Creation and Recreation
The Holy Land of Unholy Wars
Listen to the podcast here. Not all the poems and quotations are included in this podcast:
The Holy Land of Unholy Wars
This Palm Sunday, Pope Leo XIV made what must be one of the most challenging interventions yet with regard to the escalating crisis precipitated by Donald Trump’s ‘war of choice’ in the Middle East.
In this country as well as in the US, a small but vocal minority of Far Right politicians and voters has sought to appropriate Christianity on the side of division, hatred, violence, and war. There is a photograph of evangelical Christians praying over Donald Trump in the White House, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has used blasphemous Christian rhetoric in seeking to make this a holy war. Britain is a more secular country than the United States, which is perhaps why our white Christian supremacists get a little confused in their newfound enthusiasm for God, as in Robert Jenrick demand that Keir Starmer should celebrate Psalm Sunday. There’s an interesting discussion of all this at the beginning of this Rest is Politics podcast with Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell:
Into this turbulent era of violence and religious extremism, Pope Leo in his Palm Sunday homily said:
King of Peace. While he was burdened with our sufferings and pierced for our sins, Jesus ‘did not open his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent’ (Is 53:7). He did not arm himself, or defend himself, or fight any war. He revealed the gentle face of God, who always rejects violence. Rather than saving himself, he allowed himself to be nailed to the cross, embracing every cross borne in every time and place throughout human history.
Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood” (Is 1:15).
As we set our gaze upon him who was crucified for us, we can see a crucified humanity. In his wounds, we see the hurts of so many women and men today. In his last cry to the Father, we hear the weeping of those who are crushed, who have no hope, who are sick and who are alone. Above all, we hear the painful groans of all those who are oppressed by violence and are victims of war.
The Pope has never named Donald Trump, but it is clear that this first American Pope is doing everything he can to distance the Catholic Church from any association with those who would use the name of God to justify violence. As the world moves ever closer to World War III, the Catholic Church moves ever closer to pacifism, not as passivity but as non-violent resistance.
Meanwhile, Israeli police blocked the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and the official Guardian of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the Palm Sunday Mass. Here is an extract from a press release issued by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Custody of the Holy Land.
Joint Press Release
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Custody of the Holy Land
Holy City of Jerusalem
Palm Sunday, 29 March 2026
This morning, the Israeli Police prevented the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, His Beatitude Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Head of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, together with the Custos of the Holy Land, the Most Reverend Fr. Francesco Ielpo, OFM, the official Guardian of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, as they made their way to celebrate the Palm Sunday Mass.
The two were stopped en route, while proceeding privately and without any characteristics of a procession or ceremonial act, and were compelled to turn back. As a result, and for the first time in centuries, the Heads of the Church were prevented from celebrating the Palm Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
This incident is a grave precedent, and disregard the sensibilities of billions of people around the world who, during this week, look to Jerusalem.
Reflecting on these two stories, I decided to share a reflection that was published in The Tablet in April 2012. I have lightly edited it, but it is even more relevant today than it was then. It was written after a trip to Jerusalem with producer Mark O’Brien, to record a BBC Radio 4 programme to be broadcast on Good Friday 2011.
We decided to do part of the recording for Holy Thursday night, reflecting on the agony of Jesus in the garden. Rather than go to Garden of Gethsemane—a beautiful, peaceful location maintained by the Franciscans—we made our way up to the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.
We navigated our way in darkness along overgrown paths and tumbling tombstones by the light of the torches on our mobile phones, as the moon rose over the rooftops of Jerusalem with its domes and minarets. As we recorded the reflection, there was the pop pop pop of gunfire from somewhere in the valley below, and we could hear young men’s voices raised in anger or amusement—it was hard to tell which. An owl hooted nearby. My flesh crawled with some distant sense of the loneliness and horror of that long ago night.
Disciples Asleep at Gethsemane, by Paul Kane
I
I have dreamt a dream of fulfilment, of freedom:
She was an old woman, with a face like the moon,
First full with reflection, then new and dark, and then
We were in a garden and the fountains murmured
Words I wanted so much to hear, but mixed suddenly
With harsher tones, with disappointment—a man’s voice.
