"A Great Reckoning in a Little Room"

"Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name."

Thus, in Act IV/Scene 4 of "Hamlet," does the Norweigan captain answer when the melancholy Dane asks him the cause of an upcoming campaign. For his part, Hamlet can't seem to decide if he thinks this is a glorious display of courage or a silly waste of lives. But then Hamlet always did have trouble making up his mind.

I'm thinking of that line for another reason, one that has little to do with its meaning in the context of Shakespeare's great tragedy. Yesterday I stood on the rocky precipice of the heights of Arbel on the western coast of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. One of our guides, Dr. Mike Fanning, filled us in on the landscape that flattened itself below us. It was like a scale-model PowerPoint slide!

Starting at the bottom of our field of vision was the biblical village of Magdala. If you were from there, you were a Magdalene. So if your name was Mary, you were Mary Magdalene. Moving northward and slightly left along the coast, Dr. Fanning went on to point out Capernaum and Bethsaida. Then he pointed straight across the lake to a sheer sheet of cliffs shining in the fitful sun and explained that this the region of the Gadarenes and the very precipice down which the demon-conjured swine rushed to their deaths.

Eighty percent of Jesus' recorded ministry, Dr. Fanning explained, takes place within the semi-circle of that seascape.

"A little patch of ground/That hath in it no profit but the name." Well, not exactly: Rich fisheries brought revenue on which both Roman bellies and Roman coffers grew fat. Revenuers like Matthew watched the borders for bootleggers and made men like Zacchaeus raked off their cut before sending the balance to their bosses. Armies that had no special interest in the land itself fought over it as a bridge between powerful empires.

Still, it was a tiny little plot: You could take in the whole thing from one hilltop. Interesting, though: Our other guide, Dr. James Dennison, told us that a minority of New Testament scholars even posit the Cliffs of Arbel as the location for the final temptation of Christ - you know, the "all-the-kingdoms-of-the-world" one. After all, Dr. Dennison explained, these were all the kingdoms Jesus likely knew anything about. And if Our Lord didn't think that small scoop of society was worth blaspheming for, in the end he certainly thought it was worth dying for.

Jesus didn't think he was too big for such a small stage. Jesus didn't think such a stage was too small to do big things. He managed to wrench the world into a completely new shape by actions taken within that compact slice of country. It reminded me of another line from Shakespeare, this time spoken by Touchstone, a standup comic who laments the low intellect of his audiences. "When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room."

And yet I saw today how Jesus settled the greatest reckoning ever, the unpaid debt of human depravity that has been gaining in both principle and interest since Adam first put the forbidden fruit on his tab, in the little room of a constricted geography plunked down in a set space of history.

It's enough to make one begin to wonder what great things we can reckon on God doing in the little room of our own lives.