Worship in Christmas Lutheran Church, 19 Oct 2014

Karen Parkinson

Karen here. The morning started in a city landscape – Bethlehem – where we attended a beautiful service in Arabic at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church where Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb preached. We had previously met him on Friday at the Diyar Consortium. We were in an international landscape, with about half the congregation being visitors from various countries. The church itself was built by German missionaries in 1854 and had some beautiful stained glass windows with Scripture references in German along with very artistic Arabic calligraphy decorating the ceiling. A German group provided special music but we all enjoyed the rousing offertory hymn sung in Arabic by all our brothers and sisters in Christ. A very unifying experience… We were able to chat with the congregation afterwards, and hopefully were an encouragement to them.

From the church, located in a busy market street, we started the descent along the “Valley on Fire” road towards Jericho, to the east. The settlers use a different more direct route through Jerusalem, but our road snaked through Palestinian villages and past hilltop settlements. The landscape was constantly changing from the white limestone of Bethlehem towards the barren brown of the Judean Wilderness. I could imagine David hiding from Saul in the many caves visible from what was the old Roman road. The occasional Bedouin encampment became more frequent as we neared Jericho.

4th century St. George’s Monastery, Wadi Qelt

Our lunch stop was in the canyon of Wadi Qelt. Flash floods had formed deep grooves in the mountains over thousands of years to create a very dramatic landscape. We overlooked St. George’s Monastery, which dates back to the 4th century and was built into the side of a cliff. The monks certainly enjoyed solitude until we and a team of photographers equipped with a drone arrived! Joan read the parable of the Good Samaritan – easy to relate to seeing the rough terrain and narrow shepherd paths. There is precious little foliage to be found for the goats we saw being led by a shepherd on a donkey.

Later in the afternoon, we drove south through the Jordan Valley from Jericho to Qumran. Again, the landscape changed as we descended below sea level. Date palm and banana trees lined both sides of the road and the terrain was lighter in color than the wilderness with bushes providing occasional shade. It was flat all the way across to the mountains of Jordan.

Qumran cave of the Essenes

Apparently, due to water from the the Jordan River being diverted further upstream, the river is dry at this point, leaving the Dead Sea as a lake with decreasing volume and increasing salt concentrations each year.

Qumran is where the Yahad (Essene) community lived, with the goal of ritual purity and spiritual perfection. John the Baptist was a member. We wandered around the ruins and saw ten ritual baths along with cisterns, dining hall and treasury. In 1947, about a dozen scrolls of parchment sheets of all the books of the Bible except Esther, sectarian texts and other Jewish literature were found in caves nearby by Bedouin shepherds. Later in 1952, more fragments were found. It is thought that the Essenes hid them from the Romans in the 2nd Temple period.

In the distance, the Dead Sea beckoned with its salt farms at 400 m. below sea level. We chose a private beach area (Kalia) to swim in, and some of us covered ourselves with the gooey healing black mud. Showers were fortunately available with unlimited hot water, unlike in Palestine where water is restricted by the Israeli government.

Group shot, Osama center

On the drive home, Usama (our wonderful guide) shared stories of life in occupied Palestine – all rather shocking and reinforcing the idea that the Israeli military act in unnecessarily cruel ways to harass and bring fear and stress to the Palestinian people. Life here is obviously hard as freedoms are taken away and all control is taken by the Israeli authorities. Random “flying checkpoints” can appear on any road in the West Bank at any time, and the people are forced to wait in lines as the young soldiers harass and humiliate them, even claiming that “they are the masters and there is nothing you [the Palestinians] can do about it.” Usama’s own wedding celebration was interrupted by a curfew in Bethlehem and he had many personal stories about people dying at checkpoints whilst waiting to get medical help. We have a lot of disturbing information to process, for certain…