The relics in Jerusalem didn’t move me. Why?

On my visit to Jerusalem I made an appointment to meet the Greek Orthodox patriarch at his office in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. At the end of our meeting, he ushered me into a back room known as the Greek Treasury and left me alone, inviting me to “venerate the relics.” I was grateful that he left me alone, because I didn’t plan to venerate the relics.

Technically I knew how. I had spent enough time with Orthodox Christians and enough time in Jerusalem to know how to cross myself and bow in front of relics. I knew that one could kiss the glass or lean one’s forehead on the glass in a gesture of respect. But I couldn’t do these gestures with authenticity. Crossing myself and bowing felt imitative and hollow.

The relics themselves were astonishing. There was a bone from John the Baptist and the hand of Mary Magdalene. There was a remnant of the True Cross. There were relics of John Chrysostom and the great liturgist St. Andrew of Crete. I stood in front of these relics like a visitor in a museum. I even smirked inwardly a little at the historical unlikelihood that these were actual relics. It was hard for this Protestant to figure out what to do, and that troubled me. Never had I felt so proximate to my fellow Christians and yet so distant from them.