Footsteps of Jesus Pilgrimage Day 5 - The heat of Nazareth

Day five began (after breakfast of course) with a walk to the Greek Orthodox church at Mary's Well, where the conversation with Gabriel began. Because we Christians have not been great at getting along – with the first big official rift coming in the 400’s when the Oriental Orthodox family of churches disagreed with everyone else about how to describe Jesus being both human and divine, and then the Great Schism between Catholics and Eastern Orthodox churches (with both the Catholic Pope and the and Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicating each other in 1054), and then of course the Protestant Reformation, we have not been able to share worship spaces. So at nearly all these holy sites you will find both an Orthodox place of worship, and a Catholic place of worship. Holy Sepulchre is a fantastic example of this, and also how over recent time we have got a lot better at working together. Us Protestants just do our thing outside mostly. (But that is why there is a protestant garden of the tomb)

So, the site of the Annunciation is disputed and held together all at once. The traditional site within Orthodox Christianity is at the central well in Nazareth – which supplied all the water to those that lived there – one well for up to 500 people who lived there in Jesus time and beyond. For much of the last 2000 years it has been known as Mary’s Well. For the Catholics the site of the Annunciation is at Mary’s parents’ house down the hill – over which the Basilica is built.

Many would say that the conversation started at the well and concluded at the house. Nice. So, we began our morning at Greek Orthodox church at Mary's Well, an old traditional church. We were able to bless ourselves with the water that came out of a pipe from the well. Photos can be found here. 

Then we walked on somehow being gathered up in that story while immersed in today’s experience for Israeli/Palestinian/Arab/Christians.

We were met by our guide, an amazing woman – Palestinian, Christian, Israeli, native of Nazareth. She took us for a guided tour through the old Ottoman souks. They are going through tough times. People are busy and shopping malls are quicker and easier – like city centres around the world really. She talked of the work she, her sister and other women were doing to revitalise this area, to restore it as a marketplace and to have them recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with little or no support from Israeli officials.

She also spoke of the pain of the Nakba for the Christian community in Nazareth. It was a Christian city, but with the huge influx of Muslim families pushed out of their villages and farms in 1946 and forced to live in Nazareth it is now a Muslim majority city. Nazareth is not a refugee camp, but it is now home for many who cannot go home. For the Christian population there is a loss of identity in all that, made worse by the exodus of Christians from Nazareth and Bethlehem to the West. 

Lastly and most importantly, she spoke about the struggle and pain to be Arab, Palestinian, Muslim/Christian, and Israeli in Nazareth. She spoke of the difficulty of holding all her identities together in the face of her country which looks to marginalise her, silence her story and diminish her at every step. One of the places she took us was another Nakba wall. It is regularly painted over by Jews who live in nearby Natsrat Ilit who deny that the Nakba ever happened. You can see that vandalism in m photos. A prominent part of this wall is a tribute to the slain journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was murdered by Israeli troops while she was covering an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in 2022. No-one has been held to account for this. Her death and lack of action against those responsible was a significant point of contention for many Palestinians we spoke to. Maybe this can be seen as a precursor for the number of journalists killed in Gaza over the last 15 months.

Our guide spoke of the anger she experiences when she takes groups which include Jews past the wall. The organiser of those groups is still keen for them to see the wall none the less. It is the same experience that Samuel spoke about the night before – alienation in your own country as your experience is discounted and silenced. It helps me understand what is happening to a lesser degree in this country with groups like Act and in Hobson’s Pledge discounting and seeking to silence the Māori experience of living in this land – only one version of the story is legitimate, and all others are to be disregarded.

We finished that tour at her sister’s shop, met some of her family and bought some lovely gifts there. We had a chance to explore the souk on our own which was holding a coffee festival. You can find my Facebook post with photos here.

These are amazing women – doing doctorates, working as guides in Turkey and other places, strong women working to reinvigorate their community and to tell their story, formidable women who stand with Mary who we met again that day at the holy sites, in the walk between, and in them.

We gathered again at the basilica one last time with all the amazing (and some not so amazing) mosaics from around the world depicting the annunciation. For some reason I really love this place. After lunch, which was very near the place Samuel and Susan took me for Valentines Day way back in 2005, we headed up Mt Tabor, the traditional but unlikely site of the Transfiguration. The road is very steep, and we had to leave our bus and be ferried

up in vans. The views are spectacular, especially of Jezreel Valley. Another Antonio Barluzzi church. As I have said Antonio Barluzzi was an Italian architect who became known as the "Architect of the Holy Land" by being responsible for many of the pilgrimage churches in places like here on Mount Tabor, the Church of the Visitation, on the Mount of Beatitudes, and Garden of Gethsemane, and at the tomb of Lazarus in Bethany. I took some photos and you can find them here.

The next day was going to be huge.