A few months ago, I had the privilege of visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where the site of Golgotha and the empty tomb are located in Jerusalem. I did not know what to expect. We followed the Via Dolorosa from the place where Jesus was beaten, through winding streets and past Muslim shops, where, according to tradition, Jesus fell three times. The Bible only records one of these incidents, where Simon of Cyrene carries the cross after Jesus stumbles. There were also stops to mark other occurrences, such as the place where Jesus allegedly meets his mother, the place where a woman traditionally named Veronica wipes the face of Jesus, and where Jesus speaks to female mourners (Luke 23). Each stop was a special part of the most important story the world has ever known. The hymn “At Calvary” kept playing in my head.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Finally, we approached the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I did not realize that six separate denominations control the site, and the politics surrounding that arrangement have enough drama to keep a small government busy negotiating. We walked through a corridor and into a small chapel outside the church, where monks from the Ethiopian church now meet since they were displaced from the main church building. (They apparently went back to Ethiopia, and when they returned, their spot was taken). This gives you a small taste of the politics surrounding these Christian sites, and I admit it is a bit disheartening to know this going into the place where Jesus died and was buried.
It is enough to know about the politics that exist between the Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Jerusalem, to the point that a member of the Muslim Nuseibeh family opens the church every day and closes it every night, and has been doing so since the time of Saladin in the twelfth century. Any deviation in the delicate balance of that city could become an international controversy within hours. Yet why cannot different iterations of Christendom cooperate more? They do on some things, but as one travels to different sections of the church, one is entering, in effect, different churches, with all the bells and whistles Protestants generally find distracting.
A Protestant’s Reaction
Perhaps I was the typical Protestant in this setting after all. The image in my mind was that of a bald hill in a rural setting, like what was portrayed in William Wyler’s Ben-Hur from 1959. The tomb I had always envisioned was a long distance from Golgotha. Perhaps this is why some tourists go to the Garden Tomb first, theorized by Charles Gordon as the real place where Jesus was buried, even though archaeological evidence shows it is not. It is in a more peaceful, idealized setting.
But I was not trying to recreate a movie scene. I wanted to be exactly where it happened, right outside the gates of the city of Jerusalem (Hebrews 13:12). I walked up the marble stairs, knelt down, and touched the rock that my Lord was crucified on. I imagined him there, between two criminals, looking down on the faithful few, including his mother, who watched their Savior die. Did they know what was happening? The two disciples on the road to Emmaus did not seem to at the time. In hindsight, I could see it all, though—behind the ornate decor and before the centuries of history that changed the area around Golgotha.
Between the Cross and the Tomb
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was originally built in 335 by Emperor Constantine the Great. It stands as a relic of what Christendom once was and the seriousness with which they preserved Christian sites. Within the church, which stands over the traditional sites, are separate significant areas that represent the crucifixion at Calvary as well as the resurrection. From the top of Golgotha’s stone, the empty tomb, likely the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, is only a few yards away. I never imagined the two locations were so close. This put things in perspective for me. Christ died and conquered death in the same location. He could literally look right at the area he had just died as he exited the tomb. I doubt there has ever been a greater sense of accomplishment felt by anyone in history than that moment.
I knelt down and prayed for a minute. I got up and walked out to make room for others. I thanked God for conquering death on my behalf. From my historian’s perspective, this was a pinnacle achievement. The story was true. The place was real, first identified by the Romans, where they built a pagan temple to Venus under Hadrian to erase the memory of Christ, and then the site of a church where the memory of Christ would be long preserved.
When I envision the place where Jesus rose from the dead, I have an image to go with the text now, a place on earth where my Savior once walked. The amazing thing about all of this is how small a place it is. God did not choose the tallest mountain or the grandest tomb, like those of the pharaohs. Even His own disciples did not fully grasp the relevance of what Christ accomplished until afterward. Yet from this little place outside the walls of Jerusalem, death was conquered for all who trust in Christ.
“Mercy there was great, and grace was free,
Pardon there was multiplied to me,
There my burdened soul found liberty
At Calvary.”
Photo Credit: Unsplash
