. I started a 7 week Bible Study series on Monday night. I have a council meeting tonight. I have a funeral tomorrow. I'm driving 3 kids to the Seminary Youth Day two hours away on Saturday. And next week Lent starts which isn't really a reduced workload. I hope I get some of my energy back by then.

John Calvin?

Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as John Calvin Much of what is now called Calvinism had more to do with his followers than Calvin himself, and so you may or may not be committed to TULIP, though God's sovereignty is all important. John Calvin 87% Jürgen Moltmann 80% Anselm 60% Karl Barth 53% Martin Luther 47% Paul Tillich 40% Charles Finney 33% Augustine 27% Jonathan Edwards 20% Friedrich Schleiermacher 20%

...about Nine Ladies Dancing

I wrote this for the local newspaper and it appeared this past Wednesday.


Today is the ninth day of Christmas, thus the reference to Nine Ladies Dancing. By now many of the gifts from last week’s Christmas celebrations might be put away, some forgotten, some maybe even broken. You might be tired of leftover turkey. Hopefully you’ve recovered from New Year’s Eve celebrations. Now you might have credit card statements to look forward to, more likely to dread. You think you spent a lot on Christmas gifts? Think about the bill for the gifts the “True Love” gave in the song.

• 12 Partridges in Pear Trees
  
• 22 Turtle Doves
  
• 30 French Hens
  
• 36 Calling Birds
  
• 40 Golden Rings
  
• 42 Geese a-Laying
  
• 42 Swans a-Swimming
  
• 40 Maids a-Milking
  
• 36 Ladies Dancing
  
• 30 Lords a-Leaping
  
• 22 Pipers Piping
  
• 12 Drummers Drumming

It’s not exactly a list you’d consult when you need a gift idea for your true love (except maybe the golden rings). And I think this gift giver went a little overboard.

Now I’m not one of those who constantly complains about the commercialism and materialism of Christmas. I do think that some people do go overboard, not necessarily with 42 Swans a-Swimming etc., but by spending way beyond their limit or by not setting a limit at all.

I like giving gifts at Christmas and I like getting gifts as well. I’ve been through 42 Christmases and I still like getting frivolous toys like some new video games and DVDs to mindlessly while away the hours in front of the TV. Sometimes a bit of escape can be a really good thing.

I guess you’d expect a pastor to come up with the good Sunday School answer that Christmas isn’t really about the giving and getting of presents. Or maybe the next best thing might be something about the “spirit of giving.” But this year I told my own kids that Christmas is really all about getting.

If you really think about it that’s what Christmas is about. Not primarily about the fat man in the red suit, although that’s part of it too. Christmas is about the greatest gift ever, given to all people. That’s the message the angel had for the shepherds on the first Christmas. “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11).

See, Christmas is all about getting. And this “spirit of getting” lasts all year. Salvation isn’t restricted to the 12 days from December 25 to January 5. It’s a gift “for all the people” all year round and their whole lives long. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. May the peace of Christ rule in your hea

Nativity of Our Lord 2007

Nativity of Our Lord — Christmas Eve
December 24, 2007
Luke 2.1-14 [15-20]
Thomas Arth

The hills are bare at Bethlehem,
No future for the world they show;
Yet here new life begins to grow,
From earth's old dust a greenwood stem.

The hills are cold at Bethlehem,
No warmth for those beneath the sky;
Yet here the radiant angels fly,
And joy burns new, a fiery gem.

The heart is tired at Bethlehem,
No human dream unbroken stands;
Yet here God comes to mortal hands,
And hope renewed cries out: "Amen!"
Royce J. Sherf

Many of you know, but some may not know,
that a couple of months ago I participated in a tour
called a Bible Lands Discovery Tour.
We were a group of 25 people from B.C., Alberta,
Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario and
we started our tour in Egypt, traveling on to Jordan,
and ending up in Israel.
While in Israel we visited some of the sites
where some of the events in the life of Jesus took place,
or may have taken place,
and one of those places was Bethlehem.

I was looking forward to visiting Bethlehem.
I wanted to see Christmas Town.
Not the place up at the North Pole
where Santa and his elves make preparations for tonight's deliveries.
I was looking forward to seeing the first Christmas town.
The place where Mary delivered to us a Saviour.
The place where shepherds heard the angels' hymn of praise
and a message of good news of great joy for all people.
Someone on the tour who had been to the Holy Land 10 years ago
warned me that I'd probably be disappointed,
but I didn't want to hear that so I ignored it
and continued to look forward to visiting Bethlehem.

Well, it wasn't what I expected.
Oh, I knew I wouldn't be seeing the Bethlehem
of our Christmas Greeting Cards.
I knew it wouldn't be a tiny village
that had a few inns with stables out back.
Maybe if I'd done a bit more research
I would have known what to expect.
What I found was a big city, a fairly busy city,
with lots of traffic in the streets.
It was also a somewhat poor looking place.
It was quite a contrast to the parts of Jerusalem
that we had come through on our way to Bethlehem.
The impression of Bethlehem that stays in my mind the most
is the wall.
You see, Bethlehem is in the West Bank, that portion of Israel
that had been a part of the country of Jordan from 1948 to 1967.
The population of the West Bank is mostly Palestinian
and the Israeli government
has approved the construction of a barrier.
The name of the barrier depends on who you're asking.
The Israeli government calls it a "security fence"
and Palestinians call it an "apartheid wall."
To avoid either of these political connotations the BBC, for one,
uses the terms "barrier," "separation barrier,"
or "West Bank barrier" as generic descriptions.
The total length when finished will be about 700 kilometres,
90% of which will be a network of fences and trenches
and 10 % of which will be 8 metre high concrete walls.
I'm not going to get into the pros and cons and the politics of the barrier.
The reason I'm making mention of it
is that I was rather disturbed by it when I was there.
To get into Bethlehem from Jerusalem,
our tour bus had to pass through a check-point on the way in
and again on the way out,
and the barrier in this place is the concrete wall,
a huge imposing wall, 8 metres high (that's 26 feet).
Just on the outskirts of Bethlehem we looked down into a quiet valley
that could have been the kind of place
where the shepherds might have watched their flocks
on the night of Jesus' birth,
and we were told that the barrier wall
will go down the centre of that valley.

