Student Reflections

The Living Water

Written by Johanna Chase
June 20, 2008

The realization that the stories of the bible actually ‘happened’ somewhere has been slowly, but definitely seeping into my skin over the past 15 years. I have always looked at the stories of the bible with whatever tools were at my fingertips. As I have been able to learn more and more about biblical literature and surrounding studies, I have gained a larger box of tools to use while interpreting scripture. A tool that I have always overlooked and never really understood as helpful has been both biblical geography and archaeology. So much of human history revolves around simple geography. The place in history that housed the people God chose to reveal himself through is obviously important to us and the geography surrounding that people and that place can tell us so much about who God is. The story of God happened/s inside of our history and began on the land that made up the only bridge between three continents in the eastern hemisphere. It is not hard to observe the significance the middle east plays in contemporary international politics. My generation, specifically, sees this and those who are interested in foreign policy/relations are drawn to the middle east and its important role and welfare. Early in history the major political powers of the east were well aware of this reality. When we read the prophets and biblical apocalyptic literature (Daniel, The Revelation of John, etc) all of the political strife was caused by these major powers; the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Romans, and the Greeks and all of these powers were fighting for control over the trade routes and economical influence.

The other types of problems that we, as humans, encounter inside of history are the basic problems that arise when we try to love our neighbors. The biblical stories did not happen outside of the common-day complexities of neighbors loving neighbors, of people misunderstanding people, of economic, racial or any other discrimination – however subtle or outrageous it is demonstrated. Jerusalem, part of the land connecting three continents of thousands of years of economic trade and religious tradition, was over taken 37 times. Today, it is still fought over and neighbors are still trying to love neighbors. As we have studied different trade routes and where different springs are located, the meaning of the travels of the biblical characters are deepened by my new knowledge of geography and local economies and strife. It is funny to me that when we talk about the parables of Jesus or the stories of the New Testament we often interpret them to mean vague “spiritual” niceties that will help us or help our ‘morals’. The stretch of land from the lowlands of the Dead Sea region to Jerusalem was quite the trek for traveler who was looted and taken care of by the good Samaritan. In this case and others I feel like we often take the flesh out of the bible. We do not take the time to realize that the gospels were quite revolutionary and reacting to an economy of poverty. Besides the sporadic springs and ridge run-off, there is very little water in the lands of Israel. Walking from one settlement to the next did not come with air conditioning. It is difficult to hear the entirety of the call to revolutionarily love our neighbors when we are not taught or are not learning the “fleshy” depth to the significance of the history of the biblical people. Of course, it is difficult to ever come to a full knowledge of every biblical story, but seeing the violence of the lands of Israel, their steep cliffs, deep valleys, long stretches of arid desert, and the natural environment that inhabits those spaces, aids me in making sense of all the violence of the Old Testament.

Growing up in the evangelical church I constantly heard pastors speak of God as living water. “Come and drink,” they would say. The biblical nuances of living water are referring to the purity baths (mikvah/mikvahot) that were used by the men (and women once a month…once a month, get it) to purify themselves as the Torah required. The water in the mikvahot needed to be ‘living water’, meaning it either needed to be connected to a stream with moving water or the moving water needed to be added to the sitting water in the mikvah once a day. I would like to rethink the meaning behind “living water” when talking about the God who revealed itself through the traditions, history, and people of Israel. The Living Water, here, rained down on the mountains of limestone for thousands of years and created cenonian chalk valleys for citrus plants to feed the stomachs of people and make trails for them as they journey from settlement to settlement. The Living Water springs up at 1,000 gallons a minute in the spring at Jericho that called so many to its refreshing. The Living Water is the fresh Nile that carried a Hebrew baby into the reeds of royalty so that he might grow up to lead his people out of bondage and into the lands of Israel. And the Living Water flows out of the Ein Gedi waterfalls through the valleys that open up to the Dead Sea and the settlement of Qumran, where the Dead Sea scrolls were found. I drink the Living Water as I look onto the sands of the desert and absorb the privilege of transcontinental travel and cross cultural studies and see Jesus Christ in the rebuilding of a lost peace with the Jews and those in Palestine. The refreshing of Christ’s words to the Samaritan woman at the well become solidified in my daily Israeli thirst when I think of the peace of Jesus, talking to a stranger and showing her grace and showing his disciples to do likewise. Today, I suppose it is very ideological and complex to wish to share the Living Water with Palestinians and Israelis, men and women and rich and poor, alike, but I think the springs that rise out of the desert floor are to be shared as Jesus showed us with the Samaritans at Jacob’s well in John 4. The fleshly realities of sharing this Living Water only show us the steep calling we are to answer to. We might look to the story of many Jews who did not make their mark in the bible, but spent their lives carrying water up and down Herod’s palace steps as slaves of a king who was not a true king. And we might hope further that they were able to sneak drinks of that water as they lived as faithful Jews in their slavery.

