Divine Polyphony

On Thursday, as the sun set over Jerusalem, we pilgrims gathered on the roof of the Holy Land Hotel for an abbreviated service of evening prayer. "O gracious light," we said, "pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven...Now as we come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the vesper light, we sing your praises..."

But this was Jerusalem, so we weren't praying alone. No one ever is. When the time came for the Lord's Prayer, our voices were blending with those of muezzin calling Muslims to their sunset prayer (7:55 p.m. in Jerusalem, or about ten minutes after our service had begun). I could distinguish at least two chants, and there may have been three. Our hotel in east Jerusalem had three minarets within sight. So we joined hands and joined our voices to those of the muezzin and chanted the Our Father using one of the settings from the Episcopal hymnal.

You could say the moment was holy polyphonic. We weren't arguing or trying to drown out theological competitors. There's more than enough of that in Jerusalem without our adding to the mayhem. Something similar happens every day during scheduled worship in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where we got a behind-the-scenes tour on Friday afternoon from Rev. Fergus Clarke, one of the Franciscan priests who work with five other denominations -- Greek, Armenian and Syriac Orthodox, Coptic, and Ethiopian -- to operate and care for Christianity's holiest place. Fergus reminded us that his is the only church in the world where denominations worship simultaneously in different languages -- for instance Coptics and Roman (or Latin) Catholics at opposite ends of Christ's tomb, within 20 feet of each other.

I've heard it, and it's beautiful. While agreeing by and large on just one thing -- that in the tomb they preserve and adore, our God in Christ destroyed death and saved the world -- these Christians all worship differently, and so have we on our 10-day pilgrimage.

The Rev. Canon Michael Bamberger (shown here with pilgrims Brenna and Steven Hayden) and I took turns celebrating Holy Eucharist -- Mike on Saturday morning in the ruins of a Crusader church at Emmaus Nicopolis, I a few days earlier on a stone altar overlooking the Sea of Galilee. But when it came to our non-Eucharistic services, we mixed it up considerably, taking turns organizing our pilgrim worship.

One evening Fr. Mike borrowed a moving Compline, or close-of-day, liturgy from our Diocese of Los Angeles colleague Canon Randy Kimler. The next night, pilgrim Christian Kassoff, co-leader of an emergent Christian community in Huntington Beach called Thom's, invited pilgrims to reflect about their first few days in Jerusalem. Christian and his son, Damian, took turns anointing them at the end of the service. I did the honors with the holy oil after the Rev. Lisa Rotchford, knee-deep in the Jordan River, presided at a reaffirmation of our baptismal vows (that's pilgrim Ed Alosio with Pastor Lisa).

It was back to the rooftop when we gathered in Nazareth one evening by the light shining from the cupola of the nearby Basilica of the Annunciation. Another Thom's minister -- Christian's wife and Damian's mother, Shannon -- led us in yoga and guided meditation. During one of my turns, I stretched liturgical propriety even further than yoga instructor Shannon stretched our pilgrim hamstrings when I offered some doggerel to be sung to the tune of "Pray For The Peace Of Jerusalem," which our Galilean friend the Rev. Fuad Dagher taught us at St. John's back in 2010. I hoped to illustrate the pilgrim virtues of patience, flexibility, tolerance, and unity:

When we set out for Tel Aviv
Our departure time was a slidin'
We pilgrims has to sit and wait
The runway was reserved for Joe Biden

Cucumbers and yogurt and olives with pits
Like no breakfast we've ever seen
We knew we weren't in Kansas no more
When we saw that the orange juice was green

Muslims and Jews, Christian orthodox
For all kinds, Jerusalem's the place
We walk the ancient streets of this town
Amazed by diversity of faith

In Bethlehem we reached and touched
The rough stone that sheltered the Christ
His love proclaims such unity
That mocks all our conflict and strife.