It was disturbing to me because it's so unfamiliar to me.
We live in a relatively peaceful part of the world.
We don't see soldiers standing on every street corner.
My travels didn't take me anywhere near any current conflict
but the evidence was there.
The wall, the check-points,
the metal detectors on the way into every hotel and mall.
As we drove up in the Golan Heights we passed fields that were fenced
and signs on the fences that warned of landmines in those fields.
We saw soldiers all over the place.
Military service is required there and I saw young women,
to me they were still girls,
in uniform with rifles slung over their shoulders.
Some tourist areas and hotels had soldiers stationed out front.
It was disturbing and it was sad
that there isn't peace in the birthplace of the Prince of Peace.
But then I had to think that it's nothing new.
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem
the land was under occupation by Rome.
Beginning during the reign of Augustus Caesar
there was a relative peace in the Roman Empire
but it was a peace enforced by the military,
a peace filled with tension and resentment.
Israel was a place where uprisings
had to frequently be put down by force.
It would be easy to understand how someone might express
the sentiment described in the hymn I sang.
The hills are bare at Bethlehem,
No future for the world they show;
But into that place and time of unrest and seeming hopelessness
a couple of poor travelers make a journey
from Nazareth to Bethlehem.
And they know something the rest of the world hasn't yet heard.
Yet here new life begins to grow,
From earth's old dust a greenwood stem.
Mary had received the promise.
"Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.
Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God.
And now, you will conceive in your womb
and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.
He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High,
and the Lord God will give him the throne
of his ancestor David.
He will reign over the house of Jacob forever,
and of his kingdom there will be no end."
Joseph also received the promise.
"Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,
for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus,
for he will save his people from their sins."

In the Egyptian portion of our Bible Lands Tour we visited Mount Sinai,
the place where tradition says Moses brought the liberated Israelites
and received the Ten Commandments.
We were given the opportunity to climb the mountain.
We started out at 12:30 in the middle of the night
so that we would be at the top to watch the sunrise.
As we headed toward our climb
we could pick out the small fires of Bedouin guides in the cold night.
Some of them would be our guides as we climbed.
As I saw the men huddled around their fires
with their camels lying nearby
I could imagine the shepherds
on the hillsides around Bethlehem
trying to find some warmth
as they kept watch over their sheep.
The hills are cold at Bethlehem,
No warmth for those beneath the sky;
But out in those fields on the sides of those hills
they would hear God's words of promise as well.
They would hear a choir concert like no one had ever heard
or has heard since.
Those shepherds on the hills outside of Bethlehem
weren't in any position to afford expensive concert tickets.
They were the working poor.
But then an angel appeared.
"Do not be afraid;
for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:
to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
who is the Messiah, the Lord.
This will be a sign for you:
you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth
and lying in a manger."
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host,
praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favours!"
Yet here the radiant angels fly,
And joy burns new, a fiery gem.
The shepherds went to see for themselves what the angel had told them
and returned, glorifying and praising God
for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Who was that good news for?
We hear the readings for this night,
especially the Gospel reading, the familiar story of Jesus' birth.
"In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus ..."
and right away our minds go into history mode.
Emperor Augustus ... the first registration ...
while Quirinius was governor of Syria ...."
We think of quaint pastoral scenes,
the way I might have been imagining Bethlehem
before I actually went there.
But the promises that Mary, Joseph, and the Shepherds heard
were not only given to them,
and they were not only given for that time and that place.
This night when we gather here
and sing some favourite carols and hear some familiar stories
is not only about those days.
The promises are for us and for our time and place
just as much as they were for those people way back when.
And this night isn't only about those days
but for these days as well.
The heart is tired at Bethlehem,
No human dream unbroken stands;
We need to hear the words of the angels
as much as Mary, Joseph, the Shepherds,
or anyone else who heard them
and witnessed the miracles of that night did.
The promises come for a tired heart
that is disturbed by the violence, the tension, the un-peace.
The promises come for the broken human dreams
that leave us without hope.
Yet here God comes to mortal hands,
And hope renewed cries out: "Amen!"
More than taking us to Bethlehem,
the Word of this night comes to where we are.
Without these angelic words of promise
we'd be better off somewhere else doing something else tonight.
But I believe we are better off here, doing this, worshiping God
and hearing these words that are meant for us.

God came to Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds so long ago and so far away.
But God comes to us tonight, right here.
In a few moments we will hear the words
"given for you ... shed for you."
Christ was born all those years ago and the promises came true
that Mary, Joseph, and the Shepherds heard.
Christ comes again to us tonight,
not in some historic words about something that happened long ago,
but in a real way in this holy moment.
"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined."
"The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it."
May the light of Christ shine in your heart this night and always,
and may we bear that divine light to all the world.
Yet here God comes to mortal hands,
And hope renewed cries out: "Amen!

What a Concert

This past Saturday was the premiere performance by the Chorus Niagara Children's Choir. I was there because one of my daughters is one of the members of this new choir. Chorus Niagara is a premiere choir in these parts, maybe even in all of Ontario. They established a children's choir under their umbrella this year. There are almost 50 voices in this children's choir and they sound terrific.

Saturday night was a concert of both the adult chorus and the children's choir with some pieces being sung together and others separately. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face as they sang. It was just beautiful. The concert was held in the Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria in St. Catharines, Ontario.

My favourite piece that the children sang was a Hebrew language song called "Al Shlosha D'varim." The words go like this:
Al shlosha d'varim haolam kayam,
al haemet v'al hadin v'al hashalom.

Translated it means:
The world is sustained by three things,
by truth, by justice, and by peace.

I can't wait to hear them again. I was so proud.

Here's a review in the paper.

Advent Already -- Christmas Soon

This is my article for the current church newsletter coming out this Sunday.


Boy, Advent has snuck up on me. I’m sitting down to write this on November 26. In a month Christmas will be over. Well actually it won’t be over, it will only have just started, but it will feel like it’s over. We have such a build up through the month of December leading up to Christmas and then when the day is past, when all the bits of wrapping paper have been picked up, when the dishes have been washed and the leftovers are in various plastic containers in the back of the fridge, then it feels like Christmas is over.

But I’m getting way ahead of myself. As I write this Christmas is just a month away and I feel totally unprepared. I haven’t bought any presents yet (although my wife does most of the Christmas shopping and she’s got most of it done and wrapped already). Many of you know that I returned recently (on November 15) from an 19 day tour of the Holy Land, through parts of Egypt, Jordan, and Israel. Now I’m barely back to work and Advent and the busy month of December and the Christmas season are here.

Some radio stations are playing 24 hours of Christmas songs and carols. The stores are decorated. Our homes are being decorated. We’re making our lists and checking them twice, just like Santa Claus. The sounds of Christmas are rising in a crescendo that I feel somewhat ambivalent about. I love Christmas music, in fact I’m bending and breaking my household rule about playing Christmas music. It’s starting earlier every year. I’ve got my radio in the house and in the car tuned to the all Christmas music station. I like seeing the decorations out. I’m hoping for a somewhat warm day without rain so that I can get the lights and decorations put up outside the house.

But, on the other hand, I have this feeling that we’re rushing toward Christmas. We’re going to get there too soon. I want to hold off just a little longer. For that side of me I’m glad we have the season of Advent. Advent is a time of waiting. And Advent is a time of silence amid much noise. Advent is a time to think about another way, a different way.

