GREETINGS TO THE HOLY PEOPLE OF GOD,
Over the weeks I have been giving you bit size pieces of my experience in Israel. Last week and this week, you have been offered communion bread that was made with olive oil and honey brought back from Israel. The olive oil was made from the over 500 hundred olive trees that surround the Tantur Ecumenical Institute. This is the place I called home for 4 weeks and I walked by these trees daily. The honey has a more complicated history. The honey was purchased at the Resurrection Church, also known as the Church of the Crusaders in Abu Ghosh.
Abu Ghosh is an Arab village located about 9 miles from Jerusalem and one of three sites that claims to be Emmaus, the place where the risen Lord revealed himself to two disciples in Luke 24:13-35. It is also the village that is mentioned in the Old Testament as a mountain village on the boarder between the territories of the tribes of Benjamin and Judah. It was the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant for 20 years between its restoration by the Philistines (1 Sam. 6:21 – 7:2) and its removal to Jerusalem by Kind David (2 Sam. 6).
This site is favored because a caravanserai, a roadside inn was discovered here. For the medieval pilgrims it was easy to imagine this place as the place where the risen Jesus broke bread with two of his disciples and in 1140 a church was built by the Knights Hospitallers probably over a Roman fortress. In 1187, after the defeat of the Latin Kingdom at the battle of the Horns of Hattin, this village lost its importance because travelers took a different route to Jerusalem and Emmaus was then thought to be at Qubeiba. Between 1350 and 1400, the Mamlukes restored the roadside inn, and used the church as a mosque and removed the faces from the frescos as their tradition required but the faceless frescos proved to be too much of a distraction, and they built a new mosque next door and used the church as a stable. France bought the church in 1873 and was rededicated as a church in 1907 and used by the Benedictines. Today this church is part of a complex mixed monastery for both men and women. This is a big step for the Roman Catholic Church.
This is where the honey was purchased and where we were given time to roam, pray and then sit under the trees and have our weekly sharing times. Thanks to Eric Vigil’s request that I bring honey back from the Holy Land, I can also share with you the sweet taste and complex memory of the Holy Land with you.
Now I have the daunting task of trying to put something together in two 45 minute sessions to give context to my impression of the Holy Land. As I have given you a taste, I too know what our Tantur leaders were up against in designing a program for us and they had four weeks but yet so much ground to cover.
I give thanks to God for the beautiful Tantur team made up of Jesuit Father John Paul who is the Rector and overall director of our program. His parents were from Lebanon/Syria and immigrated to the US and lived in the Sioux City area. Before serving as Rector of Tantur he was in Minneapolis. JP as we called him understood the culture of the US and Christian ecumenical community. Nizar Halloun, our program director before coming to Jerusalem was in Mt. Carmel and Galilee, has a masters in comparative literature, BA in Hebrew and French linguistics and served as a tour guide in Israel. When Nizar was not serving as our tour guide, he provided guides that were Jewish, Muslim or Palestian depending on where we were touring. He was a wealth of information and wonderful resource. Sister MariaFarouza Maximos is the program coordinator and is from a growing order of nuns, known as the Sisters of the Way that focus on being ecumenical and being together in a different way. This was a dream team and I have yet to introduce you to my traveling companions.
So pray for me. Pray that the Holy Spirit will help me to sift through all that I have experienced in a way that communicates the impression that has been left upon me and continues to shape and form me. It is a daunting task. I am not good at sorting through and distilling the most important because it all carries memory and meaning for me. Pray that the Holy Spirit will help me to tune into what you most need to experience as well.
Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,
Pastor Connie Spitzack