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In Search of Significance

Written By Jeremy Carr
June 15, 2008

Anyone who has talked to me long enough or who knows me well enough knows that my heart and mind are full of conflict most of the time—the fundamentalist side against the liberal side, the reformed theologian against the skeptic. Being in Israel has brought all these conflicts to a point. More than anything else it is the conflict between my fundamentalist exclusivist upbringing and my liberal inclusivist education that has brought about these crises. This framework must be remembered if this reflection is to make any sense. The following is my attempt to articulate the questions and crises that I have experienced during the past couple of days.

Being by nature one who thinks through feelings rather than through facts and logic, there is no clear way to articulate what I have felt. I can only hope what is laid out here in some fashion would cause the reader to stop and rethink some of the beliefs that we both have held onto for so long.

One cannot take lightly the value and prominence that the land of Israel has in the minds of Christians. It is the land where the most significant event ever to come about—Christ’s life—took place. That being said, from the very moment that I got on the bus and was driven through the land I felt a strange connection with it. I felt like I had come face to face with a friend that I had already spent intimate time with but had never actually met. It was like the land and I had known each other before. I felt at the same time like I had met a stranger and a lover.

However, a dark reality tainted this otherwise intimate moment. For a while before coming to Israel I had felt a distance from Jesus Christ. I felt closer to God than I had ever before but I felt like I hadn’t seen Jesus in a long time. Determined not to lose touch with the center of my faith I decided to study through the Gospel of Mark while I was here. I knew I needed to be confronted with Jesus again. There was no way I was going to let this opportunity slip though my hands because Jesus and me where on the rocks. The times I have spent in Mark have been good and I am finding Christ, but on that bus I felt a fear that I would miss out on the chance to come as physically and spiritually close as is possible in this world to Jesus Christ, my Lord and savior, because my head and my heart where not in the right place. The churches and holy places that I would visit in the next few days would test my faith and understanding of God in a way that I could never have imagined. This is the chronicle of those visits.

The first holy place I visited was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The place was full of icons and crucifixes and pilgrims coming to worship at the place where tradition says that Jesus was crucified and buried. The gaudiness of the Greek Orthodox art which filled the place dulled my vision to the point of annoyance and increased my skepticism. I watched as people kissed the ground where the cross was supposed to have stood and wished I could share in the childlike simplicity of their faith. For the first time ever I was sitting on the precipice of touching my Lord but I could not escape my cynicism and I am ashamed to say it withheld me from worshiping that day. Perhaps it was the years and years of visiting museums and theme parks that dulled my senses to the possibility that what I was seeing was real, but as I walked the corridors of this “holy” place I could not escape the feeling that at any moment I could press against its stony flesh and watch it crumble revealing that there was nothing of substance behind it holding it all up. Luckily I had some very good friends that where willing to listen to my skepticism. I asked Cliff, who has become a good friend during the few days we’ve had together, “Does this place do anything for you?” He replied, “Ya.” He saw authenticity in the real worship that is coming from a place like this. He knew God was there and was pleased with what he was hearing. The idea that God could be there caught me off guard for no reason that I have been able to figure out yet. Why couldn’t God be there? Why did I have a problem with that idea? I also had a chance to talk to another good friend Wes Ellis who is a very articulate theologian and he helped me understand the meaning of all the “gaudiness” as I saw it. He explained that the pomp and circumstance that I hated spoke to the glorious, triumphant nature of the death and resurrection of Christ. Every icon and every picture told a story. I realized then that it was only my own skepticism that kept me from seeing the meaningfulness of that place. The liberal in me wanted to affirm and condone what was occurring there but the conservative in me would not allow it. I thought to myself “If this place is to stand in my mind I must find what God is doing through this façade. I must discover where Christ is though all of this, if he is even here at all.”

The next holy place to challenge me was the Church of the Nativity. The sanctuary of that Greek Orthodox Church was dark and foreboding. Years and years of smoke from the burning of incense had stained the walls and the pillars an ominous tint of black dulling the probably once glorious frescos. The stone floor was cold and dirty but held some appeal in allowing me to sit after a long couple of days of walking. The priests seemed almost animal like in nature, most likely due to the years and years of liturgy instilling in them the same instinct you would see in the eyes of a wolf who knows nothing but the hunt. The chants they were singing might as well have been in the language of wolves or deer or dogs. Their haunting melodies seemed so alien to my western idea of worship. In fact the whole sanctuary full of icons, crucifixes and incense burners seemed to scream of a foreign, alien religion that shared nothing in common with the faith I had grown up with. But the combination of the animal like look in the eyes of the priests and the incense stained pillars spoke to years and years of devotion that I have no concept of as a young boy of twenty. I had to come to grips with the fact that this was all something that I could not understand at that moment and admit that it was something authentic.