During Advent we hear two words. On the Sundays in Advent we will hear readings from Isaiah where weapons of death are transformed into tools for cultivation (Isa 2:4). The ravenous wolf will no longer be a predator and the lamb will sleep soundly and securely through the night (Isa 11:6). The earth itself will no longer be barren or spoiled (Isa 35:1). The weak will be made strong (Isa 35:3). This is the word of comfort for the afflicted.

That’s not the only image we see nor the only news we hear during Advent. There is a sound of alarm and warnings to be ready. Wake up! (Rom 13:11) Stay awake! (Mt 24:42) Repent! (Mt 3:2) A thief is coming! (Mt 24:42-43) The judge is standing at the doors! (Jas 5:9). This is the word of affliction for the comfortable. Advent, if we really take the time and pay attention to what God is saying to us through the Word, asks us to step back and think differently about things. Advent asks us to consider what we do and why we do it and to give God a place in all that we do.

When we finally get to Christmas, the silence of Advent will have prepared us for joyful celebration. There are two words at Christmas as well as in Advent. There is the word of the gift of a baby born in a stable in Bethlehem, the word of hope that is born in each of our hearts as we hear the message of peace that the angels sing. It’s the image of a "baby-Jesus-for-me." But Christmas also brings another word presenting a "Jesus-who-is-for-us" and a "Jesus-who-frees-people." On the same night that we hear of the birth of the babe in Bethlehem, we also hear the words of the adult Christ who is broken and poured out in bread and wine. When we see the wooden manger we can’t forget the wooden cross.

Our hymns don’t let us forget these two words of Christmas. We sing "Silent night, holy night! All is calm, all is bright round yon virgin mother and child." But another favourite is "What Child Is This" where the second verse says "Nails, spear shall pierce him through, the cross be borne for me, for you; hail, hail the Word made flesh, the babe, the son of Mary!"

I’m not a party-pooper. I will soon get caught up in the festivities of the season. But I’ll try to keep some silence during Advent to think about what we’re really waiting for and preparing for. And between the opening of gifts, the visiting of friends and family, and the feasting that will inevitably be a joyful part of Christmas I’ll try to set aside some time to ponder the sacrifice God made by coming down to be one of us. Maybe you can too.

Merry Christmas,
Pastor Tom

Days 15 and 16

Tuesday, November 13
Today we started by going to Jericho. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is almost all downhill. Jerusalem is above sea level and Jericho is down below sea level just north of the Dead Sea. This is the road where Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan takes place. The area on the way down is like desert wilderness. Nomadic Bedouins in very poor shacks and tents live in the valleys and on the hillsides off to the side of the highway where their flocks of goats and sheep live off of what appears to be very little grass growing here or there.

Jericho is like a ghost town. It’s part of the Palestinian territory of the West Bank and very poor. There are nice looking farms around but Samir says they can’t sell their produce outside of town and definitely not in Israeli territory. In town we saw an old sycamore tree like the one Zacchaeus climbed to get a better view of Jesus as he was walking through town. We also went to the Mount of Temptation where Jesus might have spent his 40 days after his baptism. There is a monastery built into the cliff walls where pilgrims come to spend their 40 days of Lent. We stopped in town at a store that sells glassware, china/stone ware, and Dead Sea cosmetic products.

From Jericho we went to the district along the Dead Sea, first to Qumran to see some ruins of the Essene village and the cave where the first Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Samir was telling us some cock-a-mamie stories about the Essenes following Jesus around recording stories of his life and ministry, another story about some Jews in Ethiopia preserving some identical scrolls to the ones found at Qumran. I’m finding him harder and harder to believe and to understand just what he’s trying to get at sometimes.

From Qumran we drove to Masada. I slept all the way and missed most of Samir’s theories that the whole Masada story as related by Josephus is a lie, sham, hoax, cover-up, etc. He doesn’t believe one bit of the story about the Zealots’ suicides after the lengthy siege by the Romans. His stories are just loonie if you ask me.

From Masada we drove up to Ein Gedi on the shore of the Dead Sea. It’s a spa with a beach. I went first down to the beach. The water level has gone down so much that you have to take a tram about a kilometre or more to get to the sea. It’s not a sand beach but salt, and sharp prickly salt on your bare feet. But floating in the Sea is the most amazing and weird sensation. You just can’t sink! There is no way. You can sit and just float, lie and just float. The water was nice and warm but when you rubbed your skin it felt kind of oily. After taking the tram back up to the spa some of us put mud on ourselves. I don’t know where the mud comes from or what it’s supposed to do but I smeared it on and then showered it off. After changing we drove back to the hotel. Tonight I did some re-packing in preparation for tomorrow night when we won’t sleep much before we head home. I can’t wait. Tomorrow we see Old Jerusalem, our last day of touring. I want to see that but I’m all toured out.

Wednesday, November 14
Last day. Today we did Jerusalem. We started at the western wall, the wailing wall, the wall is not part of the temple but part of the retaining wall that held up the whole temple complex at the time of Jesus. We had to go through metal detectors, then the men had a section separate from the women, and we could go up to the wall. I had my picture taken in front of it and touched it. There were hundreds and thousands of slips of paper with prayers on them tucked into the cracks between the stones.

After that we went to the temple mount itself after passing through another security check-point. The temple hasn’t stood there since 70 AD. Now a couple of mosques stand there as it is also a holy place for Muslims. The big golden dome is over a large slab of rock where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac (or Ishmael, it depends on whose story you hear).

From there we walked down to the Old City, saw the Bethesda pools where Jesus healed a paralytic and right next to them is the place Mary might have been born(?). From there we started on the Via Dolorosa seeing the stations of the cross. This is so totally hokey. This is probably not the route Jesus took to Golgotha. We don’t really know exactly where Golgotha is. Apparently the route has changed over the centuries. But along the way are these arbitrary stations with a chapel here,a sign or a sculpture there, and some people (our guide included) seem to take this all as fact.

At the end we came to the church of the Holy Sepulchre which is worse than a circus. There are crowds, noisy crowds, and line-ups of people to see the rock that was part of the hill where Jesus was crucified, the slab of stone where he was taken down from the cross and wrapped, and then a marble slab under which is the stone where his body was laid. Absolutely ridiculous.

Next came one of the better parts of the day when I shared a bagel with Doug. This was some bagel, oval shaped and over a foot long, and really yummy. Some of the others who bought bagels couldn’t finish theirs and gave me their leftovers.

After this bite to eat we went to the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer which is very close to the Sepulchre. The church seems to have services in German and Arabic. We didn’t climb the steeple but you can see it from all around. It must have a great view.

