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We spent the majority of the day today in Capernaum and on Mt. Arbel. I’m not able to express my feelings about these experiences in words just yet, so I’ll share some of my thoughts instead.

Capernaum was Jesus’s “home base” during his ministry. The town sits on the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee (a glorified lake, really), firmly within Jewish territory but not too far from Gentile settlements. It makes great practical sense–Capernaum lies near the international trade routes and near many of the other major settlements of Galilee. Even more, archeology indicates that Capernaum was a manufacturing center for grain and olive oil–meaning that people from all the smaller villages nearby likely came to the town with their raw materials, allowing Jesus’s ministry to reach farther more efficiently.

There were other realizations today. Prime among them, which has been building since we got here, is just how poor my mental imagery of Biblical scenes had been–the imaginative equivalent of a painted-craft-paper background in an elementary school play. This land is diverse in form and terrain, beautiful and full of life (both plant and animal). More than this, I’m starting to realize just how visual Jesus’s mode of speaking and teaching is. It’s axiomatic to say that Jesus spoke in parables that would make sense to the disciples, but it’s another thing altogether to say that Jesus had the objects he used in his analogies before him at the time he spoke the parables. This makes good pedagogic sense as he’s attempting to use the mundane to explain the complex and supernal. When you see a donkey mill–the kind of mill often used for milling grain in 1st Century Israel–and know that the device was so common that there was almost certainly one in front the disciples when Jesus says that it would be better to tie a millstone to your neck and throw yourself into the ocean (the Sea of Galilee, too, is likely in view at the time, a wholly different and more complete understanding comes into focus.

As Dr. Beck argues in his books and on this trip–very rightly so, I think–Jesus made great use of geography and the things that could be seen at the locations where he gave particular lessons and made particular statements.

This takes us to Mt. Arbel, the likeliest location for the Sermon on the Mount and the Great Commission. Rather than rehashing, I’ll refer you again to Dr. Beck’s books for the full laying-out of the argument. But, sitting on the mountain, going through the Sermon on the Mount, listening to Jack’s explanation, I could not help but be moved. Until today, I had not had the visceral emotional response to being were Jesus walked and taught that I had hoped to have. Today, though, things became real at a very fundamental level. There’s something about putting Jesus’s words into geographical and visual context that makes them feel more embodied (and therefore more “real” and relatable) and at the same time more spiritually profound.

I’m also realizing just how perfect the place and time of the Incarnation was. As I mentioned in previous posts, the Roman Empire makes a perfect example for the kind of craving for wealth, power and dominance that Jesus argues against. That Israel represents the great international route between the Middle East and Egypt by land and is linked to Europe and the rest of Africa by sea, means the message has a way to reach the world. The place itself and its history provides the context for a revelation that directly addresses the people of the place and yet remains universal in applicability.

For me, especially, with my heavy philosophical bent, this journey is really convicting me of the embodied, present and concrete nature of Jesus’s life teachings, and Passion. When we arrived, we were told that, like Abram, God has called us to Israel, that there is something for God to reveal to each of us here. This confrontation with the Incarnation as something no longer abstract and far away in time and place may be just the thing God brought me here to show me. It’s certainly something I needed, even if I didn’t know that I needed it.

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