Next door to the Church of the Nativity was a Catholic Chapel where the final twist occurs. Because of the mass of people trying to see the “birthplace” of Jesus I decided not to stick around for to long and instead found some time to sit in the Catholic Sanctuary and think for a bit. Sitting there I felt more at home than I had in the Greek Orthodox Church. The room was bright and inviting with pink accents on sheets of white plastered columns and ceilings. There where less icons and crucifixes and the whole setting was brighter than the Greek Church. After a few minutes of looking around the room my gaze fell on a particularly large crucifix hanging on one of the pillars that lined the sanctuary. I took a moment to look into the face of the man who I come to this land for; the man who I was determined to find. I waited for a sign that this man was indeed who he said he was. I waited and waited staring the whole time at his pain filled faced and then, as if it filled every crack and crevice in the sanctuary saturating the stone of which it was built I heard the Islamic call to prayer. I was immediately struck with a deep feeling of irony in the picture of the suffering Jesus with the Islamic call to worship echoing in the background. At that moment millions of Muslims where turning to face Mecca and bow in prayer to “God” and all the while Jesus the Son of God was hanging on the cross in front of my eyes. And for that instant and in that single moment I felt the clarity and the freedom to think to myself, “They’ve missed it.” For the past couple of weeks the liberal in me has been dying to proclaiming that there is mercy at God’s throne for all religions; that all religions worship the one true God, but here for a brief moment I felt the simplicity and comfort of being a fundamentalist again. For the first time in a long time I felt for an instant like I new exactly who that man on the cross was and why he came here. The feeling only lasted for a second and I left the sanctuary in silence ushered away from Christ and out of the sanctuary by the continuing Islamic call to prayer and the returning liberal voices in my head.

In all honesty thus ended the spiritual roller coaster of the past couple of days for me. Desperate for some time to quiet my mind and simply worship God I used Sunday, my first free day, to go to the western wall and pray. I was determined to do it right so some friends and I stopped by the shop of a Jewish man named Moshe who spent some time talking to the students at JUC (the school we are studying at) about Judaism and Christianity. We bought some Yarmulkes from him to wear at the wall (simply a sign of reverence and not a statement of religious affiliation) and I spent some time talking with him about etiquette at the wall.

When we finally arrived at the Western Wall I was immediately overcome with a sense of intimidation. Here I was a western Christian at the most holy site in all of Judaism. I asked myself, “Will I really be accepted here?” Following Moshe’s advice I did my best to keep a low profile. Once the initial feeling of inferiority passed I found a chair and sat for a while and tried to focus my thoughts. I had already prepared scriptures to read and prayers to place in the wall and I read over the passages and the prayers gradually focusing my mind on the moment. Eventually a vacancy opened in the wall. All of a sudden I felt the need to mark that moment and place as holy so I poured some water from my canteen on my hands and face and slowly walked up and placed my head on the wall. As I laid my hand on the wall to pray I knew I was touching the last remains of the dwelling place of God’s presence. But there was still a divide between my self and the transcendence I had been looking for the past couple of days. At a couple of points during my prayers men walked up to me, as Moshe had warned, and solicited prayers or Hebrew Bibles. “Criminals!” Moshe referred to them as. I immediately felt a pain in my spirit by encountering these men. The diamond of Judaism was set beneath the rough of what has become a reality in Modern Judaism. As I turned back to the wall to pray I felt the same pain as I touched the wall of the temple mount. And then it struck me, the resolution of all the conflict I had been feeling the past couple of days. Regardless of the mess, Chaos, doubt, and skepticism which engulfs these holy places God, although perhaps badly skewed, is still there. I was still touching the real dwelling place of God regardless of whether or not it was historical. I then felt the freedom to pray and read and participate in the worship that had risen from that holy place for ages. I felt a connection to the rabbis and the soldiers and the children that had come to that place to worship. The words of Psalms 132, which I had prepared to read at the wall, came alive. “For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his resting place: ‘this is my resting place forever; here I will dwell for I have desired it. I will abundantly bless her provisions; I will satisfy her poor with bread. Her priests I will clothe with salvation and her saints will shout for joy. There I will make a horn to sprout for David; I have prepared a lamp for my anointed. His enemies I will clothe with shame but on him his crown will shine.’” Before I left I placed a prayer in a crack at the foot of the wall. Originally I thought it was a nice prayer to pray but I then realized that it addressed all that I had gone through in the past couple of days. God had given me this prayer to pray long before I knew I needed to pray it. It is Psalms 133, “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head running down to the beard, on the beard of Aaron running down on the collar of his robes! It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the MOUNTAIN OF ZION! For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, LIFE forevermore.”

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