We pilgrims also shared perhaps 25 scriptural readings connected to the sites we visited and 50 prayers and blessings, almost all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I remember just two exceptions. After we'd heard a talk by a religious Jew and peace activist who elected to stay for our closing prayer, Fr. Mike left out the reference to Christ. Saying grace over our Saturday lunch at a shawarma restaurant on Salah al-Din in east Jerusalem, where we were surrounded by pious Muslims, I prayed in the name of the Creator, not to deny Christ but avoid disappointing him by excluding any of God's beloved non-Christian creatures who may have been listening.

Pilgrims' Progress in Nazareth: Why We Came

"This is why I came," said a St. John's pilgrim as we drove along the western edge of the Sea of Galilee on Saturday morning. It was as Christ-drenched a day as we'll have during our 12-day pilgrimage, beginning with the renewal of our baptismal vows in the Jordan River (pilgrims Melinda, Deb, and Cheryl are above) and culminating, sacramentally, at least, with Holy Eucharist served around a stone altar high above the lake.

Before I said the mass, I asked our pilgrims to preach the sermon by calling out two or three words that they associated with our trip so far. The one I heard the most was peace. If you yearn for peace, if you want to feel close to the historical Jesus, if your faith in God's saving and infinitely loving power is bolstered by the feel of solid ground under your feet that Jesus's may have touched first, then come to Galilee.

For one thing, you'll find a church built in remembrance of one New Testament event after another -- Jesus's healing work at Simon Peter's house in Capernaum as recounted in the action-packed first chapter of Mark's gospel, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, even the meal the risen Christ prepared for his disciples as recounted in John 21.

All these miracles and mysteries notwithstanding, our pilgrim hearts were also touched by moments of sheer humanity and common sense. In Nazareth, at the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation, our guide, Canon Iyad Qumri, pointed out his favorite fresco, depicting the
Holy Family's flight to Egypt as described in Matthew's gospel. Usually we see the patient Joseph leading a mule carrying Mary and her child. But wouldn't we be just as likely to see the lad riding on Joseph's strong shoulders?

Joseph would probably have been singing as they walked along, and we've been singing up a storm, too. In Bethlehem, a few feet from the grotto remembered as the site of Jesus's nativity, we sang "O Come All Ye Faithful." We did our best approximation of the Blind Boys of Alabama's "Wade In The Water" as I used olive branches to sprinkle my fellow pilgrims with Jordan River water. We sang hymns and the Taize "Gloria in excelsis" during our hillside Holy Eucharist and "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore" (what else?) during a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee. And on Sunday morning in Christ Church in Nazareth, we belted out hymns in English (you can see that pilgrims Dale, Phyllis, and Bob were holding up their end) while our local Episcopalian brothers and sisters sang in Arabic.

On Saturday evening, we were blessed by a visit to our pilgrim guest house by a dynamic Nazareth-born priest in the Diocese of Jerusalem, the Rev. Fuad Dagher, whom we'd welcomed at St. John's in August while preparing for our pilgrimage. He told us about the child care center he's launching at his church in Shefa-'Amr, St. Paul's, with the support of the Diocese of Los Angeles and some $40,000 in local contributions.

Over dinner, Fr. Fuad waxed pessimistic about prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, chalking up most of the problems to the Israeli side. A couple of pilgrims pushed him back on issues such as the U.S. war in Iraq (which he said was a disaster for all concerned).

I'll write later in our pilgrimage about politics, the leitmotif of almost everything we see and do in the Holy Land. For now, I can't help tarrying a little more over the sights, sensations, and sacraments of our two rich days in Galilee.

All Those Guys, Just To Get Ready For Our Trip!

When Bishop John Chane (center right, in purple) and colleagues from the Diocese of Washington, D.C. arrived in Amman, Jordan this week to attend the annual meeting of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, they posed with Bishop Suheil Dawani (center left, in purple) and his colleagues -- including the Rev. Fuad Dagher (far left), who visited St. John's last summer. We St. John's pilgrims will be Fr. Fuad's guest in Shefa-'Amr, Israel in January. More details about the Amman meeting here.

