unexpected

I had a long talk with this archaeologist who had excavated in the Old City years ago. He described how the "detritus" of past civilizations had constantly raised the level of the streets on an average of about one foot a century. And over the years, as new rulers triumphed over this strategic city, they would build churches over the historical sites.
If you've never been over here, you'd be surprised at Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron, Jericho and Nazareth. They seemed buried belowground, closed in, tinseled, and highly commericial, not simple and primitive, as we all imagine I suppose. It has spoken to the very core, the tension with people today: the search for genuineness, seeing something as it is even if it's not attractive. These churches over the original sites seemed to mask what really happened, displaying beautiful artwork with shiny happy people as if completely forgetting what it really was.

Only when I traveled in the open spaces and saw the Mount of Olives, the Garden Tomb, Cana, Mount Carmel, the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River did I feel that I was looking at the country as it might have appeared in biblical times.

Maxwell told me what his father, a great minister once said:

"I am recovering the claim that Christ was not crucified between two candles, but on the towns garbage heap in a place so cosmopolitan that they had to write his inscription in three languages. It was a place where thieves laugh, soldiers gamble, and cynics talk smut. That is where the church was formed, and that it where the church should be and if it's not about that, it's about nothing at all."


I saw this soldier walk up to the wailing wall.