Church of the Holy Sepulchre - another Jerusalem site testing everything you believe

It’s the center of the world, for some.  For others, it’s merely the center of where everything important happened.  Visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem will bring home the importance people place on religion, while also aptly demonstrating how it divides them.

The church is in the center of the old town, which is in the center of the city.  It is an unimposing structure supposedly sitting directly over what might be the sites of the main events of Christianity.  Here, right here, is where Jesus the Christ was crucified for your sins and mine.  Now right over here nearby is where his body was laid.  And just over here was his tomb, from whence he rose from the dead, thus conquering death.  All right next to each other, how convenient to visit.

St. Peter’s in Rome is probably the most famous church in Christendom, probably because it’s massive and grand and beautiful and Roman, all good things.  I’m not even sure how many Christians know anything about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; it just doesn’t get the press.

 

I’ll start by giving the Church of the Holy Sepulchre one large credit, as anyone can enter.  That’s not at all automatic in Jerusalem.  Over several days there in the old city, we were denied entry to a Syrian Orthodox church, an Armenian orthodox church, several mosques, and the Dome of the Rock, along with being thrown out of the Temple Mount when some arbitrary and highly restrictive non-Muslim visitor’s hours were up.  Religion does not make people nice and welcoming.  In Jerusalem, it’s quite the divider.

Full disclosure:  I’m not a religious person.  At all.  Still, no matter your religion, visiting Israel is fascinating, one of the most interesting trips I’ve ever done.  It will reinforce some of your ideas about religion and shake up others, and you can witness most aspects about religion being practiced in extreme form, if you’re ready.

We approached the courtyard outside the Holy Sepulchre, and watched the procession of pilgrims marching in and out.  Down the stairs we saw them–the men in black.  Not the Jews this time, the orthodox (the word “orthodox” now means a million things to me) with the robes, a lost clothing art form.  I realized I should have grown a beard for this trip.

 

 

A group of twenty tourists in small backpacks and hats sat on the steps, their leader aiming a camera for a group shot.  A large woman stood nearby wearing what looked like a habit, but white covered with blue sunbursts.  Skirted, headscarved woman walked nearby.  Tourists in shorts (shorts!) sat on the side benches, checking their cameras.  An African family walked by, the dad in a fez and an all-white pajama-robe, the three women in light primary-colored wraps.  A fourth of the women there had their heads covered.  The main door of the church is anything but grand.  No Notre Dame-style entrance way here.  The door has an arch above it, and it’s not small, but it’s not obvious you are entering a church.

 

You need the backstory now, so pay attention for a bit.  The church itself was started by the Roman Emperor Constantine, a guy who proved that there is none more zealous than the recently converted.  On fire with his new religion, he sent his mother Helen to the Holy Land to set up some shrines there.  After she somehow, almost 300 years after the fact, identified the exact spot where the crucifixion happened, an event unrecorded by anyone including the Romans who supposedly did it, Helen and company destroyed the temple to Aphrodite that was then already on the site (it was common then to build your new temple over the old) and proclaimed it holy.  Helen also claimed to find the “true cross”, the one used for Jesus, in a cave nearby, which is now incorporated into the church (the cave, not the cross).  The church was built and destroyed a few times, as befalls structures unlucky enough to be religious and in a constant war zone, but the current structure largely dates from the Crusaders’ times.  The Romanesque doorway is from then, in 1048.

The church today is a fine representation of what’s amiss with organized religion, not just religion itself.  Considering its important location, who should be in charge of this place?  Today, six churches share the church, like six squawking children: Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Ethiopians, and the Copts, although the Greeks have by far the largest share, a bit more than half of the church.  This situation exists because of an agreement simply called the Status Quo, done by the Ottomans in 1757 and reaffirmed in 1852.  It maintains divisions in the church, sometimes stone by stone, and the times services can be done, but like the artificial political borders in the Middle East, it leads to more questions.  There are situations such as the first two lanterns in a line being controlled by one church, the third by another, and the next three by another, and it’s not like the churches play nice neighbors and care for each other’s lanterns.  Any repairs in the building take forever, as they usually cross control zones.  A local Muslim family keeps the key to the church, as none of the Christians trust each other with it.  The family has been doing this for close to two hundred years, or, according to another source, since the twelfth century.

