What if Jesus Travelled by Train?

Just a short while ago, someone who knows me well posted a message to me on Facebook. It read since you're allergic to replacement buses, you'd have had no problems in travelling today. That was one of the comments he wrote under his announcement that he's at Bracknell railway station to start on one of his weekly train journeys to any destination that would offer an interesting walk, whether it's along the River Thames towpath, one of London's open spaces such as Richmond Park, a riverside village of Mapledurham, Windsor, or the North Downs.

Richmond Park, London, provides some nice walks.

Often he joins a Christian walking group based in the London area, or he could be with a group of friends. However, after explaining to me that trains on our line are running a normal service this weekend, I responded that this should be an item for the BBC international news! What a rarity!

Therefore, you can ask: Do I have an allergy to replacement buses? By the way, what are replacement buses? What do they replace? They are an alternate way to travel whenever the railway line is closed due to track maintenance - a common weekend occurrence here in the UK. Do I have an allergy to buses? No, not at all. Just some bad experiences.

Such as with my beloved, whose neurological problem makes her partially disabled and therefore, wheelchair-bound whenever she's outdoors. Bus travel whilst in a wheelchair is often a testing experience for her, as the engine vibration plus riding on bumpy ground arouse a severe backache. Some time ago, before the pandemic, a two-mile bus ride home from the town centre necessitated a call for an ambulance, followed by several hours waiting at Accident & Emergency for an intravenous feed of Morphine. Nowadays, such hospital visits are no longer necessary, as oral Morphine is included in our medicine cupboard.

But as a 1970-1990s singleton who had to work Monday-Friday every week, such weekend trips to London and other destinations were now and again interrupted by weekend engineering works. Therefore, a 30-mile, 48km journey from our hometown of Bracknell to London involved, say, a train to Staines, about 15 miles down the line, then alight there for the bus to Feltham, over five miles along the road, then back on the train at Feltham for London Waterloo. It was a tedious journey, and my time spent in London was tainted with the knowledge that I had to repeat the same journey home. Meanwhile, in the same ninety-minute timeframe to cover the thirty-mile journey, a nonstop express train at full speed would have covered up to 180 miles, 292km and an airline in full flight, up to 900 miles, 1,458km. 

As for Sunday travel - oh dear! I recall the day we just landed at Gatwick Airport from our honeymoon in Rhodes. To get to Bracknell from the airport, we took the train bound for London Victoria and changed trains at Clapham Junction for our line to Bracknell, these latter two stations are approx 26 miles, 42km apart. The connecting train from Waterloo was cancelled due to a shortage of drivers, so we had to wait on a chilly platform for over an hour - quite a contrast to the Autumn warmth of the Mediterranean Greek island we'd just left. Then came a welcoming announcement over the station tannoy. The planned engineering works on our line were cancelled, therefore the replacement bus connecting Virginia Water to Ascot stations is called off, allowing a full train journey home. As the train stopped at Virginia Water station, we as newlyweds saw the two buses parked outside and we both felt so relieved.

And so our culture is always to rush, rush, rush to get somewhere as quick as possible yet with maximum comfort and with a dash of luxury. Indeed, nothing is more exhilarating than sitting in comfort in a non-stop long-haul express train and watching the world flash by. Or better still, in a Eurostar train out from London St Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord, non-stop. Sitting in a Premier class coach, we were offered an onboard meal by a waiter as if in a five-star restaurant. But the climax was to actually emerge out of the 32-mile undersea tunnel in France after seeing the last of the daylight over the English county of Kent just twenty minutes earlier.

Then I wonder why some Brexiteers want the Eurotunnel shut down, even suggesting dynamite. The fact that they have no objection to the cross-Channel ferries seems to indicate their fear of finding themselves marooned in a broken down train or one held up by a faulty signal halfway through the tunnel, knowing that the seawater of the English Channel is directly overhead. The latter was the case during the evening before our last trip to Paris in 2017 when a faulty signal deep inside one of the tunnels had cancelled all international train departures, and any train within the tunnel crawled at a snail's pace. No wonder passengers might have felt nervous. Fortunately for us, the following morning the line was clear.

And so we take fast, comfortable travel for granted. Indeed, I can testify to that. Quite a contrast to the pre-Victorian era, when a carriage moving at just 10mph under horsepower was enough to induce travel sickness among the passengers. But during Biblical times, no greater contrast can be imagined when it came to travel.

The average distance covered by just mere walking is around two miles, or possibly three if going at a fast pace. Therefore trying to imagine Jesus Christ and his twelve disciples travelling up and down the country on foot has put me in my place of humbleness. Although I had the wonderful privilege of visiting Israel throughout my lifetime, I always travelled around by bus whilst there. On this matter, I must give credit to my Lord for his ability to walk from one end of the country to the other.

Both Matthew's Gospel and Mark's record a journey Jesus had made from Capernaum to Tyre on the Lebanese coast. Give or take, that is approx 40 miles along a direct route - just to heal the daughter of a non-Jewish woman, thus resulting in at least an eighty-mile round trip on foot. Then not to mention his trips to Jerusalem and back, I believe, twice during his ministry before his third trip ended at the Cross.

Eurostar, 2019, St Pancras, London.

