Setting Forth

"As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling. . . ."

Thus Herman Melville's narrator Ishmael begins an early chapter of Moby Dick. I'm feeling a little Ishmaelish myself, having, after months of anticipation and weeks of preparation, actually begun my journey to Israel under the auspices of the South Texas School of Christian Studies and through the generosity of the Prichard Foundation. I am sitting in a hotel room in Dallas waiting to catch the shuttle to the airport in three hours or so. Four students and I will spend the next ten days touring various biblical sites with the expert guidance of Jim Dennison and Mike Fanning. Thought I'd share a few musing and observations here on the front-end of our journey.

As always, I wrestled with the matter of packing. I've always had a romantic fascination with the idea of packing light. Ishmael, for instance, faces his three-year hitch on a whaling ship with no more ado than, "I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific." I decided that for this jaunt I would limit myself to a single backpack. I read up on one-bag packing at a couple of different websites and consulted a co-worker who is a veteran of international mission trips. I then invested in the kind of safari shirts and pants that will stand multiple wearings between washings, limited myself to a pair of Chaco sandles (thus eliminating the need for socks), and here I am. Of course, I've still exceeded Our Lord's carry-on limit by one bag, but I suppose that's what grace is for. Heck, even Mother Teresa allowed her nuns three habits: one for wearing, one for washing, and one for praying.

Speaking of habits, this is as good a time as any to renew my call for Christians to embrace the monastic habit. A single flowing garment would work for both genders, eliminate our tendency to judge one another by our outter finery (see the Book of James), and make packing a breeze. (And, speaking of breezes, would also be cool, comfortable going in the Negev deserts of southern Israel in April.)

What do I expect out of this trip? Well, not dreams and visions, nor the frisson of physical contact with the divine. Whether I am above or below that kind of thing isn't for me to say; maybe I'm just slightly to the side of it. But I do expect to get a feel for the physical location where Jesus of Nazareth became Jesus Christ. Hey, put down that torch! I'm not spouting heresy here; just the opposite: I am insisting that the incarnation was not a put-up job, that Jesus hammered out his being on the same hard anvil that you and I do: place, time, people, history.

I have assigned the students Leslie T. Hardin's book The Spirituality of Jesus. In his first chapter, Hardin asks, "Was Jesus made spiritual? Does his siring by the Holy Spirit automatically give him a proclivity for performing miracles? Was his God-consciousness downloaded Matrix-style into his brain at his baptism? Or were there spiritual activities that Jesus engaged in on a regular basis that allowed the Spirit free reign in his life?" A few paragraphs later he answers his own question: "In short, Jesus' spirituality is seen in the things he did that allowed the Spirit to grow and flow unimpeded in his life." And I want to go to the place where he did those things.
Now, I'm not advocating works salvation, or even works spirituality. I think Jesus had a leg-up, if you will - one foot on the bank as he reached to save us drowning sinners (to use C. S. Lewis' analogy). The virgin birth matters a great deal. But I also think that Jesus' indwelling presence gives us access to that advantage. The resurrection also matters a great deal! So, in short, if I am going to do what Jesus did (and he goes so far as to say I can do even greater things), I'd better approach the goal by doing what Jesus did: being alone, worshiping with others, praying, reading Scripture, submitting, fasting.

And I am excited to see the places where Jesus did these things. And to be in the land where, long before Jesus' time, his ancestors did great things. No, I don't think mere location can make me more spiritual: I don't, for instance, think I'll like fasting any better if I do it in the trans-Jordanian wilderness where Jesus had his cage match with the Devil. But I think that the more I can learn about the world in which Jesus forged himself, the more I can see my own circumstances as a real venue for transformation.