 

 

The churches don’t like each other.  In 2008, a Greek priest was present at an Armenian service, in violation of the Status Quo, and was physically kicked out.  This sparked a violent brawl and led to two arrests.

Consider the case of the Ethiopians, a group present in Jerusalem since the fourth century.  They used to have space inside the church, but lost it when they couldn’t pay their taxes to the Ottomans.  They were then consigned to some small buildings on the roofway, but two hundred years later, Ottomans gave the roof buildings to the Copts, who changed the locks (really).  When Jordan controlled the area in the 1960s, they gave the space back to the Ethiopians briefly, then changed their minds.  The Ethiopians, clearly fed up, choose a moment when the Copts were away praying, then re-occupied the space and changed the locks again.  Advantage, Ethiopians, for now.  They currently have twenty-six monks there, and you should visit their small space if you can find them.  The Copts are allowed to have one monk sit at an agreed-upon spot simply to maintain their church’s claim.  His attempt to move his chair into the shade one time led to a fistfight.

 

The Ethiopian section today.  No, you can’t go in.

 

My favorite example of the squabbling involves a wooden ladder, clearly visible resting on a second-floor ledge outside, above the main entrance.  One version of the story is that the Ethiopians were using it; another is that a workman left it.  No matter, as nobody can agree whose responsibility it is to remove it, and thus it sits, for a long time.  It’s been there since the reaffirmation of the Status Quo in 1852, over 150 years.  The only thing they can agree upon is if the wooden ladder rots away, it must be replaced.

 

Enough, let’s go inside.  The first sight inside the very dark, cool, and somewhat oppressing church is the body slab, called the Stone of Unction or the Stone of Anointing.  This is the spot where Jesus was laid out after dying, and how anyone knows this is beyond understanding.  The stone itself was put there in 1810, replacing the previous stone which was only from the twelfth century.  Nobody officially pretends that it’s the real Jesus stone, but that’s certainly the way people act.  It’s a beautiful setting and a beautiful stone, about as long and wide as yes yes a human body, looking like uneven colored marble with some deep cracks.  Brass columns rise on the frame’s corners to hold a top frame that supports eight lanterns along its length, while candelabras stand around it.  The stone sits on the floor so people can come right up to it, and they do.  They nearly crawl on top of it.  Every once in a while, someone pours special fragrant oil on the stone (we never saw who does it; we just saw the oil.  Maybe it magically appears), and people kneel down on all sides and use everything possible to soak up the oil.  All types of objects are rubbed over this stone—scarves and clothes, crosses and crucifixes, scrolls and plastic bags.  Everything.  Your object is somehow better if it touches the holy object.  There were many, many people crawling all around that stone, rubbing objects or just touching it, kissing it, praying by it.

 

The stone.  This is a beautiful, beautiful sight.

 

Some churches just have rituals, not merely a generic genuflect or crossing yourself, but something particular to those locations.  The stone is one.  Let’s go to the next one.  Up the stairs next to the stone is Calvary, the place where the crucifixion happened, Golgotha, the place of the skull.  A small altar (controlled by the Catholics) marks the place where Jesus was stripped and nailed to the wood, and a mosaic on the wall depicts the act.  A Greek-controlled altar next to it marks the cross site itself.  A service was being held when we visited, and again when we returned a few days later.  Greek churches are rarely silent.  The décor can’t be described well; it was so over-the-top.  Gold and silver ornate lanterns hanging from thin ceiling chains, silver statues of Mary, rectangular plates on the wall behind the altar depicting scenes, round bowls full of sand on stands, holding groups of candles.  Every female had a head scarf.  The thing to do here is kneel and crawl into the space under the marble altar, apparently the exact site of the cross.  Only one person can fit at a time, so people line up.  I declined the act.

 

 

No one looks cooler or badder than a Greek Orthodox priest.  You just simply would not muck with them.  One stern look from them would stop me dead in my tracks.  They could order me to go into a corner and cut myself for my sins and I’d meekly reply, “Yes, father.”

Underneath Calvary is the Chapel of Adam, because Christians apparently believe that Adam, the first man, is buried here.  Jewish tradition holds that he was buried in the Temple Mount.  How he got here from the Garden of Eden is a mystery.  There’s not much to see, but there’s a glass wall outside it showing the rock face that leads up to Calvary.

