Last week I had business in Jerusalem, where I lived for a year back in my 20s, and had opportunity to revisit many old hangouts, one of which was the Church of the Resurrection (to the Orthodox) aka the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (to the Catholics).

Many things have changed in the Holy Land in the past twenty years; this church reliably has not. The place is full of irony, as the most holy site of Christendom is joked to be one of the most un-Christian places in the world. There are still ladders propped in the corners of the edifice that have not been moved for over a hundred years because the warring Christian factions who have joint custody of the place cannot agree whose right it is to move them. I have seen fistfights break out between Orthodox and Catholic monks over perceived territorial trespasses.

This past week I watched dueling choirs perform. Each of the six or seven sects that control the church has their prescribed hour for devotion at the end of the day, and they claim their space with ferocity. I walked in when the Franciscans were chanting the closing rite over the slab of anointing, shushing tourists in between their lines of refined gregorian chant. The Armenian orthodox monks steamed in like a train behind them, bellowing their harmonies like rugby players in a scrum. They anchored themselves across the church from the Franciscans and both groups sang away in a cacophony of clashing modal music.

When the whole ungainly vision has passed on, I went into the Holy Sepulcher to light a candle, and sang an old Byzantine song under my breath that I learned at St. Gregory’s and we sang every Easter: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on the tombs bestowing life.” And I felt a little electricity as I touched the cold slab, polished and greasy with so many hands over the centuries.

Most tourists are appalled when they discover this shrine is such a wreck and a tangle. Where this used to trouble me, now it just seems a wonderful icon of Christ’s broken body being made whole. We might not represent him well, but still he gathers us together in one motley beautiful mess: the tax collectors and harlots, and even the monks. We are often not singing the same song, and are competing for attention, and are often missing the point of the Resurrection with our dueling chants, which somehow, sometimes helps me believe that Resurrection is real and all around us, happening in so many small assorted ways that elude our capture. I no longer expect pristine piety at the Holy Sepulcher, or any other church for that matter. As the angel said at the tomb to the disciples, “He is not here; he is Risen.” Christ is still out there, healing in the streets, forgiving, bestowing life on the tombs of our resistance, and sometimes even using us to accomplish it!