"Leaving Galilee"

(Matthew 5:1-20; Mark 5)

As we pulled out of the Hotel Ramot just above the Sea of Galilee, I really felt sad. This had been a really cool hotel, with amazing day trips and interesting near misses with breaking kosher laws. I had felt spoiled both from the hotel staff and from all that we had seen and talked about. Some of the best conversations with each other and with Yoni were after supper in the sitting area. We gave Rebekah a hard time because she was the only one without an iPhone. (Or so it seemed). We talked about this later on, how special this place was to us, but I wonder how it compared to other memories now that we have been home a while.

Thanks to Yoni I didn’t get to wallow in nostalgia very long as our first stop was only 10 minutes out from the hotel at a “wide spot” in the road just above the Sea of Galilee. This area is known as Kursi on present day maps, and is one of the best places by topography where the story of Jesus encountering the demonized man called “Legion”, may have taken place. “The area of the Gadarenes”, could be many places if you look at places that could fit that name or root syllables of that name. The topography limits where this story could have occurred because of all the areas “in the Decapolis”; only one spot slopes closely to the shore before it stops a small cliff. Many of the other areas have cliffs high above even the road we were on, or didn’t even make it to the shore.

What I didn’t know was that pigs were used for pagan sacrifices of many different kinds, just as temple prostitution was very common, so apparently was the sacrifice of pigs in different rituals of the time among the pagans. One of the reasons Jesus was asked to leave the region was with the pigs drowning and the demonized man healed, the religion of the area took a big hit, as it were.

One interesting example of a clash we saw often between modern history and biblical history was the mine field we parked next to while we learned about Jesus and the man called Legion. If this was where pigs ran off into the water, then modern pigs would likely set off mines if they got past the barbed wire fence with its’ yellow sign of warning. Ironically the field was covered with very pretty yellow wild flowers. There was also a bunker close where we stopped, both Syrian placed and dating back to before the 1967 war.

As I remembered all of this for the blog, it occurred to me…I wonder if Jesus goes back to places that hold a special place in His heart, just like I would do. When we were stopped by the road learning all this, was Jesus remembering when it all really happened? Did Jesus see again the look on the man’s face after a legion of demons left and he was healed? I kinda think he does stuff like that….