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Wednesday-Thursday, June 15-16,
2005: Picturing Jesus’ Ministry
After our
first night in Tel Aviv last Tuesday (June 14, 2005), we left for
Then on Thursday we sailed on the Sea of Galilee from
Tiberias to the boat
museum, then to the Beatitudes, Feeding of the 5000, and Feed my
sheep sites. Finally we came to Capernaum to
the site where Peter and Jesus may actually have lived. I enjoyed the ride on
the sea very much and the
Then we went to Cana where two of our company, Ben Last
and Emily Harle, began their wedding on videotape. They'll finish it in about 8
weeks. I don't know how many times Wilbur emphasized that they weren't married
yet. It was a "you can't have sex" reminder he made about ten times.
Nazareth followed and I, being paranoid, was a
little uneasy walking through the markets to the
Finally, we came back to the Jordan River where I
baptized, rededicated, and helped rededicate several people. That was a neat
experience. I have supply pastored, but
never baptized, so Emily Harle soon to be Last was the first person I’ve ever
baptized.
None of that, however, is what I started out to write. I started to write my
impressions of Jesus ministry in the light of these forays.
The first thing that struck me is that the
The
Also my reading indicates that the villages would have been very small.
The plain at the edge of the Sea of Galilee yields to the rather high hills of
In my devotional Thursday night I remarked on how insignificant a place Jesus
came to. What a small group of people he ministered to in a backwater part of
Antipas' peculiarly divided domain. It was like he gave us a little snippet of
what ministering is all about. Before he died for the world, he ministered to a
little group of peasant villagers trying to survive the building programs and
thus taxation of Herod Antipas. They farmed enough to live on, but he demanded
much more. These were the poor to whom Jesus spoke good news.
Friday-Saturday, June 17-18, 2005:
Muslim Holy Day
This
hotel has wireless, so I thought I would share a few quick thoughts on
I tend to be paranoid (which doesn’t necessary mean that people aren’t out to
get me), so I’ve been a little tense these last couple of days. Yesterday we
went through the West Bank quite a bit:
I feel like the situation here politically has come into even better focus, and
I’ll share sometime. I know it’s not spiritual, but the main thing I was
thinking in the Church of the Nativity was, “Just
think, there were Palestinians holed up in here in a standoff with the Israelis
just a couple years ago.” “Just think, there are bullet holes in the side of
this church.”
It was just bizzare as we rode down along the
It was just bizarre. The walk from here to there is no big deal--it's just
space. But the significance of the space from here to there is unbelievable and
sometimes deadly.
Well time for supper. More later…
Filling in Gaps
Friday we
left Galilee for the south, traveling along the Jordan River to a large extent
in
High on the hill is the "traditional site" of Jesus'
wilderness temptation, a Greek Orthodox controlled place with cable cars to
boot.
Then we arrived to camel rides and overpriced shopping, but there was also some
very nice fruit.
The archaeological site of Jericho itself was
irritating, almost a waste of time if it weren't for sentimental reasons. Here
were some of the notorious failures of early archaeology. The science was
infantile at the time, and Garstang blew through massive layers of stuff,
discarding everything as he went until he could find the Jericho of Joshua's
day. When he thought he had finally found it, he was at about 2000 BC. He had removed the Joshua time layer way above it
in the process. So the Tel as it now stands is about twenty
feet lower than it was a hundred years ago.
Kathleen Kenyon continued the dig in the 50's I think and did much to improve
the way archeology is done. The current majority view is that there was no city
there at the time of Joshua, but you couldn't prove or disprove it because
cursed Garstang threw away the evidence a century ago (maybe a little less).
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (P.S. there is a tower there that dates to about 7000 BC from
Kenyon’s digs. I think it sometimes pops
up as support for the Joshua story, but it is not from the time of Joshua.)
Well, I'll continue with
More Gaps
I left
off I think in terms of continuity with Qumran on
Friday. It was truly great for me to be there since I have delivered a paper on
the Dead Sea Scrolls and twice taught a course on the intertestament. Let me
say how incredibly helpful it is for me to remember things when I can picture
it. I now know where at least some of the caves are in relation to
I've seen the graves running north and south now, to the east of the site. I've
seen the miqvaoth (baptismal pools), the tower, the so
called "scriptorium" (bad choice of
words for extraneous meaning imported in) and the refractory.
