Susan's Blog: Pilgrimage to Israel/Palestine. Around the Sea of Galilee. Bread and wine.

The Galilee area of Israel functions as backdrop and context for a significant chunk of the Gospels. Jesus grew up nearby in Nazareth. When he begins his ministry, he moves to Capernaum, a city on the Sea of Galilee, and many significant stories from the Gospels happen there. After the resurrection, Jesus appears to his disciples there as well.

Unlike Israel--which is really in the middle of a hilly desert--Galilee seems tropical. It's well below sea level, which makes it hot and humid, and is actually a lake (not a sea), feeding the Jordan River. The areas around the 'sea' are green, lush, hosting both evergreen trees and palms. Today it was over 100 degrees fahrenheit and humid.

The people there, in Jesus' day, were primarily rural and poor, but for the two major Roman cities--Sephoris (we visited those ruins yesterday) and Tiberius, which was built in 17 CE. There's no biblical evidence that Jesus visited either of those places, though it's hard not to wonder. They would have stood in profound contrast to the villages with subsistence-farming economies. Roman-style cities, with wealth and power and entertainment and culture--they would have drawn a clear line, in that day, between the haves and the have-nots. The powerful and the invisible.

End of history lesson for the moment. We were out in the heat quite a bit today, first at Tabgha, which hosts the Church of the Multiplication  . It's a contemporary church built in 1981 incorporating the ancient mosaics and flooring found by archaeologists there and believed to date back to the 4th Century.

'The Multiplication' refers to the story of Jesus feeding 5,000 men (and even more women and children) with just five loaves of bread and two fish. In Christian remembrances of the Lord's supper, the Eucharist, we remember and re-live this story along with the story of the Last Supper--as well as all the stories of Jesus feeding people and welcoming them to table. If breaking bread and sharing it with others is a value for you, the story of the Multiplication makes this theological point: God has enough for everyone, and everyone is welcome at God's table.

Literally around the corner from that building is the Church of St. Peter's Primacy . There, another church built on a rock, this time the one where it's thought that the resurrected Christ appeared to his disciple

s, roasting fish on the beach for breakfast, in John 21--Another story of feeding. We celebrated the Eucharist there and stood in the Galilee to renew our baptismal vows.

After lunch--which was a St. Peter's Fish  -- we went down the road about three minutes to Capernaum. This is the town where Jesus lived after leaving Nazareth, and where found a home base for his ministry. The photo below is the ruins, as is thought, of Peter's mother-in-law's house, where Jesus lived, and where he healed the crippled man who was dropped through the roof. The synagogue ruins here are those of a 3rd-century building, but that was built on top of the previous synagogue--the one where Jesus would have taught.

Just a few feet away, the shore of the Sea of Galilee, bright blue-green, breezy, tropical, paradise.

And on the other side, if you look north, the Golan Heights, occupied territories captured from Syria in the 1967 war.

We took a boat tour out on the Galilee. It was, like I said, tropical, windy, hot, and glorious.

I think my brain is full. It's been a great respite for the past few days to get out of the bustle of Jerusalem, and to see these places. And/but, to assimilate all these stories with the landscape and people and context here, that would take a lot more time and thought and prayer and reflection. It is absolutely worth it to come here. I applaud you if you've had the time and attention span to read all this blog so far. I'm done, for the moment, with trying to make sense of the experience. It is time for a glass of wine and a shared meal with fellow travelers.