Back on the ground level, stairs lead down from the curved rear of the church to the Armenian Chapel of St. Helena, Constantine’s mom.  This is a very attractive chapel, and I waited a bit to get some photos without people.  The very numerous lanterns hanging from the ceiling are height-staggered, and are a bit overwhelming.  More stairs lead down to the cistern where she supposedly found the true cross, nails and all, but it’s actually part of a seventh-century BC stone quarry.  As to that cross, one story says that when it was displayed, people kept taking away small bits of it as souvenirs, sometimes by biting it as they kissed it.  Eventually, there was nothing left.  Another version says the true cross was carried off by the Persians in 614 CE.  A group of Spanish tourists stood here, their leader giving them a lecture, and I tried to listen in.  A stone bowl that looks like it should be used for holy water instead held two burning candles and some trash—an empty plastic water bottle, a soda can, some plastic wrap.  There’s a metaphor in here somewhere.

 

 

Back upstairs, we circled the back part of the church.  In one far corner is the Chapel of the Apparition, a room whose feeling doesn’t belong with the rest of the place.  Coming out, we came to the rotunda, the second main area of the church.  It’s a round room space, of course, with a center area holding a marble monument that has the Chapel of the Angel and the Holy Sepulchre in the front, and the Chapel of the Copts in back.  The Copts is a tiny space that you can just look into, with an altar and lots of decoration; the Sepulchre area is also small but able to hold a few people.  They let about four people in at a time, give them about twenty seconds, and then shoo them out for the next batch.  The line to get in can be discouraging, but it ebbs and flows.  Later I saw the line was much shorter, and I went in.  We four temporary occupants knelt on a bench in front of a small glass window showing, I guess, the tomb below.

My wife and I sat in the Katholikon, the Navel of the World.  If you’re Greek Orthodox, this is the center of the world.  It’s a very peaceful room in the very center of the church, very underused and good for a break.  Suddenly there’s a commotion.  A crowd outside the Sepulchre is singing, and we find them circling it.  Men looking like priests are passing out little torches to the crowd.  Everyone is getting one—it’s like a bundle of sticks that burns with a much larger flame than a candle.  One priest seems to be leading the event.  He seems very happy and I caught him with a beatific smile, holding out a flame.  This is holy flame.

 

 

Every year on the day before Easter Sunday, all the lights in the church are put out and a priest enters into the Sepulchre alone, with a bundle of candles.  When he steps out, behold!  The candles are lit.  A miracle!  The light is then transferred to other candles and flown all over the world.  On other days, such as the one when we were there, candles lit from fire in the church are taken back home by the faithful (I assume they blow them out before they go through airport security) and used again (relit from a cigarette lighter, no doubt) to light the candles in their home church.  Seeing all these people singing and lighting things was a moving experience.  Everyone else in the church just seems to be somber.

 

I’ve written before about how events in Israel are preceded with “It is believed”.  This is the spot where “it is believed” that something happened.  The tomb and crucifixion would be hard enough; the spot where Jesus was stripped is quite the stretch.  Remember none of this stuff was marked until almost 300 years later, there were no records back then except the Roman ones (and they mentioned nothing about this), and thus today not all churches agree on these things.  Some occurrences are implausible, such as Jesus being buried only forty meters (I measured it on a map) away from the crucifixion site and some surely are fake, such as Helen finding the true cross in a cave, when the real thing would have disappeared ages ago.  (She tested it to be the true cross by holding it over a corpse, which then levitated.  Yup.)  Yea-sayers will remind me that it’s all symbolic, but I bet the majority of knee-benders here don’t think so.

No matter.  If you believe the events, it doesn’t quite matter exactly where they happened, and if you don’t, it doesn’t matter where exactly they didn’t happen.  Most sites in Jerusalem are like this—inexact, more symbolic than real, but awfully important to many, so much that people fight and die over them.  At least this one doesn’t subject you to a religious test before you enter.  You’ll probably be moved by your visit.  It’s just unclear in which direction you’ll be moved.

 

If you’re reading about the area, see my post on visiting Bethlehem here.

 

 

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