These are great things. I had a novelistic picture of it (yes, I did once start
a novel with Judas starting in the
Then we swam in the Dead Sea, which was great. I
wish we could have swam all the way across to
Then we made our way to a hotel in
The Sabbath was soon approaching at the hotel there, and Jewish women could be
seen scurrying to the elevator. The elevators here
on the Sabbath run on their own so that no one has to push a button and thus
"light a fire." They won't turn on coffee pots on Saturday or do any of
these mundane things. Wilbur told a story of how he actually had to turn on the
oven for a hotel back in 58 I think it was, with a rabbi standing guard over
the kitchen to make sure no Jew did.
I'm too tired to pontificate, but I think some of the legalistic practices of
my own Wesleyan background approach such silliness.
I'll just mention the problem Jews have with having meat and dairy products
together. It goes back to a verse that appears in three different places in the
Pentateuch about boiling the kid in its mother's milk. So they won't serve meat
(the kid, I presume) with any milk. Of course discoveries at Ugarit show, as
usual, that this is in part a reaction to Canaanite practice and thus that the
Jews are making a big hullaballo about a verse that has nothing to do with them
or having butter with supper.
I'm too tired to pontificate, but Wesleyan buns and not letting guys have
goatees measure about the same on the "I don't have a clue what the words
of the Bible were really about" scale.
On Saturday morning we went to Arad,
Very interesting to me in
Then we stopped at Lachish for a few. Then we came up
to the Valley of Elah where the Philistines and the
Israelites met and traditionally David killed Goliath. Then we came to
It was crowded with Palestinian police all around. We went into the church where Palestinians just a couple years ago
walled themselves up and where there were bullet holes (I didn't personally see
any). The church is Greek Orthodox again and the traditional site is in a cave
under the church. There is as usual a place to touch or
kiss, and a place to the side where the baby Jesus traditionally was laid.
You come up to a Franciscan church right next to it. As usual it's hard for me
to know what to make of it, since I have no confidence that any of these spots
are the right spots.
I thought
I’d add pictures I took of an Israeli checkpoint
going in to
Then we came here to
Sunday, June 19, 2005: My Modernist,
Protestant Biases Come Out
Fifteen
minutes till departure on Father's Day for the
First of all, copious, copious kudos to the Franciscans and Greek Orthodox who
bought up the land where holy sites are so many years ago. They have preserved
them when they might otherwise have been destroyed. For this I am eternally
grateful.
Now for venting… Given the mindset of these groups, they just have to built
these churches on the sites. I suppose the reasoning is once a holy site always
a holy site; once a church always a church. The result is that modernist
Protestants like me, who want to see and get the feel for what it was really
like, have to struggle to look around all the "stuff" the Catholics
have piled on.
Of course I don't mind half of it. The church of the Beatitudes or where the 5000
were fed or where Jesus told John to feed his sheep are unlikely the real
spots, despite good attempts by the early Christians to identify prominent
rocks. Hey look, there's a good rock, let's build a church here. So I don't
mind those. They give concreteness to important memories and have been some of
the best places for meditation.
On the other hand, the Franciscans just had to build this monstrous, spider like looking church on top of the site where
Peter and Jesus may have lived. I want to see the real deal, not have to peer
from afar under this big metal thing to see the site. It was better before they
venerated the site, from pre 1990 pictures.
Frankly, hurray for the Old Testament sites and the Roman ruins. The church has
left them alone so you can picture what things were really like without the
monstrosities. Of course, they're not the sites I'm really interested in.
I close with the church of the nativity, although I hear the Holy Sepulcher
will win the prize for competing churches. You know, Greek Orthodox squeezed
next to Roman Catholic. Add the Armenians at the Sepulcher and we're ready to
lose all site of reality.
Hurray for the imagination; laments for reality.
Ken Schenck, reporting from
Sunday, Part 2: It was on a Sunday
in
It's
heading toward the end of Sunday here, our third holy day in a row. Friday we
went through the West Bank along the Jordan river on the Muslim holy day (the
Palestinians there didn't seem too bothered--I've only heard prayer chants here
in Jerusalem even though Nazareth, Cana, Bethlehem are all Palestinian cities).
Saturday was Shavat, and I may vent later on the stupidity of fundamentalisms
in all three faiths--Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. Just a few simple lessons
on hermeneutics explode a ridiculous way of life for the orthodox Jews here.
Then today is the Christian Sabbath. The juxtaposition of faiths in these ways
gives us pause. Do I look as silly to them as they do to me? Maybe I don't, but
I bet the ones kissing the rock in the church where Jesus was allegedly tempted
do. By the way, I actually almost kissed it myself, so I don't mean any of my
comments personally.
