The Anchor Church

“Are you sure this road goes anywhere?” I ask Tim as we wind our way back and forth up a steep hillside. Out the dusty window of our rental car, I am watching the buildings of Tiberias shrink like toys. This is the second gravel road we’ve tried, the first one dead-ending at a strange-looking radio tower and a few spooky shacks. We’re both getting tempted to give up, but there’s nowhere to turn around – besides, Tim has been here before, years ago, and knows that it’s all going to be worth it when we find ourselves at the top of the hill.

Focusing my eyes on the cliff ahead of us, I suddenly see that the pile of rocks up here actually has a shape, a structure. We park and walk in the blazing heat toward the ruins of a Byzantine church which must have been a precious gem in its heyday. Crumbling mosaics still decorate the floors in many places. Huge basalt bricks still outline the walls, and over them we can view the entire Sea of Galilee. And best of all, the altar is still there. Tim explains to me that this church used as its altar a first century anchor, which they believed belonged to Simon’s boat, which Jesus borrowed to preach to a multitude on the banks (Luke 5:1-11). I am filled with delight, and can’t help laughing, praying, and even doing a little yoga here on this anchor at the top of a mountain. I’m delighted at the view from so high up, at the blue sky, at the ridiculously winding road we drove to get here – and at the fact that so much of the church is intact in spite of having been abandoned after its excavation ended in the 90s. Tourists don’t usually come here – the people who live in this area didn’t even know what we were talking about when we asked how to get to the church up on the cliff. And here it is – the most spectacular religious site I’ve seen yet. I’m feeling what Alice Munro calls “the intoxication of a flash of God’s favor.”

Oftentimes when visiting one of these early churches, I wonder what the founders were thinking. The church at Kursi, which we wrote about in our earlier post, is a good example; what was it about the place where Jesus cast demons into swine that drew a community to build a beautiful church and monastery? Did they feel closer to Jesus there? Did that particular story have significant meaning for them? Or was it a site that nobody else had claimed yet? It’s intellectually interesting, but it’s a mystery to me why it was so special to them. But on this day, beholding the view above Tiberias from this church with its anchor altar, the mystery I celebrate is how the divine can burst into our lives in the most delightful, unexpected ways. How the faithful impulse of some people over a millennium ago could suddenly become transparent to me, praying over the same sea, under the same sun.

Shalom, Salaam, Peace -- Emily

Introduction

Sometimes people ask for signs; some indication that they are on the right path. Often times we are disappointed when it seems no sign presents itself as we might imagine. Other times there are so many options and we must make a decision on which path to take. But, more often, signs - if there are any - go by unrecognized.

There is a small and often overlooked archaeological site on the western side of the Sea of Galilee called Kursi. It was recognized in the 5th century as the location where Jesus cast demons into swine after which the swine jumped off a cliff and ran into the sea (Matthew 8:28-9:1, Mark 5:1-20, Luke 8:26-39). There was no town built there, just a monastery on the cliff and a church below that.
It is an interesting site with nice Byzantine mosaics, but one thing that caught our attention as we visited Kursi last weekend was a sign on the path from the church to the remains of the cliff-side monastery. Now, this was a small dirt path that snaked up the hill; but it was only one path – no forks in the road, no options for the hour-long hiking route up the cliff, just a simple dirt path that ended at the monastery. The sign was an arrow, obviously pointing in the direction of the path. But we found it funny that the sign also spelled out directions in both English and Hebrew: “follow the arrow.” That is the sort of sign we long for in our lives, isn't it? The arrow pointing us in the direction we were already heading, and blatantly explaining to us, “yes, this is the way, just follow this arrow.”

Of course, there are never are such signs in our lives, but sometimes when we have an opportunity to think about our experiences we can find points that, in retrospect, we might like to call signs. Maybe they are events that help us determine a next step in our lives, or new goals we hope to accomplish. Or, maybe they are just chance encounters that spark a new interest, or give us new insights into something we never knew we needed to know. Or, maybe, it is literally a sign that helps us solve a particular problem, like: “what should we name our blog?”

So, this blog will be our means of communicating those events, perspectives and other experiences that seem meaningful, interesting, or just fun. We welcome you to join us on our journey through this year in the Holy Land where, whether recognized or not, we hope to be:

“Following the arrows”