From the Holy Land Pilgrims: Thoughts, Reflections and More

By the Holy Land Pilgrims

Pilgrims from the Diocese of North Carolina are traveling the Holy Land April 9-20. Throughout the trip, they are sharing thoughts, reflections, experiences and more with those of us following the trip from home.

APRIL 19: A Look Back at the Songs We Sang, the Verses We Read and the Prayers We Said - Sharon L. Taylor

Our pilgrimage to the Holy Land ended today with a visit to Emmaus. It was on the road to Emmaus that Jesus met two disciples grieving his loss and revealed himself to them. A pilgrimage is a journey, especially to a sacred place. The Holy Land is indeed a sacred place, and Jesus revealed himself to us here. We showed reverence at each holy site we visited by saying mass or reading a Bible verse and prayer and singing hymns. Some nights the group said Compline back at the hotel.

On our first day we travelled from the airport in Tel Aviv to Bethlehem and said mass at the Shepherds’ Field. Our site was a cave where shepherds sought shelter millennia ago, perhaps even the shepherds who went to see the babe at Bethlehem. We sang “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and “Away in a Manger.” The Gospel told the story of the angels appearing to the shepherds and telling them the good news of Jesus’ birth. It was in this undecorated cave and other unadorned spaces that I most felt the presence of God with us during our pilgrimage. We left the Shepherds’ Field and drove to the Church of the Nativity where we sang “Silent Night” and read of Jesus’ birth from the Gospel of Luke.

On our second day we visited Hebron and the Cave of the Patriarchs where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah are buried. I believe we also visited the Herodion this day, site of one of Herod’s castles, where he might have met with the Wise Men.

Our third day, April 12, was very full. We started with a visit to the Israel Museum where we saw the “Shrine of the Book” exhibit about the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest known Biblical manuscripts. From there we went on to the Jordan River where the group renewed our baptismal vows and one of us was baptized into the Episcopal church. Appropriately we sang "Wade in the Water." We moved on to Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found and saw the ruins of the complex where the Essenes  who wrote the scrolls had lived. Next was the Dead Sea where nothing lives and everyone is able to float on the water because of the high mineral content. After the Dead Sea we literally climbed up into the wilderness where Jesus was tempted—a vast magnificent desert of rolling hills. After this we went to our new hotel in Galilee.

On Friday, the 13th of April, we visited Bethphage, where the disciples untied the colt Jesus rode into Jerusalem, as well as the Mount of Olives and several of the churches in the area. At Bethphage we sang “All Glory, Laud, and Honor,” the Palm Sunday hymn. The churches we visited were the Pater Noster (Lord’s Prayer) Church where we read Luke’s gospel telling of Jesus teaching the disciples to pray, Dominus Flevit where Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem and we sang “Jerusalem, My Happy Home,” and the Church of All Nations in the Garden of Gethsemane. We visited Dormition Abbey, one of two traditional sites where the Virgin Mary is said to have fallen asleep before her assumption into heaven. Our prayer was that like Mary, we may hear the word of God and keep it. At the church of Saint Peter in Gallicantu, we read the verses from Mark’s gospel where Peter denies Jesus, realizes what he has done when the cock crows, and weeps.

On Saturday, April 14th, we visited Jacob’s Well. A Greek Orthodox Church has been erected about the site where Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for water and offered her living water. Our prayer was that that living water would be unsealed in us and become an ever-flowing spring.

On Sunday, the 15th, we attended mass at Christ Church, Nazareth, then visited the nearby Basilica of the Annunciation and read Luke’s gospel telling of the annunciation to Mary that she would have a child and that her cousin, Elizabeth, was with child. At the Church of Cana in Galilee, we read John’s gospel account of the first miracle and sang “Come Join in Cana’s Feast.”

On Monday we found our way to several churches along the north shore of the Sea of Galilee including he Church of the Multiplication (of the Loaves and Fishes) where we listened to John’s description of that miracle. At the Church of Peter’s Primacy we read John 21:15-19 in which Jesus asks Simon Peter if he loves him three times and tells him “feed my sheep.” The Rev. David Umphlett explained that passage in this way: Jesus is asking Peter if he loves him completely, with body and soul, or agape love, and Peter responds each time that he loves Jesus as a brother, filius love. Jesus then used a metaphorical story to tell Peter that someday he would understand what Jesus was asking and die for it. At the Church of the Beatitudes we sang “Blest are the pure in heart, for they shall see our God.” Next we went to Kursi, where Jesus called out the Gerasene Demoniac. And we took a ride on the Sea of Galilee in a boat modeled after those Jesus and the disciples would have used 2000 years ago. That evening we said mass at a chapel under a tent along the shore of Galilee. The Epistle was from Paul’s letter to the Romans, “There is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.”

