Vignettes of the World
“It is not important where Jesus died but why he died.” I rose in excitement on my first morning in Jerusalem. There would be a full day of sightseeing, and the Hortus Gethsemane (Lat. The Garden of Gethsemane) was to which I most looked forward. …
“Reverend, don’t you want to buy some of these, maybe for your wife?” “No, thank you. There are many in Heavens,” my father said. I witnessed my father’s first act in Jerusalem and it was brilliant. He found a perfect way to bring forth the …
I was sad to leave Tiberia. Yet the journey must go on, for the tour was making its way to Jerusalem, the ultimate destination of our pilgrimage.
Mount Tabor was believed to be the site of Jesus’ transfiguration (Matthew 17; Mark 9; Luke 9). The Church of Transfiguration commemorated this event. The day was bright with gentle morning breeze that stroked us like a warm mother’s gentle hand. I enjoyed the tour very much, it being sun-soaked and bearing such religious significance.
My father spotted a fig tree and asked if he could pick a branch to take home. Our tour guide Nahzee gladly did the “honor” for him. He then learned that for olives, one would have to pick a branch that grew near the roots, otherwise it would not transplant in new soil.
Cana would be very familiar to Christians as it was where Jesus performed his first miracle of turning water into wine (John 2). We made our first stop at the Catholic Church. I learned that there were two stone barrels that used to contain wine. I also remembered quite distinctly that it was suggested that those were the actual ones with which Jesus performed his miracle. They surely looked aged and antique to me. At the chapel, married couples could walk the aisle and renew their lifelong commitment to each other.
The souvenir store sold all kinds of red wine. I picked the pomegranate red, a dessert wine. By then, I have gone completely crazy about the pom, which was a produce common in Israel but not in Asia. The pom is also a Biblical fruit as one of the critical pieces that hang on the priestly ephod of High Priest Aaron (Exodus 28).
The next visit at the Orthodox Church was interesting. I questioned the church’s seemingly limitless ornateness. The over-adornment reminded me of the ambiance of elaborate Buddhist temples. The ornate items on display conveyed a sense of superstition, with those lifeless objects held out as holy or as projections of faith. Although I did not like the interior very much, the yard and the outward appearance of the church were tranquil.
Perhaps it should not be surprising, but there were on display two more of those stone barrels at the Orthodox Church. With that I realized a certain facet of truth. All the stone barrels’ authenticity, with their claims as the actual instruments of the miracle, came into question. Most possibly, none of these barrels was what they claimed to be. At best, they were artifacts that dated to Jesus’ time, for show here to satisfy the human desire to witness miracles or any manifestation of them.
On the other hand, I thought about the situation of having churches of different denominations in any one site of religious significance. Which branch of Christianity presented the truth, or the practice, that was closest to the historical truth? How much should seekers of faith embrace the arguments that divide followers of Jesus Christ into different camps?
This question was becoming quite unsettling to me. I pushed it aside thinking that the newly-christened should not become yet so critical of the institutions that embrace, endorse, and expound on the faith. Yet this thought would become quite dominant in my mind as I visited Jerusalem.
Nazareth is the largest Arab-Israeli city in Israel. Out of a population of 8.5 million in Israel, 1.5 million are Arabs, 75,000 of whom live in Nazareth. 30% of the Arabs there are Christians. The Arabs that live in Israel, who hold Israeli ID without the passport, are known as Palestinian Arabs.
Nazareth’s sweet name comforted me greatly as this was where Jesus grew up. We visited the Basilica of Annunciation, which housed the ruins of Joseph and Mary’s marital home. Paintings of St. Mary and the child lined the walls on the long corridor. These paintings came from many countries. They portrayed St. Mary and the holy child in the donor nation’s traditional painting styles.
The view of these paintings inspired some thoughts. If each nation could have vastly different ways of painting St. Mary and the holy child, then the ways with which each individual believer understood the Christian faith must be far and few in between, as we all understood Jesus’ teaching within our own frame of reference. What these paintings exhibited were the different interpretations of the same faith. Together they seem to bespeak the universality of the Christian truth, although at the same time it was capable of adapting itself in different cultures.
Haifa is Israel’s third largest city. The Bahaii hanging garden there was indeed magnificent, and I wondered where a relatively young faith finds the means to construct such a base. It was a wondrous view in a carefully groomed landscape but I could hardly raise enough interest in it. I found this faith to stand on rather shallow principles of universalism.