The distance between Tiberias and Jerusalem is more than 90 miles, 150km, and according to Google Maps, it would have taken Jesus 31 hours to complete the trip had he walked non-stop. However, that would have been very unlikely. But I recall checking bus times when travelling around Israel, as far up as the coastal town of Acre which is a few miles north of Haifa, to Eilat, near the Egyptian border, where I had taken my beloved as part of our first anniversary celebrations. It was on one of those occasions when we, Alex and I, were the only ones waiting for a bus to turn up at the most remote bus stop I had ever seen, in the middle of a desert. It was on the road running north/south along the west bank of the Dead Sea, quite close to En Gedi resort, where we had spent the day. Almost to our surprise, the bus showed up on time as it journeyed from Masada to Jerusalem.

Whenever I rode on a bus whilst in Israel, whether it was on my own or on our final trip there as a couple, often I think about the Lord Jesus and how he managed to navigate up and down the land on foot and bedding down under the stars for the night. It's as if this was the right way to travel, and compared to him, I felt a bit of a coward - either too afraid to attempt to cross a desert on foot like he did, or simply the result of growing up without any of that experience and living in a land at a time when public transport was easily available. Indeed, Jesus was much tougher than I would ever be, and for that, I'm grateful.

Not only Jesus himself but also his followers after their Lord's death, burial and resurrection. Luke records two men walking along the road towards Emmaus, a town seven miles from Jerusalem. When the Resurrected Christ met them, they talked, and the two men invited Jesus in for supper, and possibly for him to spend the night there. However, after Jesus had revealed his true identity to them, immediately, the two men made their way back to Jerusalem to tell his disciples who they had seen and dined with. All this took place "while the day is spent and the evening was drawing near". A fourteen-mile walk all within one evening may seem to me to be rather incredulous, but to them, it was as normal as any facet of their daily lives.

I think, too, that the experience these two went through reflected the culture of the time. When those two found where the disciples were staying, did they pass the news on and then make their way back to Emmaus? Very unlikely. Instead, the disciples accommodated them for the rest of the night and most likely even provided some food. The hospitality shown in the ancient Middle East would have sent my own head spinning in astonishment! Yet, I shouldn't be that surprised. I recall 1976 as the first of my four trips to Israel. I was exploring a valley just south of Jerusalem when I was approached by a young man, a street trinket seller. After buying a couple of ancient pottery, he invited me to his home where his father and mother not only made up a bed for me in their living room but also made sure I was well fed and watered. This led to an invite to a wedding reception where I watched a sheep skinned alive in the yard.

In a sense, I can be grateful that there were no buses or trains in the Middle East during the time of Christ. Indeed, to imagine the Lord sitting in a bus surrounded by other passengers, some of them smoking, would have been so unreal, so unlike him. Even more unreal if I had imagined him sitting in the first-class carriage of a comfortable train, travelling through the length of Israel. Sure, he would have arrived in Jerusalem less than an hour after boarding at Tiberias, but there would be something missing - his ability to fulfil all righteousness. If railways and bus routes crisscrossed the whole of Israel during Christ's ministry, what sort of country would Israel have been?

Perhaps more like Britain at present, a land where personal wealth, the ability to travel in comfort, the use of all the modern commodities, a land free from war, all that would, I believe, make Israel at the time of Christ so self-sufficient, that having God dwelling among us would have been in vain. Perhaps it was no accident that not only was Israel "primitive" during the Lord's ministry but also subject to a higher yet cruel power, the Roman Empire.

This sense of hardship, living under an oppressive power, walking long distances to get somewhere, although donkeys were used for carrying both people and cargo for all fortunate enough to have them. Indeed, It's very likely that Mary, pregnant with Jesus, rode a donkey over the length of the land to get to Bethlehem from Nazareth, along with Joseph who either rode one himself or walked alongside Mary's donkey.

Indeed, I may be wrong in this, but living with greater hardship, including in the realm of travel, brings out the best in people. Greater hospitality, stronger loyalty, a greater feeling of a need for each other, a greater sense of camaraderie. Some years ago, I watched a movie where a man and his wife ended up lost in a desert and without food and water, yet, they were fortunate to see a long train of camels carrying cargo snaking their way at a distance across the desert. The man cried out, waving his scarf as a banner. Almost immediately, either two camels or two horses raced out to meet the stranded couple. This sort of scenario is very different to that of a train journey Alex and I once did to Oxford.

We boarded the train at Reading, and we found two vacant seats in a crowded carriage. Almost straight away, a young-looking female professional with her husband or partner approached where we were sitting, and she then ordered us out with an explanation that she paid to reserve the seat, and therefore entitled to it. We both vacated the seats and stood nearby. Soon after, I began to feel dizzy and started to sway. The husband, looking alarmed, then asked if I need the seat, as I don't look too well. I declined his offer, saying that if they had paid, then they are entitled.

It's this massive difference between the culture of the ancient Middle East, and that of modern England with all its mod-cons, so well demonstrated by the behaviour of that young woman.

Englishman's home like this one is his castle.

The difference between Abraham the desert nomad who begged three strangers to stop by and receive some food and water, and an average Englishman who considers his home to be his castle. I even recall an occasion when a door was slammed in my face by a well-to-do middle-class female when I asked for a bucket of water as part of my window cleaning job. How shocked and disappointed I was with her, the memory of such an incident had never faded.

I thank God there were no trains or buses in Israel two thousand years ago. And no need for track maintenance either.