Footsteps of Jesus Pilgrimage Day 2 - A Day for Mary

Day two began with a lecture briefing with Rodney around the "Nativity Narratives", and then we departed for Ein Kerem and the Church of the Visitation (Luke 1: 39-56). Ein Karem is about 7.5 km outside Jerusalem. It is a tranquil place of trees and vineyards, a town of Jewish artisans and craftspeople, with the Jewish municipality of Jerusalem spreading to incorporate it. It is a holy place in Christian memory and Christian churches and convents abound. 

But hidden in this tranquility is a dark history. Ein Kerem was a Arab/Palestinian village until 1948.  During the Arab-Israeli War that established the State of Israel over 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes. Ein Kerem was one of those villages.

They thought they would return once the hostilities ceased. Many of those families still hold the keys for their homes. The new state of Israel blocked their return and their land and their lives were confiscated. Today they still wait on that hope of return. On the 75th anniversary of the Nakba last year American Palestinian Leila Giries wrote "I’m a Nakba survivor. In the ruins of my home, I write my hopes in stone" telling her experience of fleeing her home. "I was eight years old when a Zionist militia took over the mountain top next to our village of Ain Karim and started shooting down at us." She writes of  the grief it continues to cause her, and her hopes for the future. 

Tradition attributes the construction of the first church of Ein Karem to Empress Helena of Constantinople, Constantine I's mother, who identified the site as the home of John's father, Zechariah, and the place where Mary visited Elizabeth her cousin and recited her song of praise and protest we usually call the Magnificat. (Helena is responsible for a lot of where churches were built to be honest). There is evidence of churches being here dating back to the Byzantine period (after Constantine). After the Crusaders were defeated the monks eventually left and the complex fell into ruin. In 1679 the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land bought the plot of land with the ruined Crusader complex from an Arab family, and in 1862 reconstruction of the lower level of the church began. In 1937 the Franciscans excavated the grounds, and construction of the upper level of the structure began in 1938, and was completed by Italian architect Antonio Barluzzi in 1955. He was very Italian. He is responsible for a significant number of churches built by the Franciscans at this time. They are beautiful architecturally. But I was really taken aback by the mosaics. Beautiful, but really white. For me confrontingly so. Here I am in the land of Jesus, surrounded by Palestinians who really are not white, and a whole lot of Jews who are also not that white, with all these depictions of white Jesus. Jesus is from this place. He looked like the people of this place. He was not white. I wrote at the time, "White Jesus. White heaven! The Church of the Visitation is not where I expected  to see such whiteness. It is all so unexpected. Shocking." Along with others I wonder how our depiction of a white Jesus and a white God shapes out theology and where and how we view God in our world. 

More photos can be found here

 We then drove to Bethlehem - a town once in walking distance of Jerusalem. No more. Here was our first encounter with the wall that separates Palestinian cities from Israel. The check points are all controlled by IDF forces - Israeli young people who do their compulsory military service (unless they are Ultra-Orthodox Jews or Palestinian). They learn to see Palestinians down the barrel of their high powered weapons as people not to be trusted, dangerous, the enemy. And Palestinian young people learn to see Israeli Jews as not to be trusted, fickle in their decisions, dangerous. How can peace be found when this is the basis of their interactions?

The normal check point in was closed. Not for any real reason it would seem, just to remind all those who enter Bethlehem who is really in charge and to inconvenience as much as possible. It is easy for us to get in. We needed our passports and visas to return to Israel.

We had lunch in the Aida Refugee Camp. Here are some of those displaced by the Nakba. The way in is through the symbol of the Nakba, the keyhole and key - the keys still held by those families today as they long to reclaim all that was taken from them. This is a permanent town of refugees who have lived here for 75 years. They came here to escape the Zionists, but after the Six-Day War of 1967 they now live surrounded by and at the mercy of the state of Israel. Here we had lunch provided by a group of women who have worked to provide services for their disabled children. The College goes there to provide income, from

our lunch place

both the meal they provide and from the sale of book marks and other items they make. I bought as many as I could borrow money for for gifts back home. And it gave us an opportunity to hear from them about life in the camp and their work offering hope and support to families. And it gave us an opportunity to meet these icons of Mary. Strong, resilient, compassionate, resourceful. The Mary of the Visitation and the Magnificat is not meek and mild, but an active agent in her life who is deeply embedded in the prophetic of justice. They are standing against both the ongoing deprivation of the Nakba and niggling and abuse of the IDF, and the prejudice and lack of empathy from their own people who do not see people of disability as worthy of any resourcing.