Next we went to see the (an) upper room. It’s so ridiculous to believe they ate the last supper there. Downstairs in the same building we went into King David’s tomb. Silly. Next to that building is the Church of Mary’s Dormition where she is supposed to have lived after Jesus’ Ascension and from where she was taken up into heaven without dying.

From there we drove to the Garden Tomb which is on the other side of the Old City from the Sepulchre. It’s a garden owned by some British that contains a tomb and has a skull shaped cliff where they think it might be just as likely, if not more likely, that Jesus was crucified and buried. It’s a much prettier place than the Sepulchre and they provide the opportunity for groups to have a communion service, which we did, which people liked, and which was the end of our tour itinerary.

For dinner the local tour company took us for a special dinner at a restaurant in Bethlehem. We almost didn’t get into Bethlehem because they didn’t want to let our tour guide through. We finally did get through with him and had a dinner of stuffed lamb (lamb stuffed with rice). It was delicious.

We came back to the hotel and I tried to take a nap before our 12:30 a.m. wake-up call. Then we’ll drive to the airport in Tel Aviv and head home. Yay!!!

Days 13 and 14

Sunday, November 11
Today was a very strange day for me. It started out pretty much like a lot of our days with packing up, having breakfast, and heading out on the bus.

Our first stop was Megiddo which is also known as Armageddon. It's a city at an important crossroads through the area. There were anywhere from 20 to 25 different cities and fortifications built on this site through history. Solomon and Ahab built fortress cities there. A really interesting feature is a shaft and tunnel leading to a spring outside the city. We walked down through and out the other end where the bus picked us up.

From there we drove to Caesarea by the sea. There was a large theatre, a harbour, a hippodrome, and an aqueduct built by Herod the Great. It was impressive. The Mediterranean was very choppy from a lot of wind. Some of us walked on the beach. A few were surprised by some waves and got wet shoes.

From there we drove through Tel Aviv, through Jerusalem, and into Bethlehem. We were just going for lunch and to a store. I was quite disturbed seeing "the wall." I'd seen some pictures and heard reports in the news but didn't know if we'd see it. Bethlehem is in the Palestinian Authority's area of the West Bank and a concrete wall about 30 feet high separates the Palestinian and Israeli areas to keep them each on their respective sides. Within the city of Bethlehem is "Rachel's Tomb," a special site for Israelis, so a wall surrounds it as well. We passed through an Israeli checkpoint first, and then a Palestinian checkpoint, and then went for lunch. It was such a strange juxtaposition. After lunch we went to a souvenir shop right across the street from the wall surrounding Rachel's Tomb. Our guide had been talking about this shop since we met him 3 days ago. Only thing was this was no mere souvenir shop. Here they were selling antiquities, jewelry, and olive wood carvings that were very pricey. I couldn't get in the mindset of spending one or two hundred dollars on pretty things with that wall across the street still on my mind so I wandered around with my hands in my pockets.

I'm getting tired. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the "supposed" sites where things happened in the life of Jesus but I'm tired of riding the bus, tired of living out of my suitcase, tired of being herded from one place to the next, especially tired of being away from my family, tired of eating hotel food. I can't wait to go home.


Monday, November 12
Today we did some touring in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. It's so hard not to be cynical about a lot of this. We started from a hill that overlooks the old city of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, then we drove around to the Mount of Olives. This is an important place in Jesus' life. He would always come from the Mount of Olives when he came to Jerusalem, the Garden of Gethsemane is at or near its base, and his Ascension happened there.

We started at the church of the Ascension, actually a Mosque, where, believe it or not, his footprint can be seen. I took a picture but there were a whole bunch of women down on their knees kissing the rock. From there we headed down a road that may have been part of the procession of palms or the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. Along the way we stopped at the church of the "Pater Noster." Now Matthew says Jesus taught the Lord's Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount in Galilee but in Luke it comes after a visit to Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in Bethany which is just over the Mount of Olives. So the story is that Jesus would come to a cave within the property of this church to pray and once the disciples asked him to teach them to pray. This church has panels with the Lord's Prayer in dozens, maybe over 100, different languages on various walls inside and outside the church and in the courtyard. I took numerous pictures but didn't get inside the cave. It was too crowded.

From there we continued down the Mount to the "Dominus Flevit" (The Lord Wept) Chapel. Supposedly here Jesus wept over the fate of Jerusalem. We walked further down to the Church of All Nations also known as the Church of the Agony because in front of the altar is the exposed rock on which Jesus prayed on the night of his arrest. Outside is a remnant of the Garden of Gethsemane with some really old olive trees, centuries old. Samir claimed that at least one was there when Jesus was. I have my doubts.

Next we did something completely different. We went to "Yad Vashem," named after a Hebrew phrase from Isaiah 56:5 that means "a name and a place" or "a monument and a name." It is a Holocaust memorial and museum. It's a huge complex, a modern complex, and it is beautifully and well done. You could spend a whole day there. I took my time going through and didn't have time to see everything in the main section and there were other areas I didn't even see. It was very sad but also ironic. There were descriptions of the Jewish ghettoes where they were walled in and denied their freedom to move from place to place or make a living. Now Israel is doing something similar to Palestine. Certainly not along the lines of a Holocaust or genocide but I saw some parallels.

From Yad Vashem we went to Bethlehem. I was really looking forward to visiting the "Christmas town," but someone said I'll be disappointed and I was. It's certainly not "O Little Town of Bethlehem." It's a crowded and busy city. A lot of the churches we've visited so far have been quite beautiful. The church over the supposed birthplace of the Saviour of the world is a dingy kind of decrepit looking place. It's very old, very empty, not particularly beautiful. We climbed down some steps to a little room under the main chancel where, under an altar, is a silver star set in a marble slab with a hole in the middle that reveals the rock where Jesus was born. We saw more caves/grottoes and heard some preposterous stories from Samir about what they were supposed to be that I don't even want to mention anything about it. Oh, and up in the Church of the Nativity, to add to the ugliness and cheesiness, there were tacky Christmas balls hanging from all of the lights and chandeliers.

From there we went to the "Shepherds' Field." We saw some caves where the shepherds were apparently watching their sheep when the angels appeared. One couple who toured the Holy Land 10 years ago said they're different fields and caves then they saw back then.

People always want to shop and so we went to another store just like the one yesterday. I was hoping to get a little something more but this place didn't have anything I wanted.

Tonight some people went to a music and dancing show of local Israeli and Palestinian folk music and dancing. I stayed behind in the hotel room and watched TV.