I don’t deny it: I hold hard to my needs, myself.II
Who was I to be chosen? It was late, and I understood
So little—though that little after my own fashion,
And who am I not to be accounted as good as anyone else?
I slept, and in my sleep knew I slept, and dreamed of being
awake—it was enough, surely, for I had been chosen.
Three times he returned and spoke, but I enfolded him
into myself, hearing him say, “Sleep, and take your rest.”III
There was a meal, a hymn, some wine, and I followed,
wanting to be part of it all. We climbed a hill where
the trees were silver in the darkness, and a wind sighed
about us. It seemed to speak to my heart, saying, “This is
more than you,” and so I listened, and followed, knelt
and entered that voice. And then there were lights, a crowd,
confusion, a kiss, and a naked man running away into the dark.Three times nothing—still nothing, and those
Brought to keep faith sleep in the garden.
The master dead, the dream erodes from within,
and sweet hope is made sweeter by perversion:
when it comes down to one, it comes down.
The land is gall—nor milk, nor honey flow,
and false friends keep watch unawake.
Published in The Paris Review, Summer 1993.
So here is an edited version of my Tablet reflection.
The Sepulchre and the Garden
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is cavernous and depressing. Its ornate chapels puncture the gloom with their glitter and bling. The air, soupy with incense and candle wax, shifts and stirs with the chanting of monks and the irritable jostling of tourists and worshippers. [Today, it is of course almost deserted]. Like Jerusalem itself, it is a place of religious rivalry, with frequent fights breaking out among the monks of the Orthodox, Armenian, Catholic and Coptic churches that control the building. It is said to contain both Golgotha, where Christ was crucified, and the sepulchre where he was buried and rose again. It is a place that evokes more a sense of the brooding darkness and mob violence of Good Friday than the Resurrection joy of Easter Sunday.
In the nineteenth century, General Charles Gordon claimed that another location, outside the walls of Old Jerusalem near the Damascus Gate, was the real site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus. This site, known as the Garden Tomb, has become popular among Protestants, who have tended to reject the Church of the Holy Sepulchre because of its heavily Catholic influences.
Archaeologists still dispute whether either or neither of these sites is authentic, but the quest for historical authenticity sometimes has to yield to the more poetic and imaginative interpretations that inspire the life of faith. To say this is not to discount the importance of historical research, but to recognise that there are different ways of telling the same story, and truth must find language appropriate to what it seeks to communicate. So much of the ostensible conflict between science and religion arises out of our failure to respect the many voices in which truth speaks, depending on what we want to understand.
This is why, whatever the historical debates, I prefer to think of the Garden Tomb than the Church of the Holy Sepulchre when I reflect upon that first Easter. The Garden Tomb is a peaceful refuge hidden away from the bustling streets of Jerusalem, alive with birdsong amidst a scented profusion of flowering shrubs. There’s an ancient burial chamber hewn out of pale rock, which offers a space of quiet reflection. Just beyond, overlooking what is now a bus station, there is a craggy hill said to be the site of the crucifixion, in which the rock formation looks like a skull—the word ‘Golgotha’ means skull.
God in the Garden
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a place of stress and conflict, but the Garden Tomb is a place of recreation. That is a rich word whose symbolic significance we tend to overlook. Gardens have from time immemorial been places of reflection where people have sought God amidst the beauty of nature, but the word ‘recreation’ does not just mean rest. In the Bible, the garden is the locus of the creation of the world, and of the re-creation of the world in Christ. If we read the account of the resurrection in John’s Gospel with that in mind, we discover deep resonances with the Book of Genesis:
Genesis 2 (King James Version)
8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9 And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
15 And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
Genesis describes a creation that was ‘very good’, when man and woman, God and nature, shared a space of intimate communion in the Garden of Eden. As a relevant aside, the Hebrew text is subtle and multivalent in the different words it uses for sex and gender when referring to the first humans. Rabbi Michael Hilton and I recorded a discussion about this, which you can watch here:
To read the Genesis story as a factual account that challenges science is to misunderstand the kind of truth it communicates. The Catholic tradition has always recognised that the literal words of the Bible are a veil woven over its more profound truths, which we must discern through prayerful reflection on the meaning and not just the appearance of the text. Rabbinic teachings refer to the Torah as black fire written on white fire—the scripting of human words upon the impenetrable mystery of the creator.