My Facebook photos are here

After lunch we drive to Bethlehem and the the ancient Church of the Nativity. The site has long been held as the site of Jesus' birth. According to Wikipedia, "In 135, Emperor Hadrian had the site above the grotto converted into a worship place for Adonis, the mortal lover of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of beauty and desire.^[16][17] Jerome claimed in 420 that the grotto had been consecrated to the worship of Adonis, and that a sacred grove was planted there in order to completely wipe out the memory of Jesus from the world.^[16][18]" The first church was built by Constantine I after his mother visited Jerusalem and the Holy Land and established where a number of holy sites were. Work began in 326 and it was dedicate in 339, but was in use by 333 when the Bordeaux Pilgrim visited. 

 The current basilica was built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (527–565), after the destruction of either 529 or 556.^[4] One of my favourite stories is when the Persians under Khosrau II invaded Palestine and conquered nearby Jerusalem in 614. When they came to the basilica they were moved by the mosaic above the entrance depicting the Magi (Wise Men) as Persian Zoroastrian priests, and so they preserved this building that honoured their ancestors.  

We joined what seemed like a long line and waited out turn to enter this wahi tapu - holy place. The entrance into the basilica is the famous four-foot-high "Door of Humility," which was built not to make pilgrims bow low but to repel looters on horse- and camel-back after the Crusades. We were now standing in the Orthodox basilica, and it looks very orthodox. Striking in its opulence really.This place of such humble birth. But that is how we mark holy places. 

I first came here in 2005 at the end of the Second Intifada. It was different now. The crowds were back, but not as bad as I feared. and a lot of restoration work has been done on the basilica. I don't think it is finished, but much has been done, most noticeable on the mosaics which I was told in 2005 date back to Justinian. They are now stunningly vibrant. You can read more about this work here. There are floor mosaics date back to Constantine I. 

We were hurried down the church to join the line down the steep stairs to the grotto, into the once cave where tradition says Jesus was born- either a place gifted to a couple from Nazareth or Mary and Joseph's home in Bethlehem - there are two traditions at work in the gospels. We were given time to each spend about 5 seconds at the spot, to see the altar of the Magi, and to be in this carved out space - Jerome was against it being enlarged.  Up the other side out and along the other side of the basilica and to the caves of Jerome under the Catholic church of St Catherine of Alexandria. (The Catherine wheel is how the emperor of her time tried to torture and execute her. 

There are a number of caves under here. Apparently the largest is where St Jerome spen20 years at the end of the 300's translating the Bible into Latin. This work was funded by  two wealthy Roman widows, Marcella and Paula. Life for widows in the Roman world was hard, even wealthy ones. But Paul's words in Galatians 3:28 helped free them and other single women from seeing themselves as worthless without a husband and to live lives of study, faith, and devotion to others. they came to join Jerome in Bethlehem and formed a nucleus of a community in that place. They are depicted in a mosaic in Jerome's cell and remembered for their contribution. You can read more about them here. Yet more women who reflect Mary's straighten and faith to us

Manger Square

One of the caves is the traditional site where the infants killed by Herod were buried. Here Andrew led us in a reflection on the Massacre of the Innocents and the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt as refugees. It is sad to reflect that two weeks later Hamas attacked Israel, and since then Palestinian families and endured hell, but unlike the Holy Family, they are trapped and unable to flee the ongoing massacre of the innocents. 

One of the gifts of this time was our guide, who is Assyrian christian, singing the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke and taught his disciples in, and  the language he worships in.

 

At the end of the day I wrote in my journal,

"Where did I see the incarnation today? In the white Jesus - which blinds and distracts? Or in Aida camp among the dispossessed - among Jesus's people? I met Jesus in the Muslim woman, Islam, and her passion for her son and for those mothers seeking the best for their disabled children. I met Jesus in the stories of strong women of faith who did not conform to what their society defined for them."

 

My Adventword refection on Mary is here

You can find my Facebook photos from Bethlehem here