Indeed, in the early first century, Herod began to rebuild the town, which had recently been destroyed, and planned to make it grander than ever. Such a project would have attracted plenty of artisans to Zippori, many of whom would have stayed nearby in another town you may know — Nazareth.

Zippori thus raises an interesting question for us Bible folk: Did Joseph move Jesus and the Holy Family to Nazareth because of the availability of work next door? Like a lot of the ruins we saw on this trip, Zippori is covered in tiled floor mosaics. There is even a section of the town (dating from the 400s) that looks as if it was an actual mosaic shop where new homebuilders might come to peruse their flooring options, not unlike what we might do today with paint swatches at our local Sherwin-Williams.

If not carpenters, could Jesus and his dad have been tilers instead? The word we’ve traditionally translated “carpenter” in places like Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55 is a general term for any sort of skilled craftsperson or artisan. Jesus and his dad surely could have been carpenters, but they might just as easily have been stonemasons or street pavers or leather workers. And yet, if that’s the case, then so many of my earliest images of Jesus are  now wrong! (As are countless paintings and loads of movies!)

That’s one thing I really love about Israel. Just walking through ancient sites like Zippori and seeing the actual building materials used in Jesus’ day — plus the kinds of work that would have gone into producing and installing them — helps keep our understanding of scripture fresh. Sometimes what we believe to be true is simply long assumptions of tradition and translation!

Of course, transforming Jesus into a stonemason instead of a carpenter might not change much of our interpretation of him in the end. But that’s not the only surprise one finds walking the road Jesus walked. As mentioned above, next to Zippori lies Nazareth, Jesus’ childhood home.

If you traveled to Nazareth today, you’d find a bustling city nestled alongside a little ridge overlooking the Jezreel Valley. It’s also the region’s leader in medicine and boasts some of the best hospitals in the Holy Land. Our trip to Nazareth took us to a number of places around town, including the little house (in a cave!) where Gabriel, the angel, told Mary that she would give birth to the Messiah. After that, we hiked up the Mount of Precipice, where Luke 4 tells us Jesus was nearly thrown off a cliff! The story is worth retelling.

When Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a severe famine over all the land, yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many with a skin disease in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

Luke 4:16-30

I remember standing on that same cliff wondering, “How did Jesus do it? How did he wade through that murderous crowd? How did he get away?” Which is when I saw it. A little ways to the north stood another mountain — an isolated, little hill peering out over the Jezreel Valley. Some call it Mt. Tabor, others the Mount of Transfiguration. On its top, we’re told Peter, James, and John saw the face of God, and they saw it in their good friend, Jesus. “While he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning…a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’” (Luke 9:29, 34)

Two mountains side by side, two pinnacle stories of Jesus. Who knew they were so close! When Jesus was on Tabor, did he look over at the Precipice? Did he see the cliffs where he had nearly been murdered, the place where he was marched after explaining how he came to bring good news to the poor, freedom to the prisoners, and sight to the blind for all peoples and all times? 

On the Mount of Transfiguration, we learn that God knows Jesus as his Son. We also, for the first time in all of scripture, see the very face of God (not his backside  but his own face!), and that face is in none other than Jesus Christ’s. And yet, there’s more! Because the two mountains parallel each other — because they are designed to be seen together — we learn something about the Mount of Precipice, too. We learn that good news for the poor, freedom for prisoners, and healing for the blind is not just a Jesus thing. It’s a God thing. The Mount of Transfiguration recognizes and affirms the gospel that almost got Jesus killed on the Mount of Precipice. And yet, it also recognizes and accepts the very real challenge that same gospel presents to us and the very real danger that same gospel presents to God — a God who will soon march up another mountain, this time not to escape safely “through the midst of them” but to suffer and to die for all of them.

In other words, what we see in Nazareth — at Tabor and Precipice — is a God who is much more than a carpenter or a tiler or a stonemason. What we see is a God who is a savior.

That story begins with Ruth the Moabite. “Do not press me to leave you,” she told Naomi, her Jewish mother-in-law. “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God my God.” What an amazing expression of love! And yet, it meant Ruth would become an outsider. When she and Naomi left Moab and traveled to Bethlehem, they left not only a famine but everything Ruth had once known, and they settled in a foreign land. 

Ruth’s story, of course, ends with her becoming an insider again. She marries a wealthy Jew named Boaz, and together they become the great grandparents of King David. But David doesn’t start out as king. His story is that of an outsider, too. The youngest of eight sons, David would never have been considered royal material. He was small and young and way down on the totem pole — a shepherd shepherding the sheep of more important people. But as God said when he chose him, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature…for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

Speaking of shepherds, Bethlehem is known for them. They’re famously the ones who heard a chorus of angels sing about a “great joy for all the people — to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, Christ the Lord!” If you go to Bethlehem now, you’ll find a small chapel dedicated to these very shepherds and their unexpected role paying witness to the promised Messiah.

