On Holy Ground

[This message was delivered on Good Friday, April 18, 2025, at Community of the Savior, Rochester, NY. It can be found streamed on the Community of the Savior webpage on Facebook.]

It struck me in a stunningly silent moment.  I was standing on holy ground and I didn’t realize at first. There innocent blood had been spilt. There the mangled bodies of the dead were buried. Without proper burial. Their remains spread over the earth on hardscrabble soil.

It wasn’t Jerusalem. It wasn’t Calvary. It wasn’t Golgotha. It wasn’t the hill of the Skull. It was a field in western Pennsylvania, near Shanksville, once strip mined. I stood there a month ago at the flight #93 memorial. Simple, dignified, understated.

I didn’t realize at first that I was standing in a cemetery. There were no gravestones, no white crosses in perfect rows. No flowers, real or artificial. We know that forty persons who boarded United flight #93 the morning of September 11, 2001, bound for the west coast, went down in that field, choosing to do so for a higher cause, to save the lives of others.

One month ago I stood on holy ground. But I didn’t know it at first. That night I found myself thinking, what makes ground holy? Is some ground holier than other ground? What enables us to say of one plot of earth, this is holy ground? Two answers came into my mind quickly: ground on which innocent blood has been spilt and ground on which great sacrifice has been made. I was standing on holy ground.

Solo: We are standing on holy ground And we know that there are angels all around, Let us praise Jesus now We are standing in His presence On holy ground

Jesus enters Jerusalem through a garden. That is how John’s telling of the heart of the passion begins: “Jesus, having prayed this prayer, left with his disciples and crossed over the brook Kidron at a place where there was a garden. He and his disciples entered it.”  (John 18:1)

A garden. The biblical narrative begins in a garden called Eden and ends in a garden city called the New Jerusalem, the new heaven and new earth. In between Jesus enters Jerusalem through a garden. Jesus prays earnestly in a garden.

The Bible, God’s story and our story inseparably intertwined, is exceedingly earthy. It is more earthy than heavenly. Its scope is universal, global, cosmic, but it is always local and particular. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, one little town. He fled as an immigrant to Egypt. He was raised in Nazareth, another little town. He was crucified on a mound of soil called Golgotha, Calvary, the Skull, just beyond the city wall of Jerusalem. These are places we can find on a map. Religious pilgrims visit these places and have their pictures taken, because we call it the holy land. Holy ground.

In a stroke of poetic genius, Eugene Peterson in The Message translated John 1:14 this way: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” He moved into a specific neighborhood. And he made our ground holy. Wherever his spirit is alive, the ground is holy.

The cross didn’t hang in the stratosphere or the thermosphere or the ionosphere. It didn’t hang above Calvary. It was planted in our earth, our soil, in God’s garden. Pounded and anchored in holy ground.

Between that first garden and that last garden is another garden: Gethsemane, leading to Calvary. Holy ground all. As Jesus is crucified on a cross planted in that soil, the earth reacts violently, heaving from the depths. Matthew says, “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.” (27:51) Luke says the sun hid its light for three hours. How could nature not react in repulsion?

Solo: As the sun darkens, the earth quakes, No shelter from this storm is to be found. The entire earth suddenly awakes For we are standing in his presence on holy ground.

He was crucified here on terra firma. Our soil. Our ground. And he made it holy. Sanctified it. Hallowed it. Consecrated it. When President Lincoln stood on the blood-soaked ground of the Gettysburg battlefield, he admitted the impotence of the living to do what only those who made the ultimate sacrifice could do. He said,

“We cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.” A battlefield become a cemetery, made holy by spilt blood and ultimate sacrifice. Golgotha. Calvary. The Skull. Made holy by spilt blood and ultimate sacrifice.

“In Christ Alone,” a newer hymn that I like, has one major mistake which misses the heart of God when it says, “Till on that cross as Jesus died, The wrath of God was satisfied.” No! Jesus is not on the cross because God is angry with him. Jesus is not appeasing a God filled with wrath. Someone offered the perfect revision:

“Till on that cross as Jesus died, The love of God was magnified.
For every sin on Him was laid; Here in the death of Christ I live.”

It is God’s love that moves Jesus to the cross. It is God’s love that compels him to shed his blood. It is God’s love that causes him to sacrifice his own life for us. It is God’s love that makes the blood-soaked ground at the foot of the cross holy. It is for God’s love that Jesus suffers. It is for God’s love that God suffers. And we are standing on holy ground here, this day, here, now, at the foot of his cross.

Solo: At the foot of the cross, his mercy flows And I know that here God’s grace and love abound. Made holy by his death, this soil shows That we are standing in His presence on holy ground. We are standing on holy ground and we know that there are angels all around, Let us praise Jesus now We are standing in His presence on holy ground.