Okay, in a previous post I promised to come back to how the Tour Guides talk about the various important sites that tours and pilgrimages visit.  In my view it is an important contextual piece.  In the Holy Land one cannot just hang out a shingle and become a tour company.  With the millions of people who come to the Holy Land every year, these guides are considered important representatives of their countries.  In our case it was Omar in Jordan, and Giovanni in Israel.  They go to school for several years and have to maintain strict certifications.  Many of them are highly educated before they become tour guides.  Think about the varied points of view and belief systems that they encounter in the people they interact with while doing their job.  In my view they are obviously trained in how to be authentic and accurate about the important sites they are leading groups to.  When it comes to any given site, they will use phrases such as, tradition has it, or, we know that near here, or, we know that this IS the spot where this took place.  And they are graceful and gracious about how they talk about the delicate political balance, or lack of it, in this region of the world.  To me, this is extremely important and it is not done cavalierly.

This is nowhere more important than when talking about what I will call the “miracle sites” of our Christian Faith.  So I’m going to do my best to express what I think and believe about this.

If Jesus had just been an interesting guy, who talked good, and went around preaching for a few years in a little known region of what was then the known world, what would have been the likely result of that?  I can’t pose a more key question to ponder.  As Christians we believe that Jesus was both Human and Divine.  Without that, could his life have launched another major world religion in a time when the other major religions had already existed for thousands of years?  What would it take for a baby to be born in a muffler shop in Nowthen, Minnesota, that would have people changing their whole way of thinking and being 2000 years later?  As flip as that may sound, I could not pose a more important scenario to myself and to anyone else who would listen.

I have come to believe with everything I have that when we die we get to know all the answers.  It has taken me a long, sometimes dark and painful time, to get there.  And I believe that until that time, there are mysteries that we are not meant to fully understand.  I believe that our souls are eternal.  I believe that they weave through all living things and give us an opportunity to be part of the Sacred.  This is my faith, and it has taken me to place where most days I think everyone should have my life.

Rewind just a bit.  Back to the Tour Guides.  I know right?  Just stay with me a little longer.

What gives them the confidence to say, “We know this is the place.”  This is the place where Jesus healed.  This is the place where He comforted his closest friends even after they had thought Him lost?  The answers are in both the mystery and the practical.  In the decades after the Crucifixion of Christ, four different guys thought that all that had happened had to be written down.  But it wasn’t just that.  And this is what becomes immediately apparent when you are actually here.  His followers almost immediately began to commemorate and protect these sites by building churches and chapels right over them.  And through the centuries they built churches on top of the churches.  With records.  Today in some spots you can go down through several archeological layers that are the history of the “this is the place”.  They have become part of the Gospel story.  We know where Mary lived.  We know where Peter lived.  We know where Jesus preached in the synagogue.  Some places we can walk right up to it and touch it.  Some places you can’t.  Humans being what they are, some places you can only view from a few steps back.  The preservation of the physical story becomes part of the story.  I feel in awe of the truth that the early followers of Jesus somehow knew this.  An interesting guy who talked good and had his fifteen minutes of fame.  Not this time.

I am well and hope you all are too.  But phew, writing this one wore me out.  What you can read in a few minutes has been doin’ a dance in my head for three days.  And you thought this was going to be about tour guides.   🙂