Galilee Day 1 - October 26 - Water and Rome

            Today we started looking at the region of the Galilee specifically starting with the Jezreel valley. We looked at many different concepts and ideas, I found many of them to thought provoking and still have many questions about how God has acted in history and how that speaks to us today.  There are many different things that I could write about, but I will only focus on a couple right now.

            We started out at the Jordan River at one of the traditional baptismal sites.  This river, glorified creek has been instrumental in the formation of Israel. Water imagery in the Bible is incredible. In the Middle East water is viewed much differently than in the West. It is necessary and valued for life, but it is also a symbol of chaos and death. In the Egyptian creation myths there is the idea that the land was brought up from the water. In Genesis it starts out saying that the world was formless and empty. In Hebrew ( וָבֹ֔הוּ   תֹ֙הוּ֙) the second word in this phrase doesn’t have any meaning, it is an empty word, that things, even words, without a name or meaning have no purpose. God separates the waters and creates. He names thing, light, dark, day, night, dry land and oceans, giving each a purpose.

          

              Later Abram crosses the Jordan River and afterwards he receives a new name, Abraham. He received promises for the future and purpose for his life. His grandson Jacob crosses the river, probably at a similar point and at that time spends a night wrestling with God where he received a new name. He was physically altered and also received promises. A couple hundred years later the entire people of Israel and some extra leave Egypt and come to the waters at the red sea, here they cross through the waters on dry ground and make their way to Mt. Sinai where they become a people of God.

            Jesus goes down to the River and is baptized by John. He receives a new name in a way when God says “this is My Son in who I am well pleased”. After that his purpose is clear and his ministry begins after fasting 40 days in the desert where he proves himself and withstands the temptations that confront him. 

From there we started making our way up to the Galilee, in particular the Jezreel Valley. The Jezreel Valley is very different from the other areas that we have already looked at. Instead of being even somewhat difficult to travel through, the Jezreel valley is wide open.  We compared it to a roundabout, many different road come into the valley and meet up there. The flat fertile ground is also some of the most fertile land in Israel. With over 330 feet of top soil it is valuable land.

 There are a couple key cities that are situated in the area.  Beth She’an is in the Jordan valley and guards one of the ways into the Jezreel Valley. Megiddo is another city that is important in this area. It is said that taking Megiddo is like taking 1000 cities. With the roads that meet up and pass by it is evident that this city is incredibly important to the ancient near east. In the Iron Age alone there are 10 different destruction layers.

 

Beth She'an a Roman city has Roman things - Bath house

Theater

public bathroom

temples

The road passes right in front of Meggido. 

 It must have been an important city. Found a horse at Meggido.

We continued to look at the idea of, ‘What do we do with Rome?’ Although we no longer have Rome to deal with, we have other groups that we deal with.  Deep down we have ideas of who is and who isn’t worthy of being part of ‘our’ church. We tend to act in certain ways to certain groups of people that are different than us. Certain phrases such as “_______ deserves to burn in hell because.....” is (a severe) example of us passing judgement and choosing how we respond to our ‘Rome’.

The four different perspectives of dealing with the Romans as presented by Josephus were summed up in a simple way. The Sadducees sided with the Romans to make a profit, the Zealots fought and killed the Romans, the Essenes retreated to the desert and the Pharisees didn't know what to do with them.

But the reaction of Jesus is different. On a hill outside of Nazareth we looked at the story of Jesus reading the scroll in the synagogue of his home town. He reads from Isaiah 61. The chapter is filled with a lot of imagery of the prisoner being free, the comfort of God’s people and the prosperity of the nation. These ideas and images were connected to their idea of the Messiah, the one who would come to redeem Israel to their rightful place and kick the Romans out.

Jesus ends off by saying that the scripture had been fulfilled that day. This didn't settle well with the Jews there. The Romans were still there and the Jesus is telling them that it has been fulfilled in that day. Jesus continues to point out other examples of other prophets that were bringing hope to the people around Israel but not directly to Israel. The people get so mad that they are ready to throw Jesus off of a cliff and stone him.

It draws into question how do we respond if God was to come to us and tell us that we got it wrong? That the people we don’t like that the rules and authority that we struggle against are just as worthy of God’s love as we were.

This has made me think a little bit. In the past I have had to forgive certain people in my life. It wasn’t easy, but God taught me a lot through it. At one point I spent a couple months wrestling with the verse, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 8:5)  If God responses with such deep love and care towards someone who is so clearly far below him, far from being worthy of any such love and grace, how much the more are we called to let and encourage others to experience same grace that God is extending to them.