Israel: The Crucifixion Site

So there I was: patiently standing in a quasi-line (read: mob), waiting to get to the exact spot where it’s believed that Jesus was crucified. The spot itself is nothing more than a hole in a rock, but the entire area is heavily adorned with precious metals, beautiful paintings of the Messiah, intricate faces of angels all over the ceiling, and a portrait of the Virgin Mary nearby. The “room” itself is part of a larger structure: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which also houses the tomb where it’s believed Jesus was buried. This massive church was built by Constantine the Great in 325 AD to commemorate the place of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus (before that, the area was actually a temple to the goddess Venus that the Roman emperor Hadrian had spitefully erected in 135 AD to cover the holy sites of Jesus). I’ve attached a diagram to show how the Church works; basically it was placed on top of the original hillside, so now you can just go up and down stairs inside the church to get to different areas like the tomb and various shrines.

Anyway, back to me waiting in line. With my earbuds in, I was listening to my “praise” playlist as I attempted to take-in the magnitude of my surroundings. All my life, I’d been raised hearing of this Jesus of Nazareth, who came to take away the sins of the world and thus bridge the gap between a perfect God and a fallen world. Although Christmas and the story of a poor baby in a stable is fun, I knew the crux of my faith was really this: the gory death of the Savior and his victorious ascension into heaven. I knew these things. And yet standing there in the crowd, it became incredibly real. Regardless of belief of all of the spiritual things, no one can deny that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure who was legitimately crucified in Jerusalem. Maybe he resurrected and beat death and maybe he didn’t, but he was definitely a real guy. Moreover, it’s impossible to deny the effect this this man has had on the world. Even if I didn’t believe that Jesus was ever a real person and all these historical records were pointing to some other person, it’s impossible to deny that there are now millions of people who take note of this tiny region and make a HUGE deal of a place where this guy was believed to have died and then come back to life. That’s just fact. I was standing in the crowded church and saw all the eager faces. This man who lived over 2000 years ago has affected the way that societies have functioned and interacted ever since his death, and those effects have quite frankly not always been positive. One of the huge takeaways from my time in Israel has been a deeper sense of the historical context of my life and my faith. While Christianity has a huge influence on Western society, it certainly isn’t “ours.” When I think about it, I’m just a Gentile convert in a nation that didn’t even exist when Jesus was around, and the story of his life and death came to me through centuries of “religion,” often marred with human tendencies towards power dynamics and manipulation that had nothing to do with the man called Jesus. And yet. Through all of this, God has the ability to make all things beautiful and use these broken attempts at knowing him to bring glory to Himself, and my faith and the faith of everyone who believes in Him 2000 years later is proof of it. So as I stood, waiting to see the hole in the rock where my Savior breathed his last breath, I thought of what it was like, and I thought of how amazing it is that so many people now know of it. As I was waiting, two men blatantly cut me in line, and I thought of how hypocritical it would be to get upset that someone wanted to see Jesus badly enough that they cut me. How great that people want to know God! So standing there, next to these incredibly smelly men (deodorant is clearly not a priority for line-cutters in the Holy Land), I realized that this is the meaning of the cross. That Christ died for everyone. EVERYONE. He died for the Jews and the Gentiles and the young and the old. He even died for those who smell terribly; Jesus was a carnal man who died for other carnal creatures, and he accepts us as we are. And as I stood and watched others kneel at the feet of the cross, while my earbuds fortuitously played “O Come to the Altar,” I reveled in the beauty of seeing strangers humble themselves and pray. I reveled in a God who welcomes everyone and takes our sins upon his shoulders, and I thanked him that He can, and does, use my failed attempts and sinful nature to glorify Himself. He makes all things beautiful.