This picture is a distinct reminder to me that I took First Presbyterian Church with me on my pilgrimage to Israel. Not because I specifically thought of you all while I took this particular picture—though I did think of you and pray for you quite a lot on the trip—but because of what happened when I came back home. Nora, our Director of Children’s Ministry, took one look at this picture and said, “I can’t wait to show the kids this picture next year on Palm Sunday!” Palms in the Holy Land. Cool. I wasn’t thinking at all of Palm Sunday when I clicked my shutter for the maybe 350th time—I was simply taking as many last pictures as I could of our beautiful retreat—the Pilgerhaus—on the Sea of Galilee before we left for Jerusalem.

What an awful week here at First Pres it’s been—funerals in threes, one of which was today’s—a man in his 40s with a lot of life yet to live. Palms and crosses and the reminder of empty tombs are most necessary, not only in Lent but for all times, not only in the Holy Land but in all places.

Grace and peace,
Jess

There is Always Something Holy

Nazareth—we’re running late. And probably by the time we get to the Church of Annunciation the Grotto of Annunciation will be closed. I’ve reflected often that the theme of Israel for Christian pilgrims is as follows: This is where Jesus did ___________ and so we built a church on it. The Church of Annunciation is where the angel Gabriel announced to Mary she would give birth to the Son of God whom she was to name Jesus.

From John: “The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see’” (John 1:43-46)

Nazareth is now a busy city of almost 200,000 people. In Biblical times, so to speak, Nazareth was all of a few hundred people at most, never mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures and not very noteworthy in other historical records. So that we might know the VERY cave in which Mary and her family resided I suppose is possible, but between my inner skeptic and our inability to actually walk down into the grotto, well, I wasn’t feeling the holiness of the whole thing.

In fact, well, I thought it was kind of ridiculous.

However, there were amazing works of art on the walls—

a collection of artistic renditions of the annunciation

from around the world—

and in a winding stairwell to the lower level of the church

were some of the most beautiful stained glass windows.

There is always something Holy.

If you can believe it, this is the Sea of Galilee on the very first night we arrived in Israel. We spent our first week of the two-week trip at the Pilgerhaus in Tabgha, a German Catholic retreat center, on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee. In the background are the beginnings of the Golan Heights, behind which are the bordars of Syria and Jordan. As I share with people that I have been to Israel, one question comes up over and over again: Did you feel like you were in danger? No, we did not feel like we were in danger, at least not most of the time. It was unusual to see automatic weapons up close and to have an armed soldier enter the bus at checkpointsl; but in general, we did not feel unsafe. The small exception was one evening on the Sea of Galilee, when we could hear multiple helicoptors circling in the distance and well as military jets. This was a little jarring. We felt pretty protected where we were, but it was odd to have those sounds in the background. The next day someone found an article in the newspaper about a surprise visit by Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Jordan's King Abdullah II--thus, the air traffic.

But mostly, what we experienced that first week in Israel on the Sea of Galilee is in the picture above: peace and light and time to give thanks to God.

Grace and peace,
Jess

“Run and jump right off the end. Just run and jump.”

Right.

“Just run and jump” hasn’t been in my vocabulary since I went cliff jumping in the Minnesota Boundary Waters on an 8th grade youth group camping trip. I suppose that is ironic since when I heard these words on Saturday, I had just watched all of our 8th graders and middle school students fling themselves off a pier-like structure in a woods up near Hanging Rock park and bounce, yes, bounce their way down a zipline.

The rest of the zipline day had gone pretty well. You start out simply enough on a short line from one ground platform to another with a small gulley in between. Then they advance you along taller and longer lines and rotating platforms well up in the trees. And really, for me, all of this was cool. Fun, safe, not really challenging. But this last bonus line, the one that slacks enough so that you can be flung by your hanging gear skyward and then groundward, well, that was entirely different. Not to mention the fact that following the “run and jump” instructions always came the warnings that if you did not actually get a running head-start and jump out as far as you could you very well might a) whack your head on the end of the pier and then b) hit the ground at the end of the pier because you didn’t jump out far enough. Lovely.

I will tell you, I did run and jump. And then yelled my head off like a screaming mimi. And it was beautiful—what a rush—what a perfect ending.

Run and jump,
Jess