Tuesday was a relatively light day. We returned to Jerusalem driving along the Via Maris or Way of the Sea. We stopped to see Caesarea Maritima, the site of Herod’s Castle built in the Mediterranean and to which were attached an amphitheater, coliseum, and “toilets” for public use (these latter on solid ground.)

On Wednesday we visited the Wailing Wall and said and left our prayers, then visited St. Anne’s Church known for its acoustics. The Gospel of John told of Jesus healing a man in a pool at the Sheep Gate where this church is located and we sang “I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light” in harmony. We have quite a choir amongst us. We made our way along the Via Dolorosa or Way of the Cross, saying Stations of the Cross and ending at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, housing the traditional site of the Lord’s tomb. The Via Dolorosa is only about half a mile long, but a steep climb through current day shops and streets, and descendants of the coed that witnessed the Crucifixion.

That brings us to today, Thursday, April 19th, where we said mass at the church at Emmaus and sang “Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee,” “Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life,” “Jesus Is Lord of All the Earth,” “Jerusalem, My Happy Home,” and a spontaneous verse of “Amazing Grace” at the end of the service.
Thanks be to God, alleluia, alleluia!

APRIL 15 - Sharon L. Taylor

They cast their nets in Galilee, just off the hills of brown,
Such happy, simple fisherfolk before the Lord came down.
—William Alexander Percy

Today we awoke in Galilee with blue skies, the aroma of roses and a beautiful vista outside. After another simple and delicious meal at Pilgerhaus, we traveled from Galilee to Nazareth to the 10 a.m. mass at Christ Church, Nazareth, an Anglican church. Along the way, our guide Ghussan, told us some of the history of the area through which we were driving. We passed the Pigeon Valley, a path through which Jesus and the disciples would have walked from Galilee to Nazareth. It would have taken them about a week to make the trip on foot. Arbel is the hill from which Roman soldiers of Herod’s time descended to massacre the Jewish villagers living in caves below. The Horns of Hatim are two hills believed to be the site where the Crusaders were defeated by the Muslim warrior Saladin in 1147.

When we arrived at Christ Church, Fr. Jamie Paul from our group of pilgrims and priests from other pilgrim groups were invited to say the mass with Fr. Neal Abu Rahman, the rector of Christ Church. I found the service to be very moving. Portions of the mass were said in Arabic or English. The gospel was read in both languages, and the languages mingled as the congregation read the prayers and responses in whatever their native language, all worshipping the same God.

After mass the Christ Church congregation were very gracious serving coffee, water and wonderful cookies at the coffee hour.

When we left Christ Church we continued our tour of two of the other churches in Nazareth on foot. Our next destination was the Basilica of the Annunciation, the site where the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her she would bear a child. In the courtyard there is a striking statue of Mary standing with outstretched arms and a gate bearing the sign of Christ the King behind her. The outer doors on either side of the basilica’s entrance are carved with scenes from the Old Testament and the center door with scenes from the life of Jesus. The interior walls are decorated with artwork from around the world depicting Mary as the mother of not just Jesus, but of all mankind. The United States’ contribution is stunning and titled “The Woman Clothed with the Sun”. It depicts a silver-colored Mary against a background of copper, gold, red, and blue. On the lower level of the basilica is a well where according to Greek Orthodox tradition, Mary was approached by Gabriel.
After a lunch of pita, hummus, various salads, and meat, we made our final stop of the day at the Church at Cana. This is a Greek Orthodox church commemorating Jesus’ first miracle, turning water into wine. The exterior of the church is notable for a statue of Mary standing above the angels and even Jesus as it was Mary who asked her son to perform the miracle of turning water into wine. Inside was beautiful artwork and ruins of a crypt dating back to the 5th century. Currently, money and prayer requests written on paper are thrown into the crypt. The prayer requests are collected by a priest and prayers said. The paper is burned and used for ashes on Ash Wednesday. The money collected is given to charity.

We had hoped to visit the Church of the Transfiguration today, but that was cancelled due to the long waiting line to get to it. We hope to visit another morning. We have returned to Pilgerhaus to what I’m sure will be another memorable meal and the opportunity to reflect on our day with each other.

APRIL 13 - Lizzie McManus-Dail

Standing along the gates that enclose the garden where Gethsemane is remembered, the Rev. David Umphlett told us that olive trees have a kind of eternal rebirthing. That’s not his phrase, it’s mine, but what he did say was this: olive trees are grown by leaving the old roots in the ground, old roots. And the new trees are grafted onto the old roots, so the very olive trees we beheld in the garden could have possibly grown from roots as old as the trees that remember Jesus pleading beneath their boughs. 