Today was a great day--immensely helpful in getting a perspective on things. I'll
list our pilgrimage today:
1. Mount of Olives--panoramic view
of the Temple Mount
2. Church of Tears (whatever it's really called), where
Jesus is said to have wept for
3. Garden of Gethsemane, including cave where they may have hid out from
authorities.
All the above are in primarily Palestinian occupied areas and are on the east
side of the temple mount. Below the Mount of Olives are cemeteries
and the Kidron Valley.
The Kidron valley runs south into the Valley of
Hinnom or the Valley ge Hinnom in Aramaic.
This is the place of origin for the idea of Gehenna. The image starts here because it is where the
trash of
I should
clarify that the current gates are not the gates that were in existence at the
time of Jesus. The current wall around
the city was built by Saladin in the 1500’s and is a Muslim foundation. At the time of Jesus, the eastern and part of
the western wall (to about the Jaffa Gate) probably stood in about the same
place, perhaps even the northern wall if I remember correctly. However, the southern wall extended down
toward the
4. We went to the traditional site of the upper room,
next to the Church of the Assumption of Mary.
5. We went through the Zion Gate and looked at a road Hadrian made through the city when he conquered and
rebuilt it as Aelia Capitolina in 135 after the Bar Kochba revolt.
6. We shopped in the Jewish quarter.
7. We ate in the Jewish quarter.
8. We visited the wailing wall, men on the left,
women on the right. Men can only go down with a cap of some kind. Some of the
men went into a chamber with the psycho-orthodox praying like crazy and saw a vaulted ceiling I think Herod had built.
I felt bad and angry for the women of our group. I'll save my finger pointing
at Christians who divide life between men and women for another blog. Prepare
to be compared to the Orthodox Jews still
waiting for the Messiah and the fundamentalist Muslims here. You're not much
better, just as ignorant and displeasing to God.
9. We went to the temple mount. We had to surrender all our "holy
items": prayer shalls, mezuzoth, etc... so the Muslims wouldn't be angry
to find foreign holy things on their mount. At least that's the way I
understood it. Also, the chief rabbinate
of
10. We went to the spot Wilbur wonders if the temple
had stood (this cupola is called the Dome of the Spirits). He is following a Jewish writer by the name
of Asher Kaufman in this analysis.
Wilbur thinks the ark of the covenant is buried underneath. The Muslims
stopped a dig he was on once. They refuse to believe that any temple ever stood
there before the Dome of the Rock. Of course no one who
knows anything about anything could make such a claim of utter stupidity. I suspect that if you hold the mirror up to
many Christians and say, we're not really much smarter with the way we sometimes
manipulate evidence and truth. I'm sure this is true of me as well.
But with regard to the cupola,
Kaufman is not really a professional archaeologist. He’s actually a physicist by background. He admits up front that some of his theory is
based on “inspiration.” His theory is
heavily dismissed by Leen Ritmeyer in a Catholic Biblical Quarterly review 67
(2005): 321-23. For example, Leen cites
as an example of Kaufman’s mistakes the fact that “the
slab under the cupola of the Dome of the Spirits, which he claims is the
foundation stone that protruded into the holy of holies but is clearly a
Herodian paving-slab.” I am not an
expert on these issues, but in retrospect I would agree that the rock under the
cupola was pretty much identical to the paving slab
we saw outside the location of the Fortress Antonia.
I
don’t feel qualified to decide who’s right, although my knee jerk reaction is
to follow Ritmeyer.
11. We
went back to get our holy items.
12. We went out the Dung Gate (what does that make us?)
and rode the bus to the burial site of Sanhedrin
members. We were all very tired by now.
13. But it continues, we drove out north to the traditional burial
site of Samuel, which is next to Gibeon where
Joshua is said to have conquered some Canaanites and Gibeah,
of Saul fame, and of course, Solomon sacrificed a bunch of animals at the
Samuel site as well to dedicate the temple.
Did I mention that this was north of
By the
way, in the picture of Gibeah above you can see the remains of a crusader fort
where Richard the Lionhearted had a camp.
Ramallah is in the direction of the picture of Gibeon above
(northeast-ish).
Well, that's enough for now. I need a nap...
Monday, June 20, 2005
Now the
day is over, at least the touring day.
