The Anglican Parish of Banyule

Sermon preached by Don Bellamy
Sunday April 20th – Easter Day 2003
at St John's Heidelberg

Some years ago I made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land. When I was there I was told that it is important to avoid the 'edifice complex'. That is the problem of seeing only the churches that commemorate the holy places, and not seeing the significance of the holy place itself. Today I want to change that. I want to talk about one of these edifices, in fact the most significant church in the whole of the Christian world, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or the Church of the Resurrection as it is known by the eastern churches. The church built around both Golgotha, the place of Jesus' death and the empty tomb, the place of the resurrection.

But before that, I want to go back a little.

The scriptures tell us that Jesus was crucified just outside the city walls of Jerusalem, at a place called Golgotha, or Skull Hill if you like. Modern archaeological investigation has helped us understand what has happened here. The place of Jesus' crucifixion was originally a quarry, a place where the limestone building blocks that are a feature of Jerusalem's architecture, were cut. The quarry was started in about 700 BCE and used for that purpose until about 100 BCE. By that time it covered a considerable area. But there was in this quarry a section of rock that was not of sufficient quality to be used as building stone. So those who worked the quarry simply left that stone where it was and continued cutting the good quality stone from around it. That left a hill of rejected stone in the middle of the quarry. (It reminds me of Ps 118, The stone the builders rejected became the head of the corner.) This outcrop of rock was known as Skull Hill. By Jesus' time the quarry was not being worked any more, soil had been brought in and it is likely that there was some agriculture going on, here, perhaps a garden. Around Jerusalem any likely and many unlikely places are used for growing crops or olive trees or making gardens. When you dig a quarry you are likely to end up with some rock faces, and in Jesus' time these rock faces had been used to make burial places, tombs. It was here, just outside the walls of the city, that the Romans crucified the condemned. A socket was cut into the rock of Golgotha for the upright of the cross, which remained in position. The condemned one carried only the cross beam, which was cut to size so to speak. At the crucifixion the cross beam was attached to the upright. The final shape being a little more like a T that the traditional form of the cross as we know it, more like the carving of the crucifixion on the wall than the cross at the back of sanctuary.

The scriptures tell us that after Jesus had died, he was lowered from the cross, anointed with the spices of death, and carried to a tomb that was close by. A tomb that was likely to be in the rock face of the old quarry.

In 70 CE the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, and then after about 135 CE Hadrian banished the Jews, and probably the Christians too from Jerusalem and he set out to make it a thoroughly Roman city. The old quarry was filled in with rubble and Hadrian had built there a temple to Aphrodite. By this time the walls of the city had been moved, so that this place is now inside the walls. That temple remained until about 325 CE when at the suggestion of Macarius the Bishop of Jerusalem, Constantine, the first Christian Emperor of Rome, ordered the removal of Hadrian's buildings, and excavations took place to uncover the site of the crucifixion and the tomb of Jesus. And they were found. So Constantine ordered that a church be built over these two most holy sites, it was to be the most magnificent church in the whole Christian world.

Constantine's church was almost destroyed by Caliph Hakim in the year 1009, some parts remained but the tomb was destroyed.

In 1048 the church was rebuilt by the emperor, but money was tight, and so the restorations were only modest. An edicule was built to replace the empty tomb.

In the 12th century the Crusaders restored and rebuilt the church in Romanesque style.

Are you getting a sense of what is going on here? Of course the Crusaders did not have the last word. They left, defeated in the end, and the building was further changed and added to.

It would be really nice if this most holy place in the Christian world had something of the majesty that Constantine had originally built, or that it something like the sense of the holy that you get from one of the great cathedrals of Europe. But it is not like that. It is a building that has been built, partially destroyed, partially rebuilt, rebuilt again, and so on throughout its history. It is not by any stretch of the imagination a beautiful building. In fact for many it is a very disturbing building.

Let me see if I can take you on a guided tour of it.

You come to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by way of one of the narrow, intensely commercial, streets of Old Jerusalem. You enter through a fairly narrow gateway into a courtyard. In front of you is the crusader facade. You notice that it is not symmetrical, some of the arches run into the walls at unusual places. Off to the left is a bell tower. The bell tower was built to hold up the wall of the facade that was a little too much for the old foundations that it was built on. You go through the large timber doors that make the entrance. This is an entrance into the south side of the church, the entrance to the Constantian church was at the eastern end.

Immediately you become aware of the dimness.

To your right, to the east is a steep and narrow stairway to some chapels up above. Immediately in front of you is a slab of stone, the stone of unction, and over it hanging seven? Sanctuary lamps, one for each of the church traditions that control the building. Behind that is a mosaic on the wall of a chapel behind, and around to the right through a colonnade, and into a circular area is the Holy Sepulchre itself. But we will leave that for a moment and head down a corridor to the right, and then down several flights of stairs, to the basement of the building. Here we are at bedrock level, and here in the rough stone walls you can see the where the square building blocks have been cut from the rock face of the original quarry. Here you can see the beginnings of the useless stone that makes Golgotha. It was here that a dump was found, a dump of the cross beams that had been used in the crucifixions that had taken place there. It was here that the cross of Jesus was found, but that is a different story.

Going back up the steps now, you notice the crosses carved on the walls. I told you of those a central cross made by the pilgrim with the cloud of smaller crosses surrounding it, representing all those who the pilgrim took with them in their heart. Back now to the floor level that we entered on and heading back to the main entrance. There is in the wall a glass panel, so that you can see the rock of Golgotha continuing up. It is of course now protected, for from earliest times pilgrims have wanted to take a little of the rock back home. One ancient pilgrim's guide commented on the quality of the hammers and chisels that were available from the souvenir sellers.