One thing to note about Haifa was its advanced development. At the vista point I was able to observe many types of infrastructure along the coast. Looking onto the Mediterranean, however, the image that haunted me was the hordes of immigrants struggling through this body of water in search of the possibility of a better life. Many end up dying. No, that face of the Mediterranean was not shown in Israel. It presented only its most charming self that day, basked in the golden rays of the winter sun.
The Cave of Elijah soon opened for visits, and the tour guide explained its significance to us (1 Kings 19). This was believed to be Mount Horeb in the Old Testament. Prophet Elijah ran and hid from his enemies. He ended up here having wandered in the wilderness. God also spoke to him here.
The Caesarea Aqueduct was a pleasant site. It was the water way that supplied fresh water to the booming city of Caesarea since King Herod’s time. This was my closest view of the Mediterranean. The ruins were right by the shore, and I marveled at the human genius that made the best of nature and artifact combined. The area used to be a busy entrepôt. Now that the city has receded from history, the aqueduct stands as a proud witness to the prosperous life once lived here.
Nestled in the deeps of Hong Kong’s countryside, the Plover Cove Reservoir in Tai Po is the first stop along the scenic route leading to the general area of Luk Keng in Fanling. The Plover Cove Reservoir is the largest reservoir in Hong Kong by …
From what I gathered, the broad religious orientations within the Jewish communities in Israel are orthodox, reformed, messianic, and secular. Jews aside, other people of Palestinian and Arab descents also live in Israel with their own religious affiliations. Our tour guide in Israel was an …
The last stop before Jordan River was St. Peter’s home, and we also saw the ruins of a synagogue adjacent to it. The statue of Apostle Peter holds a key and a live fish swims at his feet. The key symbolizes St. Peter’s office as the leader of the Christian church (Matthew 16:19). I must have misread the Bible. I had this idea that St. Peter was the one guarding the gate to Heavens. “I thought the key was the actual key to the gate of heavens?” My father discredited my view. There was no Biblical basis for that.
The baptism at Yardenit was one of the most anticipated events in this trip for me. For this occasion I prepared a special set of clothes with slippers. I remembered Mount Hermon’s frigidity that morning, and wondered if the water would be unbearably cold.
My father explained the meaning of baptism to the group, as eight of us in total would be baptized at Jordan River that day. It was, first and foremost, a public declaration of one’s faith and to become one with Christ. We sang a hymn to prepare ourselves spiritually.
One by one, my father blessed each of us with the water of Jordan River, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I was the last one, and I requested that my father spoke in English. “By the power of the Lord, that we may overcome the forces of Satan—” there I went, completely submerged into the river.
The water was very cold although I was under it for only a second. There was this sweet silence in my ears, for there was not even the sound of my own breathing. My thoughts stopped running. The only words that I said to myself was, “it’s very cold.” Then my father raised me from the water and I walked into a chorus celebrating my rebirth. Since I was not Jesus, heavens did not open with the flying dove and God did not speak (Matthew 3, Mark 1, Luke 3 and John 1). Yet my father on earth was with me in my spiritual birth and it was very special to me.
At the gift store I bought a pendant to commemorate my baptism. It showed the Jerusalem cross, with the heraldic cross in the middle and four smaller crosslets in the four quadrants. The Jerusalem cross was not commonly seen outside of Israel, but due to its significance as the emblem and coat of arms for the Kingdom of Jerusalem from the 1200s,[1] the spirit that it represented was well alive in Israel.
There are three interpretations of the five crosses. The first says that the five crosses represent the five wounds of Jesus Christ at his crucifixion. Secondly, it was the coat of arms for the Christian crusades. Finally, the crosslets represented the four Gospels with Christ’s salvation in the middle.
In early evening we boarded the Jesus’ boat for a tour of the Galilee. It was supposed to be the same type of boat as those in the New Testament. As touristy as it was, I enjoyed every moment of the ride. The boat flew the Israeli flag, alongside there was a PRC flag. The first music that played was the Chinese National Anthem too. I thought the operator made quite an effort to please the tourists. Those who just baptized at the Jordan River shared testimonies as the newly-christened.
Looking backward onto the shore at Tiberia, I felt all the more in love with this town. Its nightlights glimmered, absorbed into this land and this lake as dusk befell. Meanwhile, the Galilee seemed assured of its role in religion and history. Its serenity was second to none.
[1] See Wikipedia entry on the Jerusalem Cross.