It would seem, then, that God knew what he was doing when he decided to be born in Bethlehem. The town’s name is literally “House of Bread” or “House of Meat” (the Hebrew can mean either). Bethlehem was a key source in Jesus’ day of the sacrificial animals used at the Temple in Jerusalem. If you needed a sheep or goat to take to worship, you could pick it up when passing through Bethlehem. Where better for the Lamb of God to be born than alongside all the other sheep and goats ready for sacrifice!

It may seem strange to think of Jesus as an outsider, but he was never part of “the establishment” in his day. Jesus constantly found himself driven to the outskirts, whether that meant spending most of his time in the backwaters of Galilee or in the homes of “sinners and tax collectors.” Even his eventual hometown of Nazareth tried to chuck him off a cliff when he reminded them that it was the foreign outsiders instead of the established insiders who could often be expected to receive the grace of God (see Luke 4:16-30).

The story of Jesus, of course, is one where outsiders are intentionally made insiders. Consider the famous tale of Jesus and the Canaanite woman:

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that moment.

Matthew 15:21-28

The Canaanites were the traditional enemies of Israel, and yet Jesus welcomes her with wide open arms — albeit after some really awkward back and forth!

All of this outsider/insider storytelling really came home to me when we visited the Church of the Nativity that day in the West Bank. After I finished kneeling down to see the stone upon which Jesus’ manger sat, a young boy came in behind me and began to pray fervently in Spanish. He was only one of many pilgrims there that day from all over the world — all of us outsiders made insiders through the grace of God in Jesus Christ. That’s when the words of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians struck me as particularly relevant: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” To this day, I can’t think of a better expression of the inclusive hope of the gospel than that day in Bethlehem and the West Bank…and yet it’s also a sign — guns and all — of just how far we still have to go. – Pastor Jason

We spent that day exploring the desert, discussing the rich history and culture of the people who dwelt there 2,000 years ago. In addition to the site of Jesus’ baptism, we went to the Qumran Caves and the mountaintop fortress of Masada. As our group spent the day absorbing the diverse stories that have come from that land, we discussed how the desert was a place where generations of people went to search for freedom.

Across the Bible, we read stories of God’s people going to the desert to find freedom. After their 40-year sojourn, Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River into the Promised Land to live freely. Prophets like Elijah went to the desert to experience liberating encounters with God. John the Baptist called people to a way of life free from all that hindered their full devotion to God. Jesus demonstrated that He would not be overcome by the devil’s temptations and that he was free to fully follow God’s plan for His life. Outside of the Bible, we see even more examples of God’s people searching for freedom in the desert. In fact, in just the Judean desert itself, there were three groups who did so in very different ways. 

The Essenes – The Essenes were a Jewish ascetic group who lived in the Judean desert from 200 BCE to 100 CE. While not mentioned in the Bible, the Essenes are discussed at length in other ancient writings. Along with the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Essenes were one of many Jewish groups who endeavored to live out their Jewish faith within the complex matrix of Roman rule and Hellenistic culture. Believing the Jewish Temple authorities in Jerusalem were compromising Judaism’s central teachings, the Essenes created religious communities in the desert where they were free to revitalize Judaism according to their vision of faithfulness. 

Our group visited one of the Essenes’ communes, Qumran. At Qumran we saw the unearthed walls of their buildings. We also saw the caves where they hid Biblical manuscripts, fearing attack from the Roman army. (Side note: those manuscripts remained hidden for 2,000 years until a shepherd boy in 1946 accidentally found them.)

The Zealots – The Zealots were a group of Jewish freedom fighters who lived during the first 100 years of the Common Era. Wanting to overthrow the Romans through military means, the Zealots leveraged tools like guerrilla and even traditional warfare to chip away at the occupying force’s resolve. In the Luke 6, we meet a member of their group (Simon the Zealot) who turned away from that way of life to follow Jesus. The Zealots’ activities ultimately brought them into the crosshairs of Rome, when the Roman military crushed their uprising in the First Jewish-Roman War (66-73 CE). Fleeing to the desert, the Zealots took refuge on the mountaintop fortress called Masada. Overlooking the Dead Sea, Masada gave them the refuge they needed to regroup and plan their response. Eventually, the Romans, who occupied the area below, were able to build a ramp and ascend to the mountaintop. But when they did, the Jewish historian Josephus reports, all of the Zealots were dead, having chosen to kill themselves rather than submit to Roman rule.

A person can get to the top of Masada by taking one of two trails. It’s a tradition of elite Israeli military units to run with full gear up one called the “Snake Path” and have their swearing in ceremony at the top, ending with the declaration “Masada shall not fall again.” Our group took a cable car ride to the top. Atop Masada, I looked out over the expanse of desert and the Dead Sea, considering what life might have been like for the Zealots as they watched the Roman army camped at the base of the mountain.

