Pilgrimage
Streams of people ahead of us down the footpaths, all of us coming behind those who excavated the caves of worship centuries before
We have been away. We joined a group of thirty people drawn from churches in Boston, New York, Nashville, and friends from other places and flew to Israel for a proper pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
We learned that pilgriming is a grind, as it has been for millennia. For us, it is ten hours to Israel if you get a direct flight. Boston has one such flight a few times a week. New York has several. But if you come from Nashville or other smaller cities, you will make multiple connections.
If your direct flight from Boston is canceled, as ours was on the original outbound leg, you will need to boot it to New York the next night in time to catch an eleven-thirty plane that arrives in Tel Aviv the following afternoon around five p.m. By then, you are a day behind the rest of your group, making it necessary to hire a car to chase them two hours north to Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, catching them just before the end of dinner.
There are no direct flights to Boston coming home, so it is four and a half hours to Amsterdam, with a three-hour layover, followed by seven and a half hours to Boston. The return leg ran like clockwork for us, on time, with no cancellations. But with transportation and three hours at each airport, it was a straight twenty-four hours of travel to reach home.
Then there is the touring part. The essence of Jesus Christ’s ministry took place around the Sea of Galilee, and in Jerusalem, and within those places, there are numerous points of interest and meditation. Visiting one or two a day would suffice, but pilgrims must consider the odds of ever returning halfway around the world to see what they would miss by discriminating between the sites. So, tour operators pack it in. The wake-up call is at six a.m. each day, followed by breakfast in the cavernous dining rooms downstairs, side by side with fellow pilgrims from around the world. (The Sous Chef of the kitchen was mingling with the crowds one morning, and I asked him how many people they were serving. Eight hundred, he answered.) It is all buffet, all the time—breakfast and dinner—helping to move everyone through with alacrity.
Following breakfast, there is a pitstop at the room to collect badges, touring guides, keys, ponchos (it rains in Israel), whatever else, and then to the buses—long, white, cushy, airconditioned Mercedes-Benz coaches with smiling Arab drivers that say good morning and thank you and guides well versed in scripture and archeology. Our guide was an Arab Christian named Manuel. Dark, muscular, with a closely cropped beard (like almost everyone in the Middle East), and maybe in his mid-forties. He was a committed ambassador for his land.
“Christians are leaving our country,” he said in his thick Arab accent, explaining how people are tired of the conflict. “We need them to stay.”
Each day we visited three or four sites in the morning and three or four in the afternoon, arriving back at the hotel (“Oh-tel,” in Manuel-speak) around five-thirty p.m., in time to splash some water on the face, have a cocktail in the lounge, graze the abundant, unchanging buffet, attend a short service of evening prayer, enjoy maybe another cocktail and go to bed.
Repeat for ten days. Travel home for twenty-four hours. Go, pilgrim.
Others we met had come farther, from Ecuador, South Korea, Nigeria (in wonderful blue costumes), New Mexico, Washington state, and all over Europe. There were rows and rows of white buses wherever we went. In the morning, large clusters of visitors would gather in the hotel lobbies to check out, surrounded by a wall of luggage, ready to make their way to the next destination. It reversed in the evening as new crops of travelers arrived with their black suitcases and backpacks, filling the hall again and crowding the elevators.
I am thinking of it now, the enormous tide of pilgrims in and out. It stays with me, washing over my thoughts about our trip. I will remember the streams of people ahead of us down the footpaths, all of us coming behind those who excavated the caves of worship centuries before, who wore away the marble steps of churches, rubbed the bronze off statues, and kept the roads open to the Cross. The strong current of people; unremitting, like water bound for the sea.
I was compelled to make one trip to Disney when my youngest was probably in fourth grade. I had dodged it until then, being against the spectacle and crush of people, never mind the cost. I admit we had a fine time, helped by Dad’s Rule Number One, which was that any choice of ride or attraction was acceptable during the day until six o’clock when it would be time for dinner in a decent restaurant with a full bar.
I am done visiting Disney. Surely others are not. But invoking the image of tides of pilgrims in the Holy Land invites comparison to the tides of pilgrims that venture to Disney, or Buckingham Palace, the Grand Canyon, or Fenway Park, and will do so again. What is the difference? I have friends that would say none. Build it, and they will come—to be entertained, astonished, or faithful.
Yes, we are reliably that way. What of it? The glitter of Disney, the majesty of the Grand Canyon or the mercy of Golgotha? The presence of many pilgrims makes the cause just--sometimes unto more than a thousand years.
Matthew, Chapter 11
7 As John’s disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: “What did you go out to the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind?
8 If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes live in king’s palaces.
9. Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.
10. This is the one about whom it is written, “I will send a messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.”
Go, pilgrim.