We first went to the
The signs around the place indicate, however, that that particular hole as well
as the dungeon like aspect of the place probably date to the Byzantine era, if
I understand things correctly. It seems more likely to me, therefore, that
Jesus would have been chained to the walls in the adjoining rooms. Of course it
is not certain that this was Annas' house, although it fits the part of what
we're looking for. It is probably not the house of Caiaphas, which would have
been further up the hill.
Outside, however, is a walkway that Jesus probably
was brought up the night of his betrayal. Wilbur suggested it was the most
certain site of all the sites in
We then went to a museum where they had a model city
of Jerusalem. That was helpful in locating everything in relation to
everything else.
We went to the
Then we went to the
Particularly memorable to me there were some things I knew about but actually
had in front of me: the Gezer calendar, Caiaphas' ossuary, photos of Egyptian
steles that mention Israel in the 12th century, mention of David in the
ninth...
We had lunch, went to Bethany (Palestinian city), crawled into Lazarus' tomb--quite a crawl at one point.
We came back and went to the church of the Holy
Sepulcher. To get there we entered the Damascus Gate
and walked through a narrow passage of Arab shops, like a flea market. The
church itself has chapels of Greek Orthodox, Coptic, Roman Catholic, Ethiopic,
and Armenian. There are probably more but those are the ones we saw (that is,
those of us who ran off after we'd seen the main sites, Charlie Alcock and son,
the Bignells, and Clint Ussher).
What we saw of the traditional site of
A few
think that
I had imagined the church to be divided into three parts, but it really is more
like a Greek Orthodox base with several side chapels. As far as I could tell,
the only Roman Catholic chapel was next to
Then we went to the traditional site of the burial, which the surrounding rock
apparently taken away. There was also a tomb attributed to Joseph of Arimathea and
Nicodemus nearby.
Although
some have argued for evidence of earlier Christian veneration in sites that
were digs under the Armenian quarter, apparently the Empress Helena, mother of
So the
current church has pretty much nothing original of the traditional burial tomb
of Jesus—unless of course it turns out that the traditional tombs of Joseph and
Nicodemus are in fact the original tombs!
But I presume the traditional one was chosen because it originally fit
the description best. Too bad.
We ended at the Garden Tomb, where we had
communion. I think everyone in the group agrees that the feel of it is closest to what the
original tomb would have been like. Nevertheless, few if any scholars think it
was the original site. The tomb is apparently a first temple bench tomb that
would pre-date Jesus by over six hundred years.
That concludes today.
Monday, Part 2: Israelis and Palestinians
As I
write an Islamic chant is blaring outside my window. I imagine a few years ago
I might have found that pretty innocuous. But after the two intifadas of Hamas
and friends and after 9-11, I find it irritating, almost offensive.
Mind you, I'm willing to give any individual of any race or religion an
opportunity to prove themselves profitable members of the human race. And
Christ bids me to love them, to grieve for them. But I'll admit that my trip
here to
I feel like I have a better sense of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis after being
here. Frankly I feel sympathy to both sides. Before WW1, this territory was
under Turkish control. Since they aligned with the Germans, it came under
British management after WW1. I'm fuzzy on some of the details, but in 1948 the
United Nations had a two state solution that
When
For the next almost 30 years, the West Bank was a part of the country of Jordan
(a backwards B with its center point in
Then in the 6 day war of 1967,
Now we have the current situation. The Israeli settlements are slowly but
surely taking over the land. Palestinian territory has basically been reduced
to individual cities, with the Israelis for all intents and purposes
controlling everything around them.
From
But from the Palestinian perspective, who told this foreign group called the
Israelis that they could move in and take over? Wouldn't you want to have all
the space you had before? Lacking the power to fight directly, they turned to
terrorism. Some don't like the analogy, but there is some similarity to the
Native Americans. The Palestinians were faced with a more powerful invader of
the land they used to roam. Power wins. I am not justifying terrorist actions.
I just think this is the oldest story in the book, a variation on the take over
of space from a less powerful group by a more powerful group.
But reality is reality. They will never have it all back, and they have
rejected some very generous offers in the process. Frankly, the best thing for
them would be to swallow their pride and become incorporated as citizens of
Complicating matters is the expansion of Islam among the Arab peoples here. In
earlier days, many of these Arabs were Christians. Even today, there are far
more Christian Palestinians than Christian Jews. But the support of American
Christians for secular
So here are my political indictments of American Christianity. First, as
Christians we should have been supporting the Christians of the Middle
East--whether Jewish or Arab--rather than political entities like the pagan
The orthodox Jews here are not Christian and are not appropriate objects of our
support. They are just as divisive as the fundamentalist Muslims. They do not
believe the messiah has come and have views that we as Christians (and
scholars) consider patently false. Indeed, I have heard that many orthodox Jews
speak of Jesus with contempt. The
ridiculousness of orthodox Jewish practices will have to wait for another day.
