Newsletter 15 June 2008
Journey With A Friend
The Rev. Gene Young
The Journey to Israel with The Society for Biblical Studies was a journey
with a friend. An 86 year old who said, "I don't use a credit card much.
Might not be here to pay it off." I nearly caused him to have a heart
attack our second day in Bethlehem. I was showering while he was still sleeping
early that second morning. His bed was just on the other side of the bathroom
wall. I slipped in the small metal shower stall and went straight backwards
through the plastic curtain and struck the wall right next to Pappy's bed.
I hit with a bang you could hear 40' away I'm sure. Pappy nearly jumped clean
out of his bed he said. He ran into the bathroom and I was still laying on
the floor against the wall, checking to see if I had all my parts and some
still working. "No blood, no foul" said Pappy with a grin. Pappy's
nose turned slightly left the rest of the journey where it previously had
been straight. It was that kind of Journey for us.
Two friends walking where Jesus had walked. Laughing at life the way Jesus
laughed at life. Weeping in the midst of silence that has its own voice with
our tears washing away the pain of coming to understand the violence and loneliness
and broken hearts of people God loves when violence and prison walls separate
humanity for all the wrong reasons.
"I've seen Europe" Pappy said, (via Omaha Beach in 1944). "I
want to see the land of The Bible and I want you to be there to help me see
it." (I had been Pappy's Pastor for four years.) So we did. We stood
in our fifth floor room overlooking Lake Genesaret in Galilee, marveling at
the sunrise and understanding Jesus saw it the same way— with wonder
and awe at His Father's handiwork. We sat silently as the small fishing boat
caressed the waves of the Galilean lake and listened to the Scriptures read
that spoke of God's own journey with other fishermen not unlike our family
of pilgrims gathered along the rails. We stood on the hillside and absorbed
the sweep of the flowered slopes down to the lake where Jesus cast his heart
and mind and God's own desires into the hearts of those who cast their nets
of hopes and dreams into the deep abyss of unknown futures with The Man From
Galilee. We stood along River Jabbok and listened to Jacob's struggle story
one more time and found our struggles not unlike his; some of them a matter
of life and death; all requiring Faith that is beyond our understanding and
the convenience of time's relentless march against our demands for answers.
We prayed at the Wailing Wall. We walked the narrow streets of The Old City
of Jerusalem. We went to the Bethlehem birthing place and the Jerusalem Outside-The-Wall
hanging place and wrestled with the incongruity of it all and like so many
asked "why" when we already knew the answer but didn't like it much.
We laughed together, we cried together, we broke bread together, we listened
to the refugee camp dwellers speak of freedom-not-yet and the West Bank settler
view of birthright forever conversations. We sat in the sunlight of a Kibbutz
hillside and listened to Lydia Eisenberg speak of her journey from South Wales
to Israel and the shame of being Jewish and being told in London as she looked
for a place to live: (via a sign posted at a rental flat) "No Jews, Blacks
or dogs; and Irish need not apply". Like the experience of just a few
days earlier as we stood at Mt Nebo looking at the Promised Land the way Moses
looked at it knowing he could not enter, we wondered how one so lonely in
the Journey is supposed to overcome such canyons between hopes and dreams
and God's promises of a homeland. Such stories made us wonder about the "Leap
of Faith" stories we have heard and pondered if our understanding was
just a religious cliche.
Pappy and I came home with more questions raised than answered. We returned
with a thankful heart for the guidance of one Peter Miano and The Society
of Biblical Studies staff. And we are glad that "The End is not yet."
The Rev. Gene Young is from Mooresville, Indiana.
