Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land by Ruth Everhart Page A

generations will see our folly more clearly than we do.
    Michael describes an experience of the Spirit while in the marble tomb, a sense of the Spirit right there beside him, which made him appreciate the enormity of Jesus’ crucifixion. I had been kneeling beside Michael and hadn’t known he was moved. How intimate, how personal these holy experiences are! It’s hard to give voice to them even to the person beside you.
    After the meeting, the smaller documentary group has a brief worship service on the rooftop. Jessica leads us, using some David Crowder music and the text about the healing of Blind Bartimaeus, which forms the basis of the Jesus Prayer. My very long day has come full circle. To close, we stand and take turns praying. It is sweet, even as our language betrays our doctrinal differences.
    After the Amen, Brian produces a bottle of wine and small glass cups like jelly jars. We pour the wine and drink, still standing in our prayer circle. The lights of Jerusalem are spread at our feet. The moment feels sacramental, and no one moves to break the circle.

Shepherds’ Field, Bethlehem
    CHAPTER 10
    Birth and Death
    I am the gate for the sheep.
    J OHN 10:7
    T ODAY IS T UESDAY. Bethlehem.
    When I go down to breakfast, the documentary group is sitting at a table, looking dispirited.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?”
    Jessica sighs. “Tomatoes and cucumbers are all right, I guess. But for every meal? For breakfast?”
    â€œLet’s just hope they have something different for lunch,” Ashley says with a forced smile. “Not chicken.”
    â€œWhy bother hoping?” Charlie says, emphatically. “Lunch and supper will be the same as always: chicken and yellow rice. And yellow — why? ” Charlie’s drawl gives the word “why” two syllables.
    â€œThat’s from saffron — ”JoAnne begins to explain.
    â€œBelieve me, you don’t want to know why it’s yellow,” Michael says, and everybody laughs.

    After breakfast, Stephen begins his lecture with a simple question: “Was Jesus born in Bethlehem?” Warm, dry air wafts through anopen window, and I want to get up and look out at Jerusalem. “There are some good reasons to answer, ‘Probably not.’ ” Some of my fellow pilgrims shift audibly in their seats, telegraphing discomfort. I squiggle deeper into my molded plastic chair and open my notebook.
    The earliest writings in the New Testament are the Epistles of Paul, and the apostle never mentions Bethlehem. In fact, Paul mentions Jesus’ birth only in two passing references to the fact that Jesus was born of flesh. Usually, when Paul talks about Jesus, it is “him crucified.” Perhaps Paul preached about the birth elsewhere and that record has been lost to us. Or perhaps Paul didn’t know the tradition that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
    The earliest Gospel is Mark’s, and he is silent on Jesus’ birth. Luke’s famous account of the census — Mary and Joseph’s journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, which we read and hear every Christmas — is problematic because there is no historical record of the census that Luke mentions. Did this census, in fact, ever happen? Stephen’s voice underscores the improbability. Another wrinkle: No one disputes that Nazareth was Jesus’ hometown. Was Nazareth, then, where he was actually born? Still another wrinkle: There is a second Bethlehem in Galilee. Which one is the correct location?
    â€œWas Jesus born in Bethlehem?” Stephen asks again. “The question is more difficult to answer than might appear. Yet there are some good reasons for us to answer, ‘Probably yes.’ ” Again, there is shifting in the seats.
    For openers, not just one but two Gospels, Matthew and Luke, record the Nativity as taking place in Bethlehem. So the Bethlehem tradition is very old, dating back to the first century, perhaps even before the