Sunday, December 25, 2011: Titus 2:11–14

I was visiting the traditional site of Good Friday and Easter: the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, an imposing, exotic, heterogeneous amalgam of interconnected buildings in the Old City of Jerusalem. Oversight of the building complex is rationed out to the Greek Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Armenian Apostolic, Coptic, Ethiopian and Syrian Orthodox communions.

I was immediately surrounded by crosses, altars, mosaics, nooks, grottoes, candles, lampstands, thuribles and icons—and by Pentecost. On any given day one can hear liturgies intoned in Latin, Greek, Armenian, Ethiopian, Syrian or Coptic. Pilgrims and members of travel groups, often dressed in the colors of their nations' flags, filled up the space, speaking, praying, weeping and keening. Some pilgrims knelt to put their hands in the crevice where Jesus' cross was planted, prostrating themselves on and kissing the stone where his body was anointed and wrapped in the shroud. Then they stooped down to enter the grotto where Joseph of Arimathea's tomb was located. I was part of a pious, emotional, ecumenical, holy, chaotic Christian carnival.

In the midst of all of this, a challenging thought came to mind. Is it possible, I wondered, to imagine Jesus, the holy human one, entering this space right now, and looking and being in such a way that every tongue here would spontaneously confess, "Yes! This is he whose death and resurrection took place on this very spot!"? The answer was apparent to me: no.