In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Last Sunday, we were honored by the presence of a priest who serves the Armenian Church in the Holy Land and he shared with me that he was very inspired and touched by the welcoming ways of our parish and for that I am grateful. Over the two days we spent together, we spoke much about the Holy Land in and around Jerusalem. I began reminiscing with great reverence to the times I visited the land where Jesus walked and preached—the land of St. Mary and Moses and Noah.
I have mentioned before that I have had the honor of leading six pilgrimages to Jerusalem over the years and each time we covered a lot of ground. Out the door and on the road by 7:00 am or 7:30 am every morning, we traveled across Israel and Palestine experiencing a myriad of Holy Sites from the Mount of Olives to Mount Tabor, from the Manger in Bethlehem to the Tom in the Holy Sepulcher, from Jerusalem to Jericho, from the Town of Bethlehem to the City of Nazareth, from the Jordan River to the Dead Sea and many places in between. These were wonderful experiences and powerful spiritual journeys.
Having made this pilgrimage many times, I was familiar with many of the places we were going to see, but what I didn’t expect was how differently some of these places would affect me the fourth, fifth or even the sixth time around. For example, the first time I entered the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the most Holy Place on Earth, I was struck by the power of the place itself because in that ancient church Jesus Christ was crucified and rose from the dead. On that first visit, I was overwhelmed by the sense that everyone belonged there. I was overwhelmed by the sense that in that church I was standing at the center of the world where heaven and earth met and changed the world forever; but what struck me on my second visit was not so much the power of the church itself but the overwhelming feeling that millions of people had been there before me—people who had knelt and prayed there carrying into the Tomb their hopes and prayers to lay before the Tomb of Christ.
When you enter the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the first thing you encounter is a large stone slab called the Stone of Anointing. This is the stone upon which Jesus’s Crucified Body was prepared for burial. This flat stone is covered in perfumed oil at all times. As I stood by that stone, I watched Christian pilgrims from different parts of the world kneel to touch it or place their face upon it or rub their hands over it or take large pieces of cloth that they brought with them from their homes and rub it on the stone to soak up the scented oil. I asked a local clergyman what the significance of doing that was. “Those pieces of fabric,” he told me, “were their own personal burial shrouds,” which they then placed back in plastic bags to take home until the day of their death so that anointed shroud would be placed on their lifeless bodies in the hope that they, too, would one day rise from the grave. I can’t begin to describe what a powerful experience it was to witness that kind of faith.
You could hear the Words of Christ saying, “Fear Not, for I have overcome the World.” In that Church you feel surrounded by a “cloud of witnesses.” You feel surrounded by the spirit of millions of Christians who for the last 2,000 years walked into the Empty Tomb to touch God—to come as close as humanly possible to touching “the Face of God” in the 21st century. It was a moment I will never forget.
In today’s reading, the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us of all the faithful throughout the ages who have clung to God through trails and difficulties and hardships and suffering. Essentially, the Letter to the Hebrews is saying: “We are not alone in this world. We all have trials and difficulties in our lives.” So look to Abraham, look to Moses, look to Noah & David, look to the Princess Santookht and Hripsime & Gayane, look to our sainted martyrs and countless others to understand that we, too, can cling to our faith and place our hope and trust in God to overcome the challenges of life just like they did.
I will end with this. The Holy Sites in Jerusalem have stood firm over the centuries shining the Light of God in our sometimes darkened world. The Light of God makes the world more moral, more loving, more welcoming and more hopeful and that Light strengthens everyone who seeks it.
May the Light of God shine within us all and may we reflect God’s Light into our corner of the world.
Amen.