Back near the entrance again and up the narrow, steep stairs, to a chapel, a Catholic chapel, no seats, a altar and on the walls paintings of the crucifixion. Beside it is a Greek Orthodox chapel. It is very different from the Catholic chapel, it is covered in icons and gold leaf, and if one sanctuary lamp is good, then two must be twice as good, and if you can get twenty or thirty or fifty in so much the better, and most of them tarnished and dusty. In this chapel is a stone altar, and if you come forward to the altar and kneel down you can put you hand into a hole in the floor, and into the socket that the cross stood in, worn smooth with the pilgrim's touch.

Back down another flight of stairs, back to the entrance level. The stone slab is where the body of Jesus lay when it was anointed, many pilgrims come there and kiss the stone, some pour out oil as their offering, and we were told that some come with their own funeral shroud and lay out their shroud on the stone and prepare it for their own burial.

Past the stone of unction into the rotunda, the colonnaded area in the middle of which stands the Holy Sepulchre itself. Not the original tomb of course, that has been destroyed, but a edicule, a construction of marble that represents the empty tomb. This is in fact the second such edicule, and it is held together with great steel beams, but even this is not keeping it from falling apart. There are two areas here, representing the outer preparation area of the tomb and the inner area where the body was laid.

Well, that all sounds not too bad, but I visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre four or five times in the 12 days I was in Jerusalem, and I do not have a clear sense of all the building. There are chapels everywhere. I could not begin to number them. They range from the large, a bit bigger than our church of St John, to the minute. From the simple and modern, like the Franciscan chapel to the elaborate, and to our taste over the top, like the Greek Orthodox chapels, to the impoverished, like the Syrian Orthodox chapel, whose floor was crushed rock, like our carpark. Some were being renovated, and were therefore full of scaffolding. Some had magnificent artwork, and some pictures still blackened from a fire in the building centuries earlier.

And I haven't mentioned the people. There are people everywhere. Pilgrims, tourists and the merely curious. The place looks, and sounds, more like Flinders street station at peak hour than the quiet and contemplative place that perhaps we would hope for. And of course the various traditions that have the use of the building will be carrying out their liturgies in their own way at the own significant times. The first time I was there I nearly got run down by a procession of clergy or religious of one of the orthodox traditions, the celebrant in wonderful gold vestments and the others in black cassocks with tall black hats, chanting all the while.

There is rudeness there. While waiting in line to enter the Holy Sepulchre a Greek priest came and told us all to, "Get in line. Put your bag down. No cameras. Don't stay in the tomb too long. Just a minute." That morning we had experienced the generosity and hospitality of the Muslim folk at the Dome of the Rock, during their busiest time of the year, the holy month of Ramadan, but not so here.

And of course relations between the traditions that control the building are not always cordial. I am told that at one time the civil authorities got so fed up with the squabbles between the various groups that they ordered an inventory of the whole building, to see who had what and where. And that was to be the way that it was to stay. There was a ladder leaning against a wall that was included in the inventory. The ladder has not been able to be moved. The squabbles were such that when the dome over the Holy Sepulchre was rebuilt they had to get someone neutral to design the decoration, they chose an Anglican. Anglicans of course, as a modern church, have no area in the church, we depend on the hospitality of the Greek orthodox.

But for all that there is simplicity, faithfulness and hospitality there as well.

Walking the way of the cross actually takes you on to the roof of the church, and there on the roof is an Ethiopian monastery, built in traditional Ethiopian style. To get from the roof to the main church you can either go back the way that you came, and out to the street and into the southern court as I have described, or, if you have permission, go through the chapel of the Ethiopians and down some stairs that come out next to the main entrance. The Ethiopian church, while one of the oldest churches, dating back to the Ethiopian eunuch in the book of Acts, is now one of the poorest in the world. Nevertheless with great dignity and humility the Ethiopians welcomed us into their chapel and allowed us to go through to the main part of the church.

With all this noise and confusion and dirt and crowds and squabbles many folk find the Church of the Holy Sepulchre a disturbing place. It is perhaps the exact opposite of what they might expect of the most holy place of all, the centre of the Christian world. Indeed I found it so the first time that I went there. I wanted it to be quiet and prayerful and serene and calm and organised and clean. It was none of those things. But after a while I got used to it, and then indeed I found it comforting. Because it seemed to me that this place, this most holy place was just like the Christian church, the community of God's people.

Messy, disorganised, squabbling, rude, and yet at the same time, offering great hospitality, with great humility and compassion and faithfulness. It was a place that showed all that is good and all that is in need of redemption in the lives of people. Isn't that like the church? Isn't it like our parish? Isn't it like our own families. Isn't it like ourselves?

I knew this place. This was, in some way, home.

And at the centre of this place, was the death and the resurrection of Jesus. The events that shattered the world. The twin events that make sense of all that noise and confusion, all the rudeness and violence; and with all of that, all the love, and faith, the compassion and the hope, especially the hope that life will have the last word.

Isn't that what stands at the centre of our faith too.

Today we proclaim that Jesus is risen. That doesn't remove everything that is not of God from us. But it gives us the hope, that when all is said and done, God and life will have the last word, that at the last, the light has come and darkness can not overcome.

Next: Easter Day at Rosanna 2003
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