Friday, April 3, 2015 (Good Friday)

Friday, April 3, 2015 (Good Friday)
John 19:38-42

19:38 After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body.  39 Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds.  40 They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews.  41 Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid.  42 And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

The main entrance to the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre

In the pre-dawn of what would turn out to be a very snowy Ash Wednesday, a small group of pilgrims left our hotel in east Jerusalem, and began to wend our way toward the gates of the Old City, through a maze of shuttered shops in the Muslim Quarter, toward the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  The Holy Sepulchre stands over what has been identified by tradition as the site of both Golgotha where Jesus was crucified, and the garden tomb where he was laid to rest by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.

Very little remains of that “green hill far away.”  The outcropping of bedrock, which is assumed to be the site of the crucifixion and tomb, was hewn away in the 4^th century in order to build a massive basilica on the site.  These days, custody of the church that stands over the site is shared by six different Christian communities: Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Roman Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, and Ethiopian Orthodox.

The Aedicule over the
tomb of Christ

If all that seems confusing, once you step inside the edifice, you aren’t greeted with any clarity.  As the principal site of Christian pilgrimage in Jerusalem and the location of the final four Stations of the Cross along the Via Dolorosa, the church gets quite crowded and hectic as the day wears on.  We went early in the morning to be there when the doors were unlocked to welcome the first visitors.  Within moments of entering the church just after 5:00am, masses began to happen in the many chapels surrounding Golgotha and the tomb, each of them in a different language.  Priests and monastics scuttled back and forth to get ready for the day.  There is, I gather, a schedule for celebrating the Eucharist inside the 19^th-Century “Aedicule” which stands over the site of the tomb.  The schedule is set well in advance and is adhered to rigidly.  If you are wily, you can sneak through the little door in between celebrations.  If you hesitate, you miss out.  If you linger too long, you get shut inside.  Later in the day, a queue forms.  People stand in line for an hour or more, just for a few moments inside.

Try as I might, I didn’t make it into the tomb.  I couldn’t seem to get the timing right, and I was more than a little terrified of the stone-faced Franciscan who stood at the entrance.Instead, I opted to go around to the other side of the tomb and sit on the cold stone floor with the Syrian priests, who had begun their haunting, repetitive chant of kyrie eleison – Lord, have mercy.

The Holy Sepulchre is a beautiful, haunting place.  It is also chaotic – even at 5 in the morning – and noisy.  If you go there seeking peace, you may or may not find it.  That seems an odd contradiction.  We say of those who have died, that they “rest in peace.”  Surely we might expect some peace and quiet at the tomb Christ.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that my expectations were off.  Of course the tomb of our Lord would be busy.  After all, my fellow pilgrims and I had traveled over 9,000 km just to be there.  We were certainly not alone.

It occurs to me that I was not the only one with mistaken expectations in that place.  Joseph and Nicodemus laid more than a dead body in the tomb that day.  They also laid the expectations that they and many others had for Jesus.  Expectations he constantly upsets and overturns in the Gospels.  They had expected a mighty Messiah to restore the fortunes of Zion, to topple the forces of empire, to bring justice and peace.  Instead, they saw their friend and teacher abused, mocked, and ultimately executed in a tortuous, shameful manner.

Like modern day attendants in the Holy Sepulchre, Joseph and Nicodemus rush about to bury the body of Jesus according to custom, and to carry on with the rest of their lives; the festival of the Passover was near.  Jerusalem was crowded, chaotic, and noisy, and there was business to attend to.

At the end of Good Friday, we are invited to enter the tomb, not as pilgrims or worshippers, but as ordinary folk with ordinary concerns.  We are invited to lay our misguided expectations and our painful histories on a hard, cold slab, to anoint them with the perfume of our prayers, to seal them up inside, and to deliver them into the hands of God through Holy Saturday.

Pilgrim grafitti in the Chapel of St. Helena

The horizon of Joseph’s and Nicodemus’s expectations would soon be shattered once again.  That is perhaps the lesson we learn in the garden tomb: God is working, even in the darkness of the grave, to overcome our expectations.

• Christopher Jones

[Christopher is a student in the Faculty of Divinity of Trinity College, Toronto, and recently took part in Trinity’s trip to the Holy Land]