The Right Rev. David Giuliano

The Moderator's Middle East Blog originally appeared on the WonderCafe website (www.wondercafe.ca*).

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Looking for Jesus in Israel-Palestine, March 24, 2007

Late this afternoon a delegation of six United Church representatives, including me, will leave the Toronto Airport for the 11-hour flight to Tel Aviv. We'll spend nine days travelling and visiting our global partners who are working for peace in Israel and Palestine. I'll try to share some of this incredible opportunity by posting to this blog while we're there.

A lot of people have been asking if I'm excited to be going to the land where Jesus walked, taught, healed, lived and died and lived again. I am anticipating moments when that reality might take my breath-knowing that my feet are on the very soil that Jesus mixed with spit to heal a blind man or had in mind when he said, "Once there was a farmer who cast seeds... "

Today, I am hoping to encounter the living Christ on this journey, more so than the historical Jesus. I long for a living God. The one revealed in scripture, who seems to hang out in the places of struggle, crisis, oppression, and brokenness. I encounter God in beauty, peace, and grand goodness, sometimes. In this season of pilgrimage toward the cross, I am hoping that I will be given the grace of the inner eye to perceive the holy moving in the tormented lands of Palestine and Israel.

There is something sacred about that sliver on the crust of the planet-for Muslims, Jews, and Christians. All lands are "Holy Lands," but this place of temple rubble, temple mount, Wailing Wall, Golgotha, and Gethsemane has become the epicentre of spirit, both violent and faithful.

Previous Posts

• Moderator's Middle East Blog (March 2007—April 2007)