Due to the historic influence by the Romans and the Greeks in this area, my Latin learning in Ovid has prepared me for this trip in unexpected ways. The Temple of Pan was one such example. Like other ruins, the Temple of Pan (Banias as …
“Shalom!” I witnessed my father’s first act in Israel, and it was brilliant. We entered Israel via a land route from Jordan. As we crossed the border over to Israel, two Israeli soldiers came on board to check the bus. The two men carried a …
“Most of the events in the Old Testament took place in Jordan,” our Jordanian tour guide said.
At dinner on my first night in Jordan I fell in love with the creamy, nutty flavored hummus and helped myself with two, three servings. By then, I knew that I had no problem eating Middle-Eastern food, especially food that was prepared with so much heart.
The Jordanian currency was the most expensive that I have come across in my life. One Jordanian dinar equaled three U.S. dollars. That means it was more expensive than the British Pound. I could not resist the small bag of chips at the hotel and it cost me $1 Jordanian dinar.
The next morning we rose and went to Mount Nebo as our first stop. Mount Nebo had much significance in the Bible. Moses looked onto the Promised Land from Mount Nebo before he died (Deuteronomy 34:1).
We arrived in a crisp winter morning. There was plenty of sunshine but the strong wind dissipated all warmth. I was keen to experience the poignancy that Moses must have felt when he viewed Canaan at that vantage point. We reached the northernmost point in the church site (a former monastery was being restored then). There was the Dead Sea, with a mountain standing between it and Jerusalem. That was Canaan in those days. It certainly looked like what would be a wilderness in the ancient times. The Israelites wandered in Jordan for forty years. There was a strong sense that it was rather history that I was seeing there.
In Madaba we were supposed to see the largest mosaic map in the world, which had taken fifty years to complete. Madaba was an abandoned site during the Turkish reign. The Christians were not allowed to build churches, so very wisely they asked to restore the ruins after an earthquake. They ended up building the Madaba Greek Orthodox Church, which stands today. We visited on a Friday, the holy day in Jordan; therefore we caught the Christian service rather than the sight of the famous map, a large part of which was destroyed by the German engineer that reconstructed the church.
We could not see the map because it was located right in the main hall where the service was held. Indeed, the Greek Orthodox service was formal and elaborate. I could not decide if the spiritual experience of being in a Greek Orthodox service for the first time in my life was more valuable to me, or if seeing the famous map would have been preferred instead. In any case, the most memorable was actually the pomegranate juice on our way back; it was $2 US a small cup and tasted heavenly.
The next stop was Moses’ Rock. This was believed to be where God told Moses to tell the rock to yield water but Moses beat the rock twice out of anger at the Israelites (Numbers 20:10-13). As a consequence he did not get to enter the Promised Land. I had doubts that anyone could have found the same rock that Moses strike in the wilderness, but all questioning aside, the water that welled next to the rock tasted sweet and cool. The water of Meribah was a spring of life in its own right.
The Petra
The Petra is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. I had no knowledge of this wonder and surely did not know what to expect. We had two choices: walk two kilometers to the city center, or take a horse carriage to get there. I chose to walk and it was a good decision. We passed through many meandering paths, seeing sandstones that morphed in different shades of sienna and different shapes of curves on our way.
The tour guide gracefully showed us the way on foot. He explained that, in order to stop the water of the valley flooding the siq leading to the Al Khazmeh, the ancient people built canals and water pipes to direct the water. We saw bas reliefs along the siq, with the image of a man leading a fleet of camels stone-carved onto the sandstones. The natural contours of these red and yellow sandstones were a wonder itself.
I became used to the light human hand prints on the way, and thus I was blown away when we reached the Al Khazmeh. There standing proudly and prominently, the city center had high pillars supporting a beautiful Romanesque façade, hewn and chiseled into the massive sandstone structure. It was the treasury of the city. In the middle an opening led into some kind of depth that was kept out of bounds to us. I was simply unprepared for this view and very much awed.
It being a typical scene at touristy places, many school-aged boys were selling souvenirs, and donkey and horse rides. They bargained in their own childish, pleasant and appealing ways. There were camels that I would have gladly patted if not for the fear of catching the new SARS. I should have ditched the group photo and walked on to see the theater at least. The tour guide said that it would take a full day to appreciate all that the ancient city could offer. That is the plan for my next visit, and hopefully soon.
I have never seen so much sand in my life. The wonderful aerial views of the United Arab Emirates greeted me in a variety of forms: first a coastline, then what seemed like ranges of barren hills. Finally it was all sands in vast …