Days 11 and 12

Friday, November 9
Today was a busy day with a number of sights to see. We started by going to Hazor where an excavation has revealed the remains of a fortress built by Solomon and enlarged by Ahab to help secure the northern frontier of Israel. From there we drove to Banias, also known as Caesarea Philippi, where a lot of pagan worship took place and where Jesus asked the disciples "Who do people say that I am?" and "Who do you say that I am?" There Peter made his famous confession: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Banias is "a" or "the" main source of the Jordan River. There was also a ruin of a temple dedicated to Caesar Augustus who was consider a son of the gods. In a place where people worship Caesar, a son of the gods, Peter confessed the Jesus was the Son of the living God. Driving up to Banias we passed by wire fences along the roadside with small yellow signs all along warning to stay out because of landmines. This is in the Golan Heights, a part of Israel that was taken from Syria.

From there we headed back down to the Sea of Galilee and were taken to a restaurant that served "St. Peter's fish" (Tilapia) that came with head and tail and fins all intact. The people who had it liked it but many were unimpressed with the high price and the poor (rude at times) service and the limited selection of food there.

After lunch we made a brief stop (I felt like our tour guide was rushing us) on a kibbutz where they found, have preserved, and are displaying, a boat that was found in the mud near the shore of the Sea of Galilee during a time of drought in 1986. It's likely a fishing boat dated to the first century BC or first century AD. The type of boat Jesus and the disciples might have sailed in on that very lake.

From there we went to the site (?) of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. There are churches built over all of these places and this one has a rock under the altar where Jesus supposedly sat when he blessed and distributed the bread and fish to the multitude.

From there we rode the bus what seemed like a few hundred metres to the Church of the Primacy of Peter where, again supposedly, Jesus cooked breakfast on the shore for the disciples who were fishing. This was after the resurrection when Jesus asked Peter 3 times "do you love me" and told him to feed and tend his sheep. In this church there's a huge are of an outcropping of rock where, I guess, Jesus sat and cooked breakfast.

From there we went to Capernaum which really only exists in the excavated ruins. There is what is believed may be Peter's house over which a number of churches have been built. They were all octagonal shaped and a new modern church, also octagonally shaped, has been built over the site, but suspended on 8 columns around the outside with a window in the centre of the floor looking down on the ruins. There are also the remains of a residential area and the partial reconstruction of a 4th century AD synagogue.

From Capernaum we rode a boat across the lake back to our hotel in Tiberias. And wouldn't you know, the sky got cloudy and the wind picked up. People were asking if Doug and I had any prayers for calming the sea.

The lake is what strikes me most about this place. A lot of the traditions about these sites are so bogus but this is the lake where the disciples fished, where Jesus went out in the boat and preached, where he walked on the water and calmed the storm. We had morning devotions, before we set out today, overlooking the lake. Samir made a good point about the lake. All the water it receives it gives away at the other end and it is a living and life-giving lake. The Dead Sea, that receives water from the Jordan but has no outlet, is just that, dead.

On the boat ride they were playing some Christian music which included: "Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water. Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea.

After supper Doug and I walked through the town of Tiberias. You could have fired a cannon through there and not hit anyone. The Sabbath began at sundown so everything was closed except for a few corner cafes that hardly had anyone in them. We saw maybe a few more than a dozen people on our walk, probably all tourists.

Tomorrow we end up in Nazareth.


Saturday, November 10
Today we left Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee. Some of the places we visited around there weren't exactly stirring to me but the lake made an impression on me.

We drove up through the town of Tiberias and went to Sepphoris, a short distance from Nazareth, to see some ruins of the former city there. Sepphoris, or Tsipori, is the supposed birthplace of Mary. There are some truly amazing mosiacs that were uncovered there. We climbed to the top of a Crusader citadel and could see Nazareth, Cana, and the Mediterranean Sea. This is also the place where the Mishnah (the first written record of the Oral teachings of the Jewish people) was written down c. 200 AD.

From there we drove to Akko. My guidebook to Jerusalem and the Holy Land describes it as "the most complete and charming old town in all of the Holy Land ... outside of Jerusalem." Our Rostad tour booklet said we'd get to walk through the town but we drove all the way there and walked up some stairs to the top of the old wall overlooking the Mediterranean, then got back on the bus and drove to Nazareth. Going to Akko turned out to be a complete waste of time. We ended up at our hotel, finished with our day, at 3 p.m. We could have easily spent an hour or more there. But before we ended up in our hotel we toured Nazareth.

Nazareth had no charm or historic atmosphere as far as I'm concerned. It's just a big city. First we stopped for a bite of lunch for those who wanted some. He took us to a falafel and shawerma place. That's Middle Eastern fast food. A few had some. A bunch of us went to a little variety store a few doors down. I bought a Coke and a can of Pringles.

After eating we went to the Basilica of the Annunciation. It's a neat place. On the main level are the remains of the original Byzantine church and the later Crusader church as well as the cave where the angel Gabriel is said to have appeared to Mary. Up above is the new/current church and all around the walls are huge artistic representations of Mary donated from different countries. It's a pretty new church (1969) but in my view very beautiful.

We exited a side door and walked through a courtyard. In this courtyard is a really neat baptistry that says "Germania" so I'm guessing it was given by Germany. Through the courtyard is the small St. Joseph's church (1914) built over the site of Joseph's home and carpentry shop. From there we walked through the "souk" a narrow winding marketplace to a church built on the site of what may have been the synagogue in Jesus' time.

We walked back through the souk to our bus and I thought we were going to our hotel but we made another stop at an Orthodox church that contained a running spring where the owners of this church suppose the Annunciation took place. From there we drove to our hotel.

The traffic in Nazareth is horrendous. There are all these huge tourist buses squeezing through fairly small streets with all kinds of private cares trying to get through as well.

I'm really getting sick of Samir's commentary. He's talking as if these things happened in these exact sites, no question about it. I was getting hints of some anti-Judaism coming through his "sermons" and today I was hearing more. He's spoiling some things for me. Doug, Joanne, and I are going to sit with him before supper to clarify our schedule for the rest of the tour because he keeps switching things around on us.

I found it interesting that at supper they wouldn't serve coffee. The reason, I think, is that people might put milk or cream in their coffee. The dining room is kosher and there was meat being served at dinner which can't be mixed or combined with any dairy according to kosher rules. At breakfast there was no meat so they could serve coffee and other dairy products. I also noticed that one of the elevators was a "Sabbath Elevator." I asked about it and found out that on the Sabbath it goes up and down, stopping at every floor, so that you don't have to press the buttons. Building is forbidden on the Sabbath and by pressing an elevator button you are completing a circuit which is building something.

