The price that has been paid

The end of day 4 found us leaving the desert and heading to the coast for our overnight. When we woke up this morning, it was clear we were in a different part of the country and that the story was about to change. The coastal plane is where cultures intersected in the ancient world, largely because of the trade route called the Via Maris, or “the way of the sea.” Think superhighway of the ancient world (for those of you on the East coast of the state, think of I-95 or the Metroliner linking NYC, Philadelphia and Washington DC). It is here where we did our first hike of the day, a climb up Mount Carmel that may have caught our group a little off guard following a 15,000+ step day the day before. We stopped half way up beside an olive grove, which gave us a new image for the stump of Jesse passage found in Isaiah 11. I won’t go into details on this one, but just know that as followers of Jesus we stand on the shoulders of our Jewish forefathers – or to use the imagery of the Bible, we have been grafted into the lineage of the Jewish people, and that they have tossed the baton to us. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

Mt. Carmel is the place where the story of Elijah and Ahab and the prophets of Baal takes place (I Kings 18). This is the “real world” where the Jewish people should be a shining light, but the opposite has happened, and the Jewish people have become thoroughly enamored with and influenced by the “gods” of Baal. As much as our modern world doesn’t relate to gods, the temptations and substitutes are still at play. As Rod explained, money is more than money, sports can become more than sports, etc.; there is power at play, and we can let whatever it is take a place in our lives that it doesn’t deserve and can never fill.

After Mt. Carmel we had lunch at a local restaurant that once again had us feasting on that clean and refreshing Mediterranean diet. You have to fight the temptation to eat too much because it all seems so good for you!

After lunch we headed to Caesaria, a seaport city of Herod on the Mediterranean. This began our New Testament portion of the trip, and Rod didn’t take long to begin a deep dive into 1st Century Israel. The influence of Rome and Hellenism is thick as represented by the luxury palace and arena (or hippodrome) that Herod built there. To be sure, Herod is an engineering genius, building an aqueduct from Mt. Carmel some appox. 13 miles away to fill his Olympic sized swimming pool at the seashore with fresh water. Herod continues to keep one foot in Rome and one foot in Judaism, but he takes Hellenism farther in Caesaria because of its relative farther distance from much of the Jewish people. Had they visited, they would have been appalled by the giant statue of Caesar that greets every visitor to this incredible seaport.

There is much more that could be said about Caesaria, as there are many believers who were martyred there for their faith in Jesus. We left the arena in silence, sobered by the price that has been paid by those who have gone before us, and challenged by what it looks like to live our lives for the Kingdom in our modern, yet equally Hellenistic country and world.

After traveling inland, our last stop of the day was at the shore of the Sea of Galilee. As the sun set, Rod spoke of the rabbinic call that Jesus gave to Peter and the disciples there to walk after Him. Implicit in this call is the belief – by Jesus - that we can indeed become like Him. Peter fell into the water because he doubted himself; it seems that God sometimes believes we can become like Him more than we do. “To walk” with God is a theme that began with Abraham when God told him to leave his home for a land that He would show him. Jesus extends the invitation to us to do the same: to walk with Him, so that we can be like Him, so that the Kingdom of God – which has come – can continue to bring redemption to the world.