Jesus Christ!

Tomorrow is Orthodox Easter, the holiest day of the year for all the Eastern branches of Christianity. And on that holy day, in the holiest place in all Christendom, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, where Jesus was buried and rose again, the police will be standing guard to prevent an outbreak of violence. Not violence against Christians by non-believers, nor violence against non-believers by Christians. They'll be watching for Christian priests to start punching and kicking and throwing rocks. At each other.

       The problem is that the Sepulcher is shared by several different Christian sects, and two of those—the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox—have been arguing for years about who gets to handle what duties. The Greeks have been the dominant group for a long time, which they see as their right (they were Christians first, after all, and they used to rule the place, right up until 637 AD). The Armenians are feeling that, as one priest put it, "We are the weak ones, persecuted by them for many centuries." So the Greeks will forbid the Armenians from participating in certain ceremonies, the Armenians will show up anyway, the Greeks will try to toss them out, and suddenly everyone will start throwing hands. And vice versa.

      This past Christmas, at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (the second holiest site in Christendom, and subject to the same power sharing scheme), Greek and Armenian clergy fought over whose turn it was to sweep the floors, started hitting each other with brooms and ended up throwing rocks. Last week, on Palm Sunday, they got into such a brawl in the Sepulcher that the cops were called. When the police showed up, the believers started beating them with their ceremonial palm fronds.

      Easter is traditionally an even hotter button, especially the ceremony when the Patriarch of the Greek Church enters the shrine and the candles (according to the Greek priests in attendance) miraculously light themselves. The Armenians keep trying to slip believers into the ceremony, presumably trying to catch the guy with the lighter. One journalist reports that "people attending the Holy Fire ceremony have been trampled trying to escape the violence that breaks out." 

      So tonight the cops aren't waiting to be called. They're already on duty to protect the sacred rites of Christianity on Holy Saturday and Easter. Jewish cops, no less. Shamuses, you could say.
      Yoram Sabo, a filmmaker producing a documentary about religious fervor in Old Jerusalem, acknowledges that these battles "may seem trivial, but you have to look at it through religious glasses—people fight for what they thing is important." Evidently what's not important anymore is all that love and peace and unity in the body of Christ and turn the other cheek stuff. But that's hardly news, is it?

      What charms me about the this story is how perfect an example it is—and an amusing one, being refreshingly free of religious killing—of the inherent logic of institutions. No matter how they started or what their original intention was, sooner or later their primary purpose becomes the perpetuation and enrichment of the institution itself. The priests and monks whaling on other priests and monks don't even seem to see the irony that they're doing all this to honor the Savior who came to lift us out of worldly conflict, tribalism and institutionalized religion. (A theme very cleverly explored by one of my favorite Russian journalists here.) 

      This is one of those times I really hope I'm around for the Second Coming. I hope there'll be some holy laughter in the air.