Days 9 and 10

Wednesday, November 7
Today was a long day of driving and sight seeing fro Petra to Amman in Jordan. After leaving Petra the itinerary said we were supposed to go to Kerak to a crusader castle there. Our guide took us, instead, to another crusader castle called Shobak, or Shawback. He said Kerak would be overrun with tourists, plus it’s situated in the middle of a town, whereas Shobak is perched atop a hill called Montréal (yes that’s right) sort of in the middle of nowhere. Much of this castle is in ruin but is being restored by archaeologists. A good bit was still standing. These castles were a line of castles built by the crusaders in the 1100s to guard the road from Egypt to Damascus. There are Arabic inscriptions on some of the stones dating to the 14th century restoration by the Mamelukes but when the Turks rebuilt it later they got the stones rearranged in the wrong order so it doesn’t really say anything now. It was quite impressive and the view all around was incredible.

From there we headed north to Madaba. On the way we had to cross Wadi al-Mujib which was called Arnon in the Old Testament. It is a huge and deep valley where we had to drive back and forth on switch back, hairpin turns down and back up the other side. At the bottom is a dam creating a lake for irrigation and for water supply to Amman.

At Madaba there are the remains of a huge mosaic map on the floor of a church depicting the Holy Land from Lebanon to Egypt dating back to the reign of Emperor Justinian (527-565 AD).

From there we went to Mount Nebo where Moses is said to have looked over the promised land but could not enter it. The view wasn’t too good because it was very cloudy and misty. You could see the Dead Sea 1,000m below. There’s a church up there with some ruins, a monument erected for a visit by Pope John Paul II.

On the way back from Mount Nebo as we headed to Amman we stopped at a studio and store where handicapped/disabled/differently-abled people make mosaics. They are really beautiful and I would have loved to buy one but they were too expensive for me.

We got to Amman just around dusk. It’s a city of 2 million. Our hotel is, again, gorgeous, maybe the fanciest we’ve been in. As in Aqaba we had to have our carrying luggage x-rayed and as at every hotel we had to walk through a metal detector. I don’t know what it is about me but I’m the only one who had to open my backpack at the Israeli border on Sunday and the only one they had to check with a wand after walking through the metal detector even though everyone made it beep. Maybe it’s my beard.

Tomorrow Israel.


Thursday, November 8
This morning we drove from Amman to Bethany-beyond-the-Jordan where tradition says John the Baptist baptized and where Jesus was baptized. It was neat to be there. It’s not a huge river, more like a large creek. We got to put our hands in the water and we had a Re-Affirmation of Baptism service. While we were walking down and putting our hands in the river a soldier with a rifle over his shoulder was keeping an eye on us.

While we were having our service just up the bank from the river, a mother and her daughter went down to the (muddy) water to be baptized by their pastor. Later when we were driving in Israel where the Jordan River comes out of the Sea of Galilee we saw hundreds of people lined up going down to the river, all dressed in white robes, to be baptized. (Later we saw that Benny Hinn Ministries had a huge tour in the Holy Land with lots of buses and after I came home I was flipping channels and saw Benny and a crowd of people at the Jordan River so we just might have seen him baptizing all those people).

On our way from Amman down to the Jordan I realized I had left the tube with the papyrus I bought back at our hotel. I went and told Mohammed, our guide, and he called the hotel and arranged for someone to drive it down to us so when we left the river and headed north to the border crossing we picked it up along the way.

When we came through Israeli customs I was the only one in the group to have my bags x-rayed and opened and searched. The rest of our tour were waiting for me and laughing at me. When one of the inspectors saw my Keffiyeh in my suitcase he asked where I got it, why, for who, and how much I paid. When I told him at Petra, as a souvenir, for myself, and $20 he nearly laughed. The people from our tour who heard started to laugh and he said "they should laugh."

Finally we were on our way. We’re on a smaller bus. It doesn’t have as many empty seats for us to spread out in back. We drove to Bet-Shean, one of the cities of the Decapolis at the time of Jesus. It also figures in the story of King Saul and Jonathan and their deaths in battle.

We were a little early actually so we got something in that was scheduled for another day. We went to the Mount of Beatitudes where Jesus may have given the Sermon on the Mount. There is a pretty nice church up there financed by Mussolini. There are windows, stained glass windows, with each of the Beatitudes written in Latin around the top of the church just below the dome. You can look down on the Sea of Galilee from there as well.

We came to our hotel which is quite a step down from the places we’ve been staying so far. Supper was disappointing. I did a bit of laundry again sine we’re here two nights. Our guide is a Palestinian Christian and gives us mini-sermons wherever we stop. It could get tiresome if he’s too over-the-top for our entire tour of Israel. We were spoiled by our first guide in Egypt, Reham, who was great. In Jordan, Mohammed really knew his stuff and was a good guy but didn’t have the personality of Reham. Time will tell how I like Samir for our tour of Israel.

Days 7 and 8

Monday, November 5
We had a relaxing morning and left Aqaba after 11 a.m. We drove about an hour to Wadi Rum. T.E. Lawrence and his Arab allies had their home base there. It seems a harsh place. We arrived at a camp from where we loaded into Land Cruiser trucks. Most sat on benches on the backs of the pick-ups. The one I rode in had a back seat so I rode inside. We drove through the desert. It was a breathtaking landscape with flat stretches of where sometimes we were driving on soft sand and other times on hard rock-like surface. And then here and there, all over the place, sheer rocky mountains would rise from the desert floor.

From there we drove about 2 hours to Petra. Not the ancient city of Petra but to a hotel in the newer town of Petra. Along the way we periodically saw Bedouin tents. It’s almost hard to believe that people are still living in tents, still living a nomadic lifestyle. I don’t know why but I automatically assumed that people in the modern world would be settled down somewhere in a permanent home.

We’re spending two nights at this hotel so it gave me a chance to do some hand-washing and let it hang to be dry before we move on. The pool at this hotel isn’t heated so I didn’t go swimming today.


Tuesday, November 6
Today we went to Petra. That’s an incredible place. It’s hidden in a canyon and valley. It was the capital of the Nabbatean people who were there from the 3rd century BC to 106 AD when the Romans took over. To get there you have to walk down through a deep canyon called a "Siq" which opens at the end to a building carved into the rock called the "Treasury." This is the place you see in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where he goes inside to get the Holy Grail ("This is the cup of a carpenter"). It’s called the Treasury but it was really a temple and tomb. The whole canyon as you continue past the treasury has numerous tombs carved into the rock walls. There’s also a huge Roman theatre carved into the canyon wall. It’s really beautiful. It’s mostly reddish-pinkish coloured sandstone. There is so much to see there and too much to describe and the pictures I took don’t do it justice.

Apparently Bedouins used to live in the caves and former tombs of Petra until 1980 when the government forcibly removed them to a modern village just outside the valley. They still come every day to set up their stalls and coffee shops and sell all kinds of things. They also lead people in and out of the canyon on horses, donkeys, camels, and horse drawn buggies.