Christian monastics – After Christianity was legalized in the Roman empire in the 4^th century CE, scores of Christian pilgrims made their way to the Holy Land. They built churches, monasteries, and shrines in the locations of important events from the Bible. We have no evidence from Scripture that Jesus ever visited Masada, however the site’s remoteness made it appealing to Christian monks looking for seclusion. So atop the Masada fortress, I learned that Christian monks made their home there for a time. These Christian hermits created caves for themselves, where they would study, pray, and contemplate. They also built a church around the year 400 CE. These monks created a small society where they could devote time to their individual spiritual growth as well as foster the bonds of community.

While I was exploring Masada, I was struck by the contrasting stories of that place. One the hand, Masada is a memorial to the Jewish Zealots who made their last stand there against the Roman army. One the other hand, the ruins of the church make it a memorial to Christian monasticism’s practices of worship and devotion. It’s as if Masada is both an Alamo and a Cathedral. A place of war and a place of peace. 

Each one of these three groups came to the desert looking for freedom. The Essenes came looking for freedom from the religious bureaucracy in Jerusalem. The Zealots came looking for political freedom. And the Christian monastics came looking for inner, spiritual freedom. What that freedom looked like was different for each group. But they believed it could be found in a dry land where most people would never choose to go.

For me, the lesson of the desert is about sacrifice. In order to find the freedom we seek, we need to make personal sacrifices. For example, an accomplished pianist can only know the freedom of being able to play the beautiful sounds of improvisational music after having made the sacrifices of spending countless hours practicing her scales. So often in Western societies we only think of freedom in terms of what we are free from—freedom from someone or something infringing on our rights. Valid as this view of freedom is, it is only half the picture. There’s another side to freedom: a freedom for something. To be free for a life of flourishing requires that we learn how to balance freedom from and freedom for. We need to learn what to say yes to and what to say no to. The pianist said no to the desire to take a break from practice. The Essenes, Zealots, and Christian monastics all said no to certain creaturely comforts, so they could say yes to the thing they were searching for. They made sacrifices to be free for a life they thought worth living.
– Pastor Herbie Miller, Philadelphia Presbyterian Church

One of the things that made this site so important for David was that it had a freshwater source. The water came from the spring of Gihon which, in Hebrew, means “gushing forth.” So valuable was this spring that the inhabitants who occupied the city before David built a wall around it and connected those walls to their city walls. After David conquered the area, he reinforced the defensive walls around the spring. And successive rulers continued to protect that vital spring. They all knew that “water was life.” If their city was under siege, they needed to protect their water, or it would only be a matter of time before they would be defeated.

At the spring of Gihon, a pool was carved into the rock 3,800 years ago. This pool was Jerusalem’s wartime water source. And some believe it was the location where Solomon was anointed king of Israel, when David was nearing his death. Second Kings 1:32-34 says this: “King David said, ‘Summon to me the priest Zadok, the prophet Nathan, and Benaiah son of Jehoiada.’ When they came before the king, the king said to them, ‘Take with you the servants of your lord and have my son Solomon ride on my own mule and bring him down to Gihon. There let the priest Zadok and the prophet Nathan anoint him king over Israel; then blow the trumpet and say, “Long live King Solomon!”’”

The City David — where David would build his palace; where Solomon would be anointed king; where generations of political and military strategists would protect one of their most valuable assets — is all about the water. Because “water is life.”

Since most of us never have to wonder if we’ll have clean water when we turn on our faucets, we easily forget the value and significance of fresh, clean water. But for those who live in the developing world, daily routines are built around getting fresh water. I think of trips I’ve taken to Haiti, where women walk miles from their home with empty buckets that they’ll fill at the well and then walk home. And I think of philanthropic and enterprising engineers who work with NGOs to devise ways to dig inexpensive and effective wells in places like Haiti. Access to safe and clean water is one of the most pressing humanitarian issues of our time.

The pressing need for water in our own day invites us to enter the frame of mind of our biblical forefathers and foremothers. With them, we can hear anew the words of the prophet Isaiah, who said, “The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail” (Isaiah 58:11).

Even in the most dry and arid environments, God promises that we will flourish with waters that will never fail. Often, our lives, like the parched land of the Judean desert, can feel “sun-scorched.” But God never withholds nourishing spiritual waters from His children. Some of the primary ways we find these waters is through His Word, prayer, and the sacraments. Knowing we receive His water in these activities, it’s incumbent upon us to protect the time we spend doing them. Like King David protecting his water source, we need to protect the time we spend doing them. We need to remember that “water is life.” — Dr. Herbie Miller, Senior Pastor, Philadelphia Presbyterian Church