Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Every spring, my friend Loren McGrail reminds us that Holy Fire Saturday is something like a liturgical key. In that tradition, she says, the world discovers something like the soul, the determination of Jerusalem's Christian community. As that community leans into hope, as many press together as one body (waiting as one, as one, as one), a single torch of fire emerges from a darkened tomb. And the crowd erupts in joyous cries--"Christ is risen! Is risen indeed! Christ is risen! Is risen indeed!" And as they do, the single flame becomes many, passed from hand to hand, from neighbor to neighbor; all over the now bejeweled church believers cup their hands and pull the holy smoke toward cheeks, lips, bruises and hearts. "Christ is risen! Is risen indeed!"
At lunch last week, Lareen Abu Akleh shared her experience of Holy Fire Saturday just weeks ago. And this year it had been different, sad even, interupted by occupation muscle and provocation. With friends, Lareen had set out early for the heart of the Old City and the tomb within the ancient church. This year, though, Israeli police had set up ten, twelve checkpoints, blocking the progress of pilgrims, and creating bottlenecks where police angrily confronted pilgrims. There were scuffles in the old streets, even priests and nuns were pushed around roughly.
For Lareen--the niece of martyred Palestinian--American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh--this was especially cruel. As she'd done since her aunt's assasination in 2022, she'd planned to take the holy fire from the great gathering in the Old City and out to Shireen's tomb in an East Jerusalem cemetery. Her family was waiting there--for a reunion of sorts, and a circle of remembrance around a spirit that still burns bright in both family and community. But she never got into the church. Stymied by occupation.
As she told us this story, Lareen's eyes brightened (by turns, angry and proud, bewildered and determined); and she noted again how much power and purpose she finds in bearing witness to the holy fire, and its miraculous appearance in that tomb every year, and how it brings a whole people together. Resilience. Grace. Solidarity.
It was clear that, reunion or no, Shireen's spirit lives on, boldly, gathered up by God's own passion for justice, and stirring in the hearts of her family, her community, and this land of many peoples. Listening that day, I felt as close to the gospel as I've felt in a good, long while.
Razzouk Tattoo--Since 1300 (Old City)
Sitting there Friday afternoon, as Nazir worked his magic into my right forearm, I remembered Lareen's story, and the longing, the determination, the urgency in her voice. That "Christ is risen" is an embodied experience, a community heartbroken but open to grace, bodies pressed together, waiting in communion, waiting as communion. The radical truth of the resurrection is not that "I" am risen, that "Dave GJ" is risen, or that any one of us is. It just can't be reduced to personal piety or individual achievement.
The radical truth of the resurrection is that "Christ is risen," and that in Christ and through Christ so too are all the dear ones God loves, all the souls, all the communities, all the children, all the martyrs: and the grieving mothers of Gaza (all of them), and the dispirited survivors of Shoah (all of them), and the hungry whose plates are empty, and the wandering poor who have no place to lay their heads, and all and all and all. It's really not about religion at all. It's about holy fire, it's about love liberated, it's about what is.
So I did this thing.
After 63 years spinning around the sun.
Encouraged by my much more daring daughters and egged on by UCC friends traveling together, I found my way back to Razzouk Tattoo and asked for a tattoo (calligraphy) that reads (right to left, of course) "Christ is risen!" in Arabic. The folks at Razzouk were enthusiatic, wonderfully professional, and appreciative of the old man's spiirt in me.
I look at it now, my first tattoo, and it connects me to every soul, every single soul I meet now: the Muslim woman pushing her child up the steep hill on her way to pray; the dear Jewish friend with whom I reconnected (here!) after nine long years; the two-year-old in church this morning, wailing like the sky was falling during communion itself; Zoughbi and Tarek here in Bethlehem, so exhausted by all this violence and apartheid's (seemimgly lethal) grip; Lareen and Omar and Issa and the determination embodied in them all. "Christ is risen" has nothing to do with human triumph, and nothing to do with supercessionism or religious one-ups-man-ship. It has everything to do with us, with all of us, with this strange and strangely transfigured human family. All of us. Rising.
The Arabic word “Intifada” means “uprising” or maybe even “shaking off.” It strikes me now that that's what Holy Fire Saturday is really offering, that's what Easter is really all about: that we are not alone as we rise to the struggle for freedom, for justice, for peace; that we are wholly blessed as we lean into community and solidarity, press together to watch for...
Come, then, Holy Fire! Come, Shekinah, Sophia! Come, Sister Christ!