It was quite hot (30 or 31 deg. C) today but I used sunscreen and wore my hat, but we had to do a lot of walking and the heat, which isn’t a humid heat, still really tires you out. Coming out of the "Siq" you can take a horse for the last 900m to the bus parking area. I rode the horse because it was all uphill and I was beat.

Back at the hotel some of us met on the terrace to watch the sunset behind the mountains. It was very nice but once the sun was gone it became quite cool. After sitting outside in shorts and a t-shirt and freezing I put on jeans and a sweatshirt before going down for supper.

Doug led evening prayer in the hotel theatre for us after which they were showing the Indiana Jones movie. Something I forgot to mention, on a nearby mountaintop that we passed on the way down to Petra there is a shrine commemorating where Aaron, the brother of Moses, is said to have been buried. Our guide Mohammed said it’s called Mount Hor but my guide book says Jabel Haroun.

Who'd have thunk?

I'm a proud Canadian but I don't hide my German roots. I'm not much of a drinker either. These quizzes are crap sometimes. I do like to watch Ballykissangel though.

Your Inner European is Irish!

Sprited and boisterous!You drink everyone under the table.

Who's" Your Inner European?

Days 5 and 6

Saturday, November 3
Talk about a looooonnnng day. Last night we turned the lights out at 9:45 and someone was coming to wake me at midnight to start climbing Mount Sinai. Well I couldn’t sleep. Partly because of excitement about what we were about to do, partly from cats fighting outside our room, and a whole lot because of all the mosquitoes. I think I might have slept from 10:45 to 11:15. After the knock on the door at 12:00 I brushed my teeth and got dressed. I dressed as warmly as I could: jeans, t-shirt, sweat-shirt, golf jacket. But I had my doubts about how cold it would be. We met in the courtyard of the monastery guest house and it wasn’t really that cold.

Around 12:30 we started walking. Just a little ways outside the monastery the Bedouins were waiting with their camels. 10 from our group were going up on camels and 3 of us, the three youngest, were walking all the way. I figured "Moses did it, so will I." If I ever get there again I’m taking a camel.

We had a Bedouin guide lead us. I could never remember his name and had to keep asking what it was. He and Ahmed, one of our tour guides, said we should just call him Suleiman (Arabic for Solomon). He led us up the mountain. It took us about 2 hours to walk up to the base of the 750 rugged stone steps. The ones on camels did it in about 1½ hours. My thighs were already sore from climbing inside the great pyramid two days earlier. They were burning and aching by the time we reached the rest of the group. Along the way up the mountain path you periodically come across some crude shacks built of stone where Bedouins sell coffee, tea, pop, water, chocolate bars, flash lights etc. There was also a Bedouin following us for a long while with his camel trying to get one of us to ride up. All along the way, up and down the mountain, there were Bedouins with their camels offering rides. "Camel? Camel? Camel good!"

It was a long hard climb. It wasn’t as steep as it could be. It zigged and zagged with lots of switch backs. It was totally dark. When we started out the moon hadn’t risen yet and there were a zillion stars out. Then we saw the moon. It was neat because, where at home a crescent moon is like a C or a backward C, here near the equator it was like a U. I also realized that when we see mosques at home the crescent moon on top of the minaret is like a C but in Egypt they all had the crescent lying down like a U.

Anyway, we climbed in the dark by the light of our flashlights. At one of the tea huts I had a Snickers bar and a Coke. We made lots of rest stops and finally joined the rest of the group. It was still pretty early so we rested at the tea hut at the base of the stairs. Then we set out to climb the 750 steps to the top of the mountain. Those are really rough steps and hard to climb. One couple who rode the camels didn’t even attempt climbing the stairs. A short while later an older fellow from our tour (68 years old) was really struggling and panting as we climbed the steps. I said, "You’re making me a little nervous and soon I’ll be a lot nervous. Are you sure you should be climbing these steps?" He decided he better go back down so Suleiman took him back to the tea hut with the others who stayed behind. Later I found out that this guy has had bypass surgery and has a heart murmur. I don’t know why he tried the climb in the first place. Soon after that another couple was having trouble and Ahmed had to take them back. We waited for him and then continued up the steps taking numerous rests (every 50 steps or so). We reached the summit at 4:30 or so while it was still very dark.

I read Exodus 19 and 20 to our group, and whoever else up there was listening in. I said a few words about the grace of God in the delivering of the slaves and choosing to be their God, and choosing them to be his people, then I read some prayers. Before I finished praying a Muslim on the mountain with us started chanting the call to prayers. There is a Greek Orthodox chapel and a Muslim Mosque at the summit of the mountain.

I said I was skeptical about the cold. It was freezing! We had sweated from our climb so we were chilled even more. There were Bedouins walking around up there renting out blankets for $2 or $4 depending on the size. Some of the women in our group got some. One of our guys did too and after a while he saw me shivering and gave his blanket to me.

We waited for the sunrise, and waited, and waited. The sky was getting brighter and you could start to see the mountains all around us. It was absolutely, stunningly, beautiful. My pictures won’t do the views justice. God was saying good morning in the eastern sky. There was some cloud and/or haze in that direction but finally the sun broke through.

Then it was time to go back down. By the way, there were hundreds of people up there and after the sunrise we all started back down. Down certainly wasn’t as tiring as up but it still hurt, and it seemed to take a really long time. On the way down we could see the mountains that were all around us but that we couldn’t see on our way up.

We eventually got back to St. Catherine, I had a shower, packed up, and went for breakfast. Then we had a short tour inside the monastery where apparently Jethro’s well where Moses met his wife, and the burning bush, a tree from a stalk of the original bush, are. Oh yeah. Then we left St. Catherine, continued east through the Sinai desert to the east coast and the up to Taba. I fell asleep on the drive.

We stayed at a gorgeous, posh resort on the Gulf of Aqaba, the Intercontinental Taba Resort. I swam in the Gulf (an arm of the Red Sea), and in the two swimming pools. We all had dinner together and had to say goodbye to Reham. She was a fabulous guide. She was intelligent, informative, had a good sense of humour, and was pretty easy on the eyes. She says she’s a descendant of the ancient Egyptians. It’s a shame we couldn’t have her for the entire trip but her expertise is Egyptology. She has a passion and love for her country and its history and culture and she was a big part of what made our trip, our tour of Egypt, so awesome.

I phoned home from Taba. It was good to hear my wife’s voice. I wish that she (they, the kids would like this too) could be here to experience all this with me.


Sunday, November 4
So, today was a day of border crossings. We left the beautiful resort in Taba, our last stop in Egypt. Ahmed took us as far as he could go. We were taken to the border by Ibrahim, our bus driver for our whole time in Egypt. We left that bus that we had been traveling in for 6 days and had to drag all our belongings through Egyptian customs and security, then about 200m down the road was Israeli customs and security. I was coming up the rear and when my backpack went through the x-ray machine they looked and looked, finally they put it through and asked me to open it. They took everything out and put it all back in again. I don’t know what in it looked suspicious.

