In Galilee

 Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.' (Matthew 28:9-10)

The Galilean hills rise quickly behind the village of Capernaum where Jesus made his home. It was a fishing village on north shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Today, the ruins of an ancient synagogue stand 100 meters or so from the shoreline, a few pillars and paving stones weathered smooth by shuffling feet and exposure to the elements. The lake, blue and wind-whipped on summer afternoons, stretches eight miles wide and 14 miles south from this point.

It’s easy to visualize Jesus walking the shoreline, talking to young men who soon followed him on a journey that cost them everything, including their lives.

It is here, among these hills, Jesus promised to meet them after he was raised. It’s fitting, I suppose.

There is nothing spectacular about Galilee. It was a common, work-a-day place where men and women toiled out their lives, sowing seeds hoping some of it might grow, casting nets into the deep praying for a catch to sustain them for one more day.

Galilee was the place they reared their children, buried their dead, shivered through winters and sought the warmth of human friendship to cushion the hard times, which were all-too frequent. Galileans lived in obscurity, and few of power or influence paid much attention.

But it was there and to them that Jesus first appeared. This is the place human souls first gathered around him, hungry to feel and know more of whatever mystery it was that filled him.

And at the end of the story, this place of obscurity becomes the land of resurrection, as Jesus returns, inexplicably risen and alive, after the powers of this world had done their worst to be rid of him.

Go to Galilee. There you will see him. That’s Jesus’ promise then ... and now.

We need not go anywhere, of course, because Galilee is here, the common places of our lives. We live in Galilee, toiling out our lives in the heat and cold, knowing joys that kiss our eyes with tears and sorrows that hang like weights, dragging us into the deep.

But amid it all there is this love, the Love he is and ever shall be, who finds and fills the heart so that we swoop and soar like the purple martins out my window. And he will do so, until our time in Galilee is past and we see him face-to-face.

Pr. David L. Miller