Today was long, beginning with a processional at Bethpage, where it is remembered that Jesus sent for a colt. We walked the walk of Palm Sunday, pausing at churches that are built to remember the flashes of that entrance into Jerusalem. Our pilgrimage is well-crafted; we ourselves will only actually explore the Old City of Jerusalem itself this afternoon. We looked onto it today as Jesus might have, standing on the Mount of Olives.

And there was barbed wire. And broken glass. Jutting out from the walls. To keep who out, I wondered? And to keep who in? 

Jerusalem, my happy home, we sang. It was beautiful. Our group has some serious harmonizers. And Jerusalem felt like home, like walking into the pages of a book that I have read and read and read my whole life. And like so many homes, it has its secrets, its scars. The bullet holes on the Zion gate. Churches that wear old signs of many foundations, multiple rebuildings, Arabic script and Hebrew letters that tell old stories of the home we all want to have but struggle to share. 

APRIL 11/12 - Katherine Kopp

April 11 - On this day we traveled from Bethlehem to Hebron to visit a holy place revered by Christians, Muslims and Jews: the Cave of the Patriarchs. We saw Abraham's Tomb as well as the Tombs of Isaac and Sarah within the mosque which is adjacent to the Jewish synagogue. 

Along the way to Hebron we had to pass several Israeli checkpoints where the soldiers stand with their automatic weapons. It has been sobering to witness some of the conditions under which Palestinians in the West Bank live. 

As with our first day here, our experiences are giving us much to think about. 

APRIL 11 - Jonathan McManus-Dail

“Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart, and especially the people in this land of Palestine and Israel, that barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease, that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Amen.

This prayer for social justice from the Book of Common Prayer is in my heart as I reflect on our second day of Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Today’s journey took us first to Hebron, a modern city in the Palestinian West Bank where we visited the Cave of the Patriarchs which is believed to house the tombs of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah. All three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are united in our reverence for these Patriarchs and Matriarchs, yet we remain divided by our desire to control these holy sites and by continued violence and oppression. As we visited the Mosque built atop the tombs, we learned about the massacre of 29 Palestinian Muslims who were killed during their prayers by an American-Israeli Zionist in 1994. The murderer believed that, because of the long heritage of Judaism in the land, that Muslims have no right to worship or claim space in the Holy Land. The territory surrounding the compound, though in the Palestinian West Bank, is tightly controlled by the Israeli military with checkpoints complete with young soldiers toting assault rifles.

From there, we traveled back to Bethlehem (that’s right! Bethlehem!!) where we visited The Crèche, a Catholic ministry providing care and refuge to children of unwed Palestinian mothers. Children born in such circumstances, often to mothers who were victims of sexual violence, are afforded precious little protection or support from the Palestinian government and are often not accepted in their communities. The Crèche provides an otherwise vacant bridge to this vulnerable population. I was moved by the compassion and selflessness of the sisters and others who work with the beautiful children in their charge. I was drawn into a sense of the holy as I heard about the suffering of this vulnerable population and about the people of God who stand in the gap to help.

With a strong sense of the gravity of what we’d just heard and witnessed, our group headed off to a tour and lunch at Bethlehem University. There, we heard from some amazing students about their perseverance and hope as they study and learn together as Palestinian Christians and Muslims, even as they have to travel through Israeli checkpoints on their daily commute to school.

I’m quickly learning that the Holy Land holds many layers of conflict, certainly, but also of hope, history and a sense of connection to a story so much bigger and older than I can process.

APRIL 10 - Rebecca Hix

Day 2 on the pilgrimage really was a continuation of Day 1 but with more movement. On Day 1 we met at the airport about 8:30a.m. It's 8:30p.m. on Day 2, and the "less than experienced" flyers haven't been to bed yet!  But what a Day 2! 

We traveled from the airport to Bethlehem and worshiped in one of the caves commemorating the visitation of the shepherds to the little baby Jesus. No American red barn for Jesus, he was born in a cave. We started right out turning upside down what we know and understand about Jesus. Then on to the Church of the Nativity, honoring where Jesus might have been born. It was a rite of passage for pilgrims, I'm told...too many people trying to get in too small a space and then once in that space, is it the space itself that's holy? Is it the gathering of Christians from worldwide with whom we share the story?  Is it pilgrims that have been coming for centuries?  I'm not sure what it was for everyone, but it was holy for me, because our team of 35 (or so) gathered in that cave and sang Silent Night, with perfect acoustics and a meaning richer and deeper than I've ever experienced with a hymn I've been singing since before I knew words!  May God continue to be known!