For centuries, debate has roiled over the true location of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and death. I had the privilege of visiting the sites at the center of the controversy on a trip to Israel in mid-March, just before fruitless hostage negotiations ended the ceasefire in Gaza.
The first site has been revered by Catholics and Orthodox Christians since 326 A.D., when it was identified by Constantine’s mother, Saint Helena. Constantine then ordered the construction of a towering memorial, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, there within the city walls. It is the cornerstone of the Christian Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City, situated between its Muslim, Jewish, and Armenian counterparts.
My strong suspicion is that we’ll never know where the cross was raised and Christ drew his final breaths — because He doesn’t want us to.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Muezzin droned Muslims into prayer as we stepped inside. During Holy Week, the Church is packed with Christians on pilgrimage — Copts, Syrians, Franciscans, Greeks, on and on — waiting for hours in winding lines to kneel for seconds in the Edicule. More than a month before Easter, the church was nearly empty, save for the locals.
The interior was sacrosanct, decorated with pomp and circumstance befitting the King of the Jews. Arms of light stretched through incense clouding the rotunda. I watched as shrouded elderly women on hands and knees massaged precious oil into the Stone of Anointing with their palms, dragging their rosaries over it and grazing it with their lips before struggling to stand.
They brought to mind the women I had seen earlier that week at the Western Wall on Shabbat (coinciding with Purim, a blood moon, and Ramadan), pressing themselves against the meleke limestone and tucking folded papers into its cracks, desperate to be heard in the inner room, the holy of holies. I sat on a plastic lawn chair and counted hundreds, thousands of pleas suspended in purgatory.
In the late 1800s, Protestant scholars and travelers began to question the placement of the Holy Sepulchre, pointing out that the area had been inside the city walls by Constantine’s time, whereas the Gospels specify that Jesus was crucified outside the city. In 1867, a tomb discovered in a garden area near a rocky outcrop became known as the Garden Tomb and is run by a small British charitable trust.
The Garden Tomb
Entering the garden, which is done through a back road near Damascus Gate, is like an exhale, like slipping from a tourist-laden New York City street into the Elizabeth Street Garden. There are gentle chirps, a breeze through the foliage, and, as you meander toward the back, the whir and mechanical sigh of a bus station built under a pockmarked cliffside.
This rock, they say, is Golgotha, the “place of the skull,” where Mark (15:22) writes that Jesus was brought for crucifixion. Atop is a cemetery for Islamic mujahideen (jihadist holy warriors), guarded by a wall with a prominent inscription of the Shahada: “No God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger.”
“The cross,” said our volunteer tour guide, “would’ve been there, on the main road.” She pointed toward the buses. “Not on a hill, like in your children’s books, but low, where travelers might see him suffer face to face.”
“Why don’t they move the bus station and excavate?” asked a skeptical Catholic in our group. “Seems easy enough.”
The tour guide shook her head and said in her lilting British drawl, “Ask the Waqf.” The station, which opened in 1953, serves as the primary transportation hub to Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and the West Bank, with routes to cities like Ramallah, Nablus, and Bethlehem. It can’t (won’t?) be moved.
The true vine and the vineyard
Back through the garden and deeper in is a small sitting area and a cobbled winepress, which, in Christ’s day, would have been lined with hay to catch seeds and skins as workers pressed grapes beneath their feet. The garden is believed to have been a vineyard, a hub of agricultural activity.
Just beyond it is the main event — a rectangular entrance to a tomb, sealed with a wooden door that reads, “He Is Not Here, for He Is Risen.” Further description is almost unnecessary; inside, there’s not much to see. It’s cool and dark, and on the right, two resting places for bodies are carved into the stone.
I am not a historian. I don’t claim to have a scoop (or any strong opinion, for that matter) about the real location of Jesus’ death. The true site is lost to us, unmemorialized due to the persecution of early Christians and the city’s destruction in 70 A.D.
But how like our subversive Savior would that be? To suffer where we might draw near and to bleed and die in a humble garden whose entrance is easily missed. The true vine, entombed in a vineyard, His flesh split and blood pressed out for us beneath our own feet.
He has undermined our expectations from birth, just like that — this was no military leader or politician, but a child, swaddled in humility and sleeping in a feeding trough in the dirt. As Timothy Keller said in “The Reason for God,” meditating on the subversive paradox of Christ’s life: “Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet he had a life filled with the experience of poverty, rejection, injustice, and even torture.”
And there is no more subversive message than His gospel.
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His promise offers a radical redefinition of identity, not based on performance or societal status but on grace. As Keller notes in “The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith,” the gospel of Jesus is not only different from those ideas, but diametrically opposed to them. “I’m fully accepted in Jesus Christ,” Keller said, summarizing, “and therefore I obey.”
“When you realize that the antidote to being bad is not just being good,” Keller continues, “you are on the brink. If you follow through, it will change everything: how you relate to God, self, others, the world, your work, your sins, your virtue.”
Scholar Christopher Watkin makes a similar point in his book “Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture.” Watkin emphasizes that Jesus — in his incarnation, choice of disciples, and ultimate sacrifice — turns upside down the societal norms that prize power, control, and prestige. He writes, “The cross of Jesus is not merely a means of salvation, but also a disruption, a radical subversion of the very way we understand the world and our place in it.”
My strong suspicion is that we’ll never know where the cross was raised and Christ drew his final breaths — because He doesn’t want us to. He’s not there. The tomb, wherever it was, is empty, and so is the holy of holies. Instead, He lives and dwells in every heart that will offer Him room.
Muddy waters
Early in the trip, we were baptized at a sterile location in the Jordan River, created specifically for believers on pilgrimage. The water was clear and cool. We wore white robes. Our pastor wore a pink diving suit to keep warm.
The reality of Christ’s baptism was much different. The water was low and dirty, and yet He came. And the heavens opened, and the Spirit of the Lord descended upon him, saying, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.” He emerged both muddy and clean.
We can’t avoid the mud. Our best good days won’t cleanse us. Luckily, our subversive Savior does not come to the sacrosanct. He comes to dwell with us, not in spite of the mud but because of it.
Abide, Easter, Christianity, The church of the holy sepulchre, The garden tomb, The holy land, Grace bydalek, Jerusalem, Faith, Pilgrimage
