Today
is Sunday, and my third day in Nazareth (I made it here safely, without too
much excitement). So I and three
other women from my group went to church at the Church of the Nazarene, which
is a small church at the bottom of the hill that I live on. I’d been to about eight other churches
since I’ve gotten here (four per day), but that was more for the tourist-y
reason of seeing the pretty buildings built on top of important places than for
a worship service. The Church of
the Nazarene is beautiful, but wasn’t built to be seen in quite the same way as
the Basilica of the Annunciation, for example. There were two beautiful wall
hangings, one of grapes and the other of the mountains, with bible verses on
them, and the church had stained glass windows that were more like colored
windowpanes. They might not have
been as ornate as some, but they were quite cheerful in my opinion.
The pews were pretty empty when we
got there, and there was at least one extra chair at each end of each pew. This seemed rather odd to me, but the
only empty seat (pew or chair) in the room by the start of the sermon was the
one that the pastor brought up next to the pulpit, to show that they were
inviting God to come and be with us.
And I think they kept adding chairs during the singing! It was probably the fullest service I’ve
ever attended.
The
service started later than when it was supposed to start, so we were early
when we thought we would be late.
Generally, the Middle East isn’t as obsessed with being on time as I
(and Americans in general) tend to be.
At my church at home, there’s a countdown on the screen so that you know
when the service will start. It’s
useful but sometimes seems a bit sacrilegious, like we're rushing to get done with church so that we can get on with the rest of our lives. During the waiting around, everyone greeted each other, and the pastor came around and meet us (because we were obviously new).
Like
most churches, they started with prayers and singing. I really liked the music, even though it was not at all what
I was expecting. You know how
modern Christian music in America sounds a lot like most modern (nonreligious)
music in some ways, and less like hymns?
This was like that, expect instead of sounding like modern American
music, it sounded like Arab music (perhaps Arabic hymns sound like this, but I don't really know).
It was beautiful, and everyone sung very well too. I suppose I knew in my head that
Christian music from around the world sounds different, but I hadn’t heard it
before. They put the words up on
the screen, so I followed along as best as I could and even tried to sing a
bit. I was surprised at how many
of the words I knew, and I was able to guess at a lot of the rest (I think next
week I should bring a notebook and write down new words to learn). I generally dislike the songs that
repeat two-syllable words a lot, but I like these songs the best when I’m
trying to read and sing in Arabic at the same time.
Since
they had an English translator, I chose to listen to the sermon in English with
their headphones. It was a very
good message, and he talked about how we need to make time with God the
important things in our life. One
thing that stood out very strongly was that, even though I’m thousands of miles
away from home, the application of this particular sermon sounded very familiar. It was this: we tend to have plenty of
time to spend at work and on our computers and watching tv, but not enough time
to spend with God. I know I’m
guilty of this, but perhaps the world isn’t as big as you might think, if
different people thousands of miles away have the same things that they need to
learn from sermons.
All
in all, it was a great experience, and I’m looking forward to going back. My new goal is to be able to understand
the sermon in Arabic.
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