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