The story of Genesis 1-3 remains a powerful myth of human origins, for it offers an imaginative account of why we are such a troubled species. Like the Freudian oedipal myth, it points to a primal experience of exile, mourning and sexual conflict in the shaping of the human soul.
On the one hand, we inhabit a story of imagined origins and endings, which haunts us with a yearning for joy and harmony beyond anything the world can offer. On the other hand, we are prey to intense feelings of fear and alienation, which afflict our most intimate relationships as well as our global politics. That ancient serpent appears as a mysterious presence in the midst of creation and it is still there, whispering its seductive offers of godlike power and domination to the human soul, infecting our lives with a malevolent undercurrent of shame and blame.
The last chapters of John’s Gospel take up themes from Genesis 1-3 and impregnate them with redemptive significance:
John 20:
11 But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre,
12 And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.
13 And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.
14 And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.
15 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.
16 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.
17 Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
18 Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her.
The Gospel author recapitulates the story of creation and the fall in Genesis by representing the garden of the resurrection as the scene of a dramatic and transformative encounter between the risen Christ and Mary of Magdala, heralding the dawning of a new age. Patristic theologians depicted Mary as a figure of the New Eve, who encountered Christ, the New Adam, in Paradise made new on Easter morning.
I’ve written a Substack post which reflects on that forbidden touch (more accurately translated as ‘do not cling to me’). Perhaps we need to imagine Mary and Jesus naked in the garden, with her erotic desire to have and to hold transformed into the mystical yearning that no mortal body can satisfy.
God in the City
If the garden is one important metaphor in the biblical story, the city is just as important. The Christian Bible unfolds between the garden of creation and the city of redemption. The biblical journey from the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem can be read as the story of God’s gradual redeeming of creation, as the human species evolves and migrates from nature to culture, from rural to urban environments, in that complex interweaving of sin and grace that constitutes our history.
Christianity has had an ambivalent attitude towards cities, even though it has always been more of an urban than a rural religion. In The City of God, Augustine identifies the fratricidal brother Cain with the building of the earthly city as a place of sin and corruption, and his murdered brother Abel with the heavenly city as the eternal home of the redeemed. Augustine’s pessimism—more accurately described as realism—was a reflection of the times in which he lived, amidst the violent collapse of the Roman Empire. But it is also possible to see the city as a space that shimmers with the incarnate presence of Christ amidst its human multitudes. Thomas Merton describes how, on a busy street corner, he had a sudden epiphany of this:
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, pp. 156)
While some monastic communities and hermits have withdrawn to wilderness places, many others have sought to serve Christ among the human throngs who populate the city. The quest to recognise Christ among the urban poor is likely to become ever more important, as the vast cities of the future swallow up surrounding rural communities.
A garden provides beauty and balm for the troubled soul, but the Christian life is not one of exile from the human condition. Paradoxically, perhaps the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is indeed a more holy place than the Garden Tomb, for it confronts us with all the failure and tawdriness of the Christian story, including its violent religiosity. To seek Christ in such a place is to confront what the incarnation means in all its struggle and turmoil. [I wrote that in 2012, but how true it seems today].
In its turbulent and bloody history, Jerusalem is sacred to all three Abrahamic religions. It is a holy city not because it is beautiful but because it is a focal point in the ongoing story of our confused and often violent quest for God. The biblical story begins in a garden and ends in a city. The life of faith calls us out of the sheltered tranquillity of paradise, into the darkened streets of the city where Mary of Magdala, like the Bride in the Song of Songs, went out in search of her beloved on that first dawn of God’s Sabbath recreation of the world.
Song of Songs 3:
3 By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.
2 I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.
Elizabeth Jennings, The Resurrection:
I was the one who waited in the garden
Doubting the morning and the early light.