When we were finally in Israel our bus wasn’t there to meet us. Apparently we were early. So we waited. One man in our group sat on a bench and wrote in his journal. A soldier saw him and came over and wanted to see what he was writing. I guess journaling at the Israeli border crossing is a no-no.

When our bus finally came we were driven through Eilat, Israel’s only Red Sea port and resort town. It only took about 15 minutes to get to the Jordanian border. There we got off the Israeli bus and again dragged our belongings through customs and then a much longer walk to Jordan’s customs and security. There Doug had a bit of trouble because they wanted to know the name of our tour company in Jordan. We only had the name of a company in Jerusalem that was arranging the Jordanian and Israeli parts of our tour. They finally called the company in Jerusalem who put him in touch with the guy whose name we have, who was with another tour group up in Amman. Just about then our guide, Mohammed, showed up and cleared things up.

We were brought to the Moevenpick hotel in Aqaba and most of us got 2 bedroom apartments to stay in. I didn’t go into the sea to swim today, just the pool and hot tub. We had a lovely supper under the stars on a warm but comfortable (not humid) night. During supper a man from our group became quite unwell, was taken back to his room in a wheelchair, and a doctor came to see him. We don’t know exactly what’s wrong with him but have a few suspicions. We’re hoping he can continue on the tour.

After supper 7 of us walked through downtown Aqaba. It’s neat to see a city with such a different culture from what we’re used to in Canada. When we got back Doug and I went to one of the hotel’s cafes on the rooftop in the open air and had Moevenpick ice cream sundaes overlooking the city lights on a beautiful warm night. Doug’s a great guy and a good friend but it would have been way better with my wife there.

I forgot to say that before we left Taba we gathered together in an empty section of the hotel bar and had a Sunday worship service using the Morning Prayer service and singing a couple of hymns. It was lovely and a lot of people really appreciated it. I led the liturgy and Doug read the story of Hagar and Ishmael being sent away by Abraham and Sarah and talked about the roots of the Jewish and Arab people and how God has cared for all of them.

While we were swimming in Aqaba we heard the call to prayer coming from the numerous mosques around the city. I though we could learn something about devotion and prayer from them. Even Christians in a Muslim land could use those 5 daily reminders to pray themselves.

Days 3 and 4

Thursday, November 1
What a cool day! Not the temperature, the stuff we did. First thing was the pyramids. These enormous things that you learn about in Social Studies in grade school? We were there! I climbed inside the great pyramid, on of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. It’s not for the claustrophobic or if you have a bad back. Part of the way up you have to walk bent over and you come down the same way. It’s very narrow in parts as well and there’s only one way in and one way out so people are passing each other bent over. It was really hot and stuffy inside there too.
Four of us took a camel ride as well. Joanne rode on "Charlie," Anne Marie was on "Moses," Clarence rode "Mickey," and I was on "Columbus." I had to do both of those things just for the experience. Now I can say "I was at the Pyramids, I climbed up to Cheops’ burial chamber, and I rode in the desert on a camel.

After that we drove down to the Sphinx to take some pictures. Then we went back to the fast food place where we were yesterday for lunch. I didn’t have any this time. It didn’t make me sick yesterday (although one or two of our people weren’t well after eating there yesterday) but I didn’t enjoy it enough to want another one. From there our guide took us to a store that sells cotton and linen products (it’s called Funky Bros.) and from there we headed to Sakkara.

At Sakkara there is the very first pyramid tomb known as the "step pyramid." Rather than the conventional rectangular shaped tomb, the Pharaoh Djoser decided his tomb would have them stacked up on top of each other. His actual burial chamber was dug into the bedrock underneath the pyramid. We also went into the Mastaba, the rectangular tomb, of Mereruka who was Djoser’s Minister of Finance and his son-in-law. I was amazed that we could actually walk into that tomb and touch, actually see and feel, the carvings on the wall that still have some paint on them after over 4000 years.

After returning to Giza we stopped at a place called "Relax Perfume Center" where they manufacture and sell "Essential Oils," the oils they extract from various flowers. This is done a lot in Egypt and much is exported for making perfumes but the oils are more concentrated then perfumes and colognes. We got back to the hotel in mid afternoon and were able to relax a bit before supper.

This touring can get tiring and I’m only 41. I can’t imagine how some of the septuagenarian are handling it.


Friday, November 2
We left Cairo today, had our last view of the pyramids as we drove away, crossed the Nile for the last time, and went downtown to the citadel. It was built by crusaders and captured by Saladin. Within the citadel is the Mosque of Mohammed Ali (not the boxer). Ali was an Albanian who became the first king of Egypt after claiming independence from Ottoman rule.

After that we headed east out of Cairo toward Sinai. You don’t have to go far from the Nile until you’re in total desert. There is some development in desert areas, probably confined to areas near the highways. We came to the Suez Canal and passed under a tunnel at the south end of the canal. Once on the other side of the canal we were in Sinai.

Shortly after turning south along the Gulf of Suez we stopped at Ain Musa, the Spring of Moses. I’ve heard conflicting reports about what this is supposed to be. What I read, and what would make the most sense to me according to its location, is that this was Marra where the Hebrews found bitter water. God told Moses to throw a branch from a certain tree into the water and it would become sweet. We saw a dirty well with some garbage in it. And, as everywhere we’be been, people tried to sell us cheap trinkets and junk. And little kids were all around us begging. They were really adorable but you’d go broke helping all the poor and adorable people here. They have no social assistance here so people do what they can. All around the pyramids, the Citadel/Mosque, any tourist area, they’re trying to sell you postcards, pens, cheap necklaces, fake papyrus pictures, bookmarks, books. It’s the same stuff everywhere. Some are very persistent, more often with women and older people. I just say "no, no" and they usually leave me alone. Maybe I’m big and scary.

After Ain Musa we traveled a little further south and came to Banana Beach, a restor that seems, for the most part, to be abandoned. It seems very broken down. You can tell that it was, and could be, gorgeous but maybe they overestimated how many people might come there and then went bust. The tour guide claims that most are condos owned by people from Cairo who really only come in summer. I don’t know about that. It looked pretty rundown to think anyone used it and there were more resorts like it up and down the shore. The one thing that was open and looked pretty good was the restaurant where we had lunch. Not terrible.

From there we headed the rest of the way to St. Catherine, the town and monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai. We arrived in the dark, had supper, and I wrote this in my journal just before going to bed at 9:37 p.m. They’ll be getting those of us who are climbing the mountain up at midnight so I won’t sleep much. Maybe not at all since we have a few mosquitoes in the room.