Pilgrims' Process

My elder daughter, 2009 Holy Land pilgrim Valerie Taylor, snapped this photo of once and future pilgrims from St. John's Episcopal Church in Rancho Santa Margarita with our guest preacher and celebrant last Sunday, Fr. Fuad Dagher from the Galilean town of Shefa'-Amr. Left to right: Yvonne, David, Bob, Fr. John, Mary, Cheryl, Nancy, Christopher, Fr. Fuad, Shirlee, Melinda, Jan, Ron, Deb, Phyllis, Dale, Leslie, Sandy, Pat, Gary, Tom, Joe, Debbie, Sandy, Andrea, and Sue. Pilgrim Kathy was getting ready for her first attempt to teach the story of Queen Esther to kindergartners (where's Madonna when you need her?).

Counting Living Stones

Fuad Dagher was born in Nazareth, making him "the man from Galilee," he said gamely to the people of St. John's Episcopal Church this morning. He's now rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Shefa-'Amr, about 20 minutes by car from from his birthplace and Jesus's home town.

So he's lived his whole life in the middle of what we usually call the Holy Land but which Fr. Fuad takes care to call "the land of the Holy One." The Holy Land, he said, has become a bloody land of war, as Jews and Arabs battle over mere territory. Better to remember, he says, the true source of holiness, a reality that can't be constrained by politics or borders.

He had another piece of advice for 30 St. John's pilgrims he met with today between services, some who visited Israel and Palestine last summer and others who will make the trip in January 2011. Walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, he said. Run your hands along the damp rock in the Bethlehem cave where the church teaches that the holy child was born, and touch the hill of Golgotha at the heart of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. "But also remember the living stones," he said -- the Christians who have faithfully kept watch over the land of the Holy One for 2,000 years. "Sometimes when people meet me, and they see that I'm an Arab, they say, 'God is good! When did you convert?'", he said with a smile. But he was never a Muslim. His family have always been Christians.

Shefa-'Amr's population of 40,000 is composed of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, a showplace of interfaith comity of which the nation of Israel is considerably proud. If peace can make it in Shefa-'Amr, it should be able to make it anywhere. But Fuad has relatively little faith in the putative peacemakers in the Israeli government and the Palestinian National Authority -- not that he makes any bones about what he calls the original sin of Middle East strife, namely Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as a result of its victory in the Six-Day War in 1967. That proposition is open to debate, as is almost every proposition made in almost every argument about the Middle East (although the key elements of the two-state solution, which theoretically is now embraced by both sides and the U.S., amount to a return to the status quo before 1967).

Not open to debate is the alarming decline in the number of living stones, namely Arab Christians, who remain in the Holy Land. They now comprise less than 2% of the population. Christians are a vital buffer between Muslims and Jews. As they leave, prospects for peace decline further.

But meanwhile, for us St. John's Epiphany 2011 pilgrims, it's on to Jerusalem and Shef-'Amr.

Shefa-'Amr To Rancho Santa Margarita

The Rev. Fuad Dagher is an Arab Christian who lives and does ministry in a predominately Arab Muslim community in northern Israel -- and if that doesn't encapsulate the dilemma and opportunities of life in the Middle East, nothing does. Fr. Fuad is the energetic rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Shefa-'Amr, a town of 35,000 that's part of the five-nation Diocese of Jerusalem. Among his current projects is building a school for those with physical disabilities.

As a pilgrim in 2007, I enjoyed the hospitality of Fr. Fuad and his wife, Hana, at St. Paul's. This Sunday, he'll be our guest at St. John's in Rancho Santa Margarita, where he'll meet with St. John's pilgrims who visited Israel and the West Bank last year and another group whose members are planning a visit in January 2011 -- our hoped-for Epiphany in the land of light. In the meantime, we'll be praying for peace and justice for Fr. Fuad and all his neighbors.