Holy Land Pilgrimage: Day 3

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

I celebrated my mother’s birthday by doing the thing she taught me to do: Travel somewhere fascinating, see as much as possible, and kick back at the end of the day. I’m in the garden at the hotel in Magdala now, re-membering the day’s flurry of activity.

Sunrise at the Sea of Galilee

I began at sunrise at the shore of the Sea of Galilee, there just to watch and pray. We’ll do this as a group tomorrow, celebrating Eucharist, but I wanted to have some time there myself, too. The sunrise over the Golan Heights warmed the slightly chilly morning and within minutes cleared away the evening’s moisture hanging in the air.  I also listened to Curly Nikki’s podcast – good stuff, actually, especially for a person like me wired to do rather than to be.

We left an hour later than planned because most of the group arrived about 2 a.m. after some hang-ups at the airport. They soldiered on, though, through a day that challenged even the few of us who’d had a full night’s sleep.

Banias, a.k.a. Caesarea Philippi.

We began at Banias, whose spring is one of the sources of the Jordan – so I can say the Jordan River actually is chilly, at least there. The place is also known as Caesarea Philippi, and we saw ruins of both the Hellenistic temple to Pan and the temple to Caesar Augustus and the tetrarch Philip. But more important, this is the site of “Peter’s confession,” where he named Jesus as the Messiah and received the name “Rocky” (Peter), indicating that on his strength Jesus would build his church (and perhaps an homage to the scenery there). The backstory is important, too. After John the Baptist had been murdered in prison by Herod Antipas, Jesus and his friends escaped from Antipas’ jurisdiction to Caesarea Philippi. But Jesus wasn’t just laying low. In the setting of this tremendous rock cliff, and in explicit contrast to the religions of the day (the state and the Greco-Roman pantheon), Jesus planned his next act.

The famous mosaic at the Church of the
Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes.

Then we went to Tagbha and the Church of the Multiplication (not of numbers but of loaves and fishes). There we saw the famous ancient mosaic marking that event, as well as other beautiful but lesser-known mosaics, including two peacocks, my personal favorites. Then we visited the site of the “primacy of St. Peter,” meaning the beach (or one like it) where the resurrected Jesus cooked breakfast for his friends after a long night of unproductive fishing, and where Jesus and Peter reversed Peter’s three denials with three commands to feed Jesus’ sheep, even though Peter’s love was lacking.

The synagogue at Capernaum. 

Then we went to Capernaum, Jesus’ adopted base after being rejected by his hometown crowd in
Nazareth (and needing to get out of Herod Antipas’ jurisdiction). The main sites there are the excavated town and synagogue. Here, Jesus healed the woman with the hemorrhage, the man with the withered hand, the paralytic lowered through the roof, and Peter’s mother-in-law at her home. That latter site is thought to be identifiable through archaeology, as opposed to so many sites that honor memory rather than history. Archaeologists found a home in Capernaum’s ruins with graffiti discussing Peter and Jesus, and that’s good evidence that Peter’s old home became a house church in the early years of the movement, remembered and marked perhaps by Peter but at least by those who knew who he was and where he'd lived. I’ll take that. The church marking the spot is fascinating – a sadly 1960s structure, with all the aesthetic grandeur of the old Kansas City airport, but brilliantly suspended over the site so you can see Peter’s house literally under the church. That certainly beats what we’ll see in a few days in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, where the Church in its wisdom completely obscured what it so badly wanted to honor.

A recovered fishing boat from Jesus' time. 

Then we drove to a kibbutz for two final experiences: taking a quick boat ride on the Sea of Galilee and viewing an excavated wooden fishing boat from the time of Christ. The cruise was a welcome rest and a chance to see the area from a fisherman’s perspective. The lake isn’t huge – 8 miles across and 13 miles long – so “sea” is pretty aspirational. But, at the same time, if I were rowing across it (which I couldn’t) and a storm came up and swamped my boat, I’d be scared, too … and angry at Jesus for sleeping through the crisis. The kibbutz is also the site of a preserved 2,000-year-old fishing boat that two present-day fishermen found in the mud during a season of low lake levels. The story of its salvage reminded me of the Steamboat Arabia in Kansas City, but with the addition of Jesus to raise the stakes.

Now, finally, the day is done, and rest comes with a glass of Shikma, a local brew. I’m grateful for it all.