Praise the Lord Jerusalem
what does holiness look like?
Yesterday, at the Church of the Nativity, I touched the 14-pointed star-shaped, silver-lined window that serves as a viewfinder to the spot of earth where God touched down upon it. After a brief prayer for a newly born woman and a newly born-into-eternity woman, I stepped back and looked at the small carved-in-rock church with stones black from many candles, and unimpressive draperies and small icons. There were tourists (or pilgrims) snapping photos. But this, I thought, is the least photogenic place imaginable. I thought of the divinity student who had told me she didn’t like this church.
Didn’t like it. As if it was here to be liked.
But it made me think, because I agree that this is not what I expected the sanctuary of the Lord’s birth to look like. I didn’t expect it to look like this. But I wonder what we think holiness is supposed to look like. If none of these candles and lamps and soot-covered walls and mosaics covered up in iconoclastic plaster is what I think the home of the Divine should look like, then what should it look like?
Praise the Lord, Jerusalem, goes the psalm. And, here, in Jerusalem, I wonder what that means. All this city? What city and what part? It’s then when you realize the idea of the new Jerusalem isn’t just a nice invention of theological symbolism. It’s a necessity. The literal gives way to the symbol. It’s rooted in this reality but not limited by it. Limitations create something warped and convoluted.
I am typing this after being anointed with chrism at Mass—my forehead and my hands smell like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—an instantly recognizable smell immediately calls to mind the divine.
Outside, the final adhan of the night is crossing the border wall unfettered and up the hill and into my open window. “God is great,” sings the muadhdhin, “None is worthy of worship except God.” I know the call to come to pray has ended because a beep-boop of a dialing telephone follows the invitation. It sounds as though the cantor has been interrupted and is making a phone call, and the mixture of human technology with divine call has the distinct flavor of holiness. Human worship, universally, is all sincerity of heart and clumsiness of execution. And there God is in that.
This morning, sans camera, I walked into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and a beam of sunlight poured through the sunburst window above the Anastasias Chapel, spilling over its spring-onion-dome like revelation. I sat on a wooden bench opposite the entrance and watched the pilgrims file in slowly to pay their respects to the marble slab of tomb inside. Above the door hangs a soot-stained strange image of Christ soaring out of the tomb in a flight of resurrection. The sound of chanting from the liturgy in the Coptic chapel wafted over our heads, with a peace the rest of the crowd failed to muster.
Crowds of pilgrims and tourists swarmed hither and yon, snapping pictures, following tour guides, and posing in front of the soot-stained Christ floating behind the candelabra. Are they looking for the holy, I wondered. How will they know they’ve found it when we don’t even know what it looks like?
After taking individual pictures, a group of 40 Korean pilgrims posed in a large group and unfurled a banner with their tour group’s name, home church, and dates of pilgrimage. Something about the women of a certain age unrolling that tacky banner like angels out of Revelation, with scrupulous care and meticulous enthusiasm, brought such joy to my heart. Love looks so odd in action.
I find holiness is so hard to see because it lives so deeply under the surface of all things. It demands stillness to witness. But once you see it, it’s everywhere, meeting you at every turn of your head and filling the room like perfume of holy oil.