All Good Things

March 15, 2008 - 18:12

Just now leaving Abu-Nassar Hinnawi, an apparently famous restaurant in Jaffa. It was actually quite a good spread, though for some reason everyone up and headed for the bus about 25 minutes before we needed to (at Med's instigation, I understand?)... so we didn't get to enjoy the tea and baclava they set out! Actually, Bill, Rick and I stuck around long enough to try the tea. But it was a pretty good dinner... makings of falafels for an appetizer, and then some beef-lamb mixture of sorts to make two little burgers, and a shishkebab of chicken for the main meal. Having said all that, I've enjoyed almost everything I've tried here, but am looking forward to eating things I can pronounce.

Nader just shared his hope that he has helped make the Gospel come alive for us in a new way as a result of what we've seen, and hopes that we will be different people going back than when we first arrived. I think he did, and I think we are. It is not that I believe more fully than I did before–if anything, I can better understand how the Gospel would be difficult for some people to accept just because of the sheer ordinariness of the surroundings here. I don't think Jesus ever intended to leave incontrovertible, geographic proofs of His life and ministry; His proofs are the lives of His followers, and I suppose it has been that way since Matthew 28.

It seems an eternity since I first wrote what I hoped for out of this trip... 1) to learn something I didn't know before; 2) to get preconceived notions out of my head by coming up against reality, and 3) to get a different perspective on Who God is as a result of my visit here. I think I mostly succeeded.

Learn something I didn't know before. Facts-wise, that's a given... Nader is a walking encyclopedia. Otherwise, I'm still processing. I think I can say I didn't really know much about how Arabs and Israelis interact with each other in the Holy Land. Obviously not every Arab is a bomb-throwing crazy (Nader said that neither he nor any of his friends, Christian OR Muslim, have any use whatever for Osama bin Laden... and he cried when he heard about 9/11)... but Jerusalem is nevertheless very divided. Muslims, Christians, and Jews live in distinct parts of the city.

I also didn't know exactly how seriously Jews take the Sabbath. As inconvenient as it was sometimes (all the stores are closed and you do NOT want to have to wait for a shabbat elevator!), it's still kinda cool that they're pretty insistent that things take a breather on the Sabbath. there are enough Arabs and non-practicing Jews to where the city isn't completely dead on Saturday, but there is a noticeable drop in activity.

And finally, I didn't know just how run-of-the mill Jesus' crucifixion would have been to probably a good chunk of the Jerusalem population. Crucifixions happened all the time. There was a would-be messiah on every other corner, preaching about a coming deliverance for Israel. So what was so different about Jesus? Ah, that's the stuff of legend. And the Gospels. And Christianity.

Preconceived notions. The preconceived notions that I came with, namely, that the Jews are the people to whom God promised this land, I still largely have intact. The belief that they have the right to defend themselves from the constant barrage of indiscriminate rocket attacks into southern towns, attacks that terrorize, injure, and kill innocent civilians, hasn't changed one bit. I can to some degree understand the frustration that would give rise to such radicalism, but that makes it no less unconscionable.

The Jerusalem Post pointed out in an op-ed today that the U.S., in its efforts to appear even-handed so as not to tick off excitable Muslim types, acts as if Israel and the Palestinians are equally at fault for the stalled peace process. In reality, whereas Israel has moved from being almost totally against a two-state solution to a majority being for it or at least seeing it as a necessity, the Palestinians have made almost no movement for their part toward embracing such a concept... which is logical, since so many of them are still stuck on the notion that Israel doesn't have a right to exist in the first place. And how are you supposed to deal with someone like that?

Having said all that, and having made it probably quite obvious that I'm incorrigibly pro-Israel (see Gen. 12:3, Zech. 2:8), I will also say that again, I was reminded that there are always–always–two sides to every story. I would like to take a trip like this again with perhaps a Messianic Jew as a tour guide, but it was a good thing to have a Christian Arab Israeli guide, I think. Apart from the fact that he was probably able to take us some places a Jew could not, it is the very fact that his perspective is different that is good. I don't view disagreement as an automatically bad thing. I have a pretty good handle on the American perspective, I think. I have a better handle on the Jewish perspective because of my friend in Jerusalem. I had not, prior to this trip, had a chance to hear from an Arab who lives there.

A different perspective of Who God is. I can't say that I had any earth-shaking epiphanies this trip. Maybe because I wasn't specifically looking for them, maybe because I didn't have any more space in my head for anything else after all the input and information I was getting! But I think I got a really good look at the reality that Jesus was born into.

It's one thing to hear that He was born of humble birth. It's another to see the cave where Mary laid Him (more over-the-top trappings notwithstanding).

It's one thing to hear that He was from a podunk town. It's another to see the somewhat ramshackle town of Nazareth, hardly a dump but still probably not a lot more glamorous than the town Nathaniel was shocked a prophet could hail from.

It's one thing to hear that He died like a common criminal. It's another to see the little rise in the ground that Golgotha probably was... not the ponderous mountain one sees in paintings, the focal point of that day for all of Jerusalem. To have such a humble birth, one could perhaps understand–but to face such an ignominious death? I got just a bit more of a glimpse of how Isaiah described Him in chapter 53.