Narky in Nazareth

Jerusalem, 8 December 2010

Maybe it was because of the focus on the divinity at the start of the day as we made our way up Mt Tabor – after I'd told the evening service last year about Mt Harmon! Or maybe it's the lull after the beauty of the water around Galilee but today felt like just being a tourist on a bus looking at modernist churches.

Mt Tabor commands a spectacular view across the Jezreel Valley – site of many of David and Saul's battles and encounters. Far off in the distance is Mt Carmel and Haifa but today was far too hazy for that. One of my favourite gospel stories seemed very disconnected today – unearthed as it were, teetering high away from people – even the art in the church was more angelic than people – beautiful though the angels most were it seemed far away. I get the writer of Luke putting the praying up here and away but it was a mighty long way up – we caught sheruts from where the buses can't wind any further up the mountain - and it was a spectacular ascent but I wondered about just how long it would have taken to talk – this was no quick 5 minutes of prayer this marked a deliberate and time consuming withdrawal from the crowds. But today the crowds are up here as well – and we had communion in a chapel with no view – and lots of words!

Anyway after the mountain top we wound our way down the valley to Nazareth which should have been fantastic – the boyhood home of Jesus. But nothing remains of that Nazareth – instead it's mostly new city with relatively new 12-13C buildings. And the church may be the biggest n the Middle East but it looks like it's built by a bloke with an edifice complex.

I guess it had to happen at some stage but I think I may have reached the limit of my ability to find meaning in the modernist junk built over supposed holy sites. It feels so empty when you're looking at things constructed in the 1960s that merely leave a square or two of mosaic under a glass floor and then fill the remainder of the space with gaudy over romanticized theologically inaccurate or at least monolithic paintings – many of which are not art.

Encountering rude religious didn't help either – maybe best to just leave it here to say that it won't be the most memorable day of this trip.