They'll work for pay on the Sabbath but won't flip a switch on a coffee pot.
They'll serve butter for breakfast but not for supper, only margarine--all on
the basis of a ridiculous interpretation of a statement in the Pentateuch.
Meanwhile, we abandon the Syrian Christians, the Iraqi Christians, the
Palestinian Christians.
My second indictment is one I can do nothing about, the milk is spilt. But I
stand by my earlier indictments of the war in
But the recent British documents that have surfaced are nothing more than what
I said back during the election. Ho hum, who is surprised by any of these things?
It's exactly what I said and I'm stupid nobody from
Bush and his cabinet had a plan for the
Now consider that after 9-11 we had the sympathy of the whole world, even the
lip service of the Arab nations. There was nothing wrong with going into
And now,
the prize for single handedly doing the most to promote fundamentalist Islam
around the world goes to.... envelope please.... George W. Bush, yes, for
advancing the idea that Islam is the religion of Arabs and Palestinians, while
Christianity is the religion of the West.
I know most American Christians thought that all the Palestinians were Muslims
anyway. Guess what? We were ignorant to think that. But don't worry. They are
now.
Monday, Part 3: Balancing Out the
Last Post with Faint Praise
I will
say that I think Bush has grown up a bit while he's been in office. I
completely approve of what Condoleeza Rice did here over the weekend in pushing
for Israeli withdrawal from the
But most nations in this part of the world do not view her or Bush as having
moral authority. The
We have become like any other powerful nation to the world. We are a force with
which they must deal. But we come without any aura of moral integrity in their
eyes. They will view any pontification on what is "moral" as
hypocrisy.
I believe that the difficulty Bush is having with his appointments and things
like Social Security are revealing examples that deep down on a subconscious
level, even those who voted for Bush do not really trust his judgment.
He's a good guy, but a eunuch in my estimation. May the points of my ignorance
not sway you and feel free to post dissenting positions.
I end with another story of the craziness here. This morning's paper tells of a
college woman who tried to blow herself up at a
The average Palestinian on the street doesn't agree with any of that stuff, I
don't think. But those talking about Israelis loosening check points and stuff
like that or taking down this offensive wall--the crazies leave them no room
for argument. The Israelis are doing what they need to do to be safe and it has
worked.
I'll try to steer back away from politics next entry. We're off...
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
And now
today to end things. I may reflect on a deeper level after I get back, but
here's today.
We started at St. Stephen's gate also called the Lion's
Gate on the East side not far from the Eastern Gate.
We entered to visit the Pool of Bethesda and the Fortress Antonia where Pilate
would have sentenced Jesus.
This is all in the Muslim Quarter. The ordinary person here is eager to sell to
you, but it also seems to be parking for the
The Pool of Bethesda was a real serendipity as I
had no expectations of it at all. Yet you could clearly see a first century
cistern and several grottos where people could have bathed. Also there was a Crusader church to the parents of Mary (Anna in
particular). Wilbur said it was the only Crusader church in the city Saladin
did not destroy when he came in the 1500's I think.
Then down to the church where traditionally Jesus was
sentenced and Barabbas freed. This is the first station of the cross on the
Via Dolorosa.
Then down to the church where traditionally Jesus was
given his cross. This is the second station of the cross on the Via
Dolorosa.
Then Wilbur took us to the
At this point our group retraced our steps back out St. Stephen's gate. But I
went back later to finish the Via Dolorosa and this seems the appropriate place
to continue that part of my day.
When I went later I went by myself so I didn't have a really good sense of
where I was going and I did not find the Israeli soldiers, who were stationed
at strategic points, particularly helpful.
First I passed the Ecce Homo arch, which is now
universally agreed to come from Hadrian's time. It was not there in Jesus' day.
A man claiming to be Armenian tried to become my tour guide at station 3, the first time Jesus stumbled. I somehow
missed station 4, as the shops began and I became a little concerned about
where I was and where I was going.
Basically, from the Damascus Gate into the Muslim quarter is one long
continuous corridor with continuous booth-like shops all along it. But there
are crossroads and side paths in the part I was in that make it a little
labyrinthine. I found station 5, where Simon takes
the cross, and someone helpfully told me to take a right.
