Father Bill's Pondering August 20
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August 21, 2023Years ago, I had the privilege of traveling to the Holy Land as part of a class I was taking in seminary. It was a long trip with lots of walking and standing in the sun, but it was also wonderful to travel the same way that Jesus traveled. It was exciting and enlightening to be able to be where Jesus was and to see the places that we imagine every time we hear the Gospel. Before leaving for the trip, my professor repeated that traveling to the Holy Land would forever change the way we would read the scriptures and the way that we would know Jesus. Despite his repetition of this warning, I would have to say that he was underselling this reality.
While I have many fond memories of this trip there are two that I continue to reflect on even thirty years later. The first of these involves our stay at a kibbutz on the Sea of Galilee. Our guide took pity on us one day and gave us the afternoon off to rest and to take advantage of our beach front accommodations. I immediately put on my bathing suit and went for a swim in the waters that Jesus walked on. The amazing thing about our time there was that when I arrived at the beach the water was calm and had a glasslike surface. But without my noticing the wind began to whip the water into a frenzy and soon there were whitecaps crashing onto the shore and making it difficult to swim.
“Suddenly a violent storm came upon the sea, so that the boat was being swamped, by waves; but he was asleep.”(Mt 8:24) Seemingly out of nowhere, water was coming over the boat and those in the boat were afraid, but Jesus slept. The disciples immediately woke Jesus and begged him to save them. Jesus calms the sea, and all is well. Having seen how the water went from calm to violent in such a short time I now empathized with the disciples. I also realized that the lesson of this Gospel passage is that if you get into the boat with Jesus when the sudden storms of life arise, and they will, there is no need to be afraid, you are in the boat with Jesus.
The second memory I have kept for these thirty years has to do with Jesus bending down to wash the feet of his disciples. While it was long past Easter, during our trip we celebrated the events of Holy Week. We gathered in the upper room where Jesus and his apostles had their last meal and heeding Jesus’s call to service, we washed one another’s feet. Keep in mind that this came after a long day of walking through the dust covered streets of Jerusalem in sandals. When I washed the foot of the person next to me, I remember the towel I used to try her foot being covered in mud. I remember thinking that this was after only a day of walking around and Jesus washed the feet of men whose commitment to hygiene left much to be desired. I think the best way to describe the experience is that it was gross.
Jesus did not hesitate to bend down and wash the filthy feet of his disciples, more importantly he did not hesitate to leave the perfection of paradise to come down to earth to clean and to heal our wounded souls. The yuck of our sins, the filth of our sins, the weight of our sins did not stop Jesus from accomplishing our salvation.
It can be easy for us to put a modern-day spin on the stories of the scriptures. We can be doubtful that the “sudden storms” came as surprise because of the storm predicting technologies that we have today. It can seem like a day at the spa when we hear of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples because of the modern bathing rituals we have today. But the fact of the matter is that the lessons we learn from the Scripture, Old and New Testaments, are as relevant today as they were when they were first taught.
How complicated have we made our world because we thought the ten commandments needed improvement. What a mess we have made because we have put limits on Jesus’s command to love God and our neighbor. How difficult we have made our lives because we have forgotten that faith is not about instant gratification but is instead about prayer, patience, and persistence.
I know that we all have not had the opportunity to travel to the Holy Land, but this does not mean that we do not have the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the Sacred Scriptures. In doing so we will find the answers for which we are looking. We will find the path to happiness, we will find the path to holiness and wholeness, we will find calm in our chaos, hope in our fear, and freedom from all that binds and burdens us. It’s as if every page of the Bible is a pilgrimage that can show us over and again the length, breadth, and depth of God’s love for each of us. This is certainly a journey worth committing ourselves to taking every day.
