The Church of the Holy Sepulchre has a fascinating history. According to historians, for about a century after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Christians in Jerusalem regularly congregated near the site of Jesus’ passion (the cross and the tomb were within walking distance of one another, and thus were considered the same ‘site’) for weekly worship and daily prayer. Then in the second century, Hadrian, the zealously anti-Christian and anti-Jewish Roman Emperor, razed the site, covered it with dirt and stone, and erected a pagan temple in honor of Aphrodite/Venus, purposefully attempting to smother the worship of the faithful in that area. Of course, as the inspired Paul said, and as Christian writers of the second and third century noted, we do not need a specific “holy site” to worship a King who resides in our hearts (Ephesians 3:17).
Later, after Constantine legalized Christianity and made it the defacto state-religion of Rome, his mother made a visit to Jerusalem to survey the so-called “holy land.” She later was moved to tear down Hadrian’s Temple and build a house of prayer for Christians. Many centuries later, Crusaders renovated and expanded the structure, and the building as they built it is essentially the same as we have it today, but over the years, ownership of the site has been disputed… and that’s putting it mildly.
Officially, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is owned by a partnership of six Christian groups, under a 1757 agreement known as the “Status Quo.” The Greek Orthodox Church holds the largest share of ownership, followed by the Roman Catholic Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Jacobite Church, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. That said, the word “partnership” is used strictly in the legal sense, because these six groups cannot agree on anything. One time, a chair was moved without permission (because the person sitting there wanted to move to the shade), and the “unauthorized change” in the decor resulted in a fight between different devotees, and I mean a real fight, a backyard brawl, a smackdown, a brouhaha, etc.
Which brings us to the ladder.
Outside the Church, leaning against a window on a balcony in the second floor, is a simple wooden ladder. It was placed there in the 1700s, by a worker doing ordinary mason work, before the Status Quo came into effect, but after it did, the agreement stipulated that the ladder could not be moved without unanimous consent of the six parties involved, and they could not all agree on whether or not to remove the unused ladder. Three hundred years later, the ladder remains, a monument to the stubborn divisiveness of so-called “religious authorities,” who took it upon themselves to co-opt a site which Christians, once, naturally gravitated to in an unofficial way, in order to impose “official” rules and regulations, as dictated by them.
Ironically, if not fittingly, while the oversight of the Church Building is handled by stubborn and petty religious leaders within “Christendom,” it is the Muslim community that controls the keys. The keys to unlock and allow access into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem have been in the care of two Muslim families for over 850 years. While so-called Christian leaders squabble over ladders and chairs, the building itself is in the hands of people who deny the supremacy of Christ entirely, and this arrangement was done specifically in order to keep the peace between the six Christian factions.
What a shameful state of division, especially in light of our Lord’s beckoning for unity (John 17)!
~Matthew