I found 6, where Veronica wipes sweat from Jesus' face,
so I knew I was on the right path. This path then dead ended at station 7. I
didn't realize it at the time, but this was the path that comes from the Damascus
Gate. If I had turned right, I would have come out in the direction of my
hotel. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, however, was to the left and with the
barest nod from an Israeli solidier, I was on my way again.
I missed stations 8-10, but I was soon back in the Holy Sepulchre, which I have
already described. I revisited
Back to earlier in the morning.
We went from St. Stephen's Gate down to the old city
of David on the south side of the now walled city from Saladin's time. We
saw a wall from the pre-Davidic time of Jebusite
occupation as well as ruins of houses from
David's time. I might add that a few days earlier, the upper room day, we
had seen recently uncovered remains of the wall from
David’s time, on the south end of the old city.
We went through the Warren Shaft, which is where the
Jebusites got their water. It is a shaft that ends with a cistern
that goes down to the Gihon Spring. Joab climbed up this shaft when David
was taking the city and then sneaked in here.
Then we went through Hezekiah's tunnel, knee deep
in water. We had only one flashlight between about twenty of us, so it could
have been real dark if my camera didn't have a pre-flash light I could use. It
was a lot of fun, although shock therapy for the claustrophobic. This ended at
the pool of Siloam.
Then the trip was over.
Some of us then went to lunch with Wilbur. Our normal fare has been shawarimas
and falafels. Then six of us walked around the top of
Saladin's wall from the
We finally started the Wall at the Jaffa Gate on the West and walked south till
the corner, where we turned east. We passed first the area of the upper room,
then the area of Peter's denial at Anna's house as we passed
The city started with the Jebusite city south of the current
Anyway, we finally we arrived along the wall at the Dung Gate within sight of
the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, etc..
At this point Charlie and son Nathaniel, Greg Mervine and son Trent, and Clint
took a taxi back. I continued walking east passed the steps by which Jesus
would have entered the temple mount. I turned to the north and saw Absalom's grave until I reached St. Stephen's gate and
the Via Dolorosa as I've mentioned.
That's it. Whew. The trip is over.
Maybe I'll reflect a little on the more important significance of the trip for
me later. But from a shallow perspective, here are the top three
non-significant things from the trip:
1. Climbing up
2. Swimming in the
3. Walking through Hezekiah's tunnel
Thank you Wilbur Williams! And thank God for all the great opportunities He has
given to me!
Postlude: June 23, 2005,
I now sit
at home. Here's a final entry relating to the spiritual significance of the
trip to me.
When Jesus Walked the Earth: The Model Practicum
I often tell my New Testament Survey classes that John gives us Jesus as he
relates to us, while the first three gospels give us as much of Jesus as he
related to them, the lost sheep of Israel. John tells us what we need to know about Jesus, but
Matthew tells us that Jesus ministry while
he was on earth was not focused on everyone.
The Gospel of Matthew tells us not only that Jesus did not focus on non-Jews
while he was on earth, that he did not primarily minister to Gentiles while he
was on earth. Matthew tells us not only that Jesus did not focus on all
Jesus did not primarily minister to the wealthy, although there were a few.
Jesus did not primarily minister to Samaritans or the inhabitants of
I can see the Headline now: the day God came to Chorazin. Where? I bet a lot of
people even in
As I have reflected on these things, I have become attracted to the idea that
in his three years of ministry, Jesus was showing us one way that we are to do
ministry. College and seminary minstry students often have to do something
called a "practicum." They take what they've learned in the classroom
and they go do it. The places they do them are more varied than they are. I did
some in local churches; I did one in a nursing home. Some do them in
conjunction with hospitals or prisons.
After my trip to
What did Jesus do for his practicum?
1. He started with where he was. And where he was wasn't anywhere special.
2. But every individual is special to God. And Jesus' ministered to the
"nobodys" of
3. Jesus ministered to their needs on every level.
He dealt with their physical
needs by healing them.
He dealt with their spiritual
needs by freeing them from demonic oppression and giving them an eternal hope.
He dealt with their economic needs
when they were oppressed by the taxation of Herod Antipas, the one who beheaded
John the Baptist. In the time of Jesus, this Herod only had control of
These were farming villages who usually just produced enough for them to
survive--they didn't usually even produce enough extra to trade for other
things. They mostly did it all themselves for themselves. Times must have been
tough when this ruler not only notices them, but tries to squeeze everything he
can get from them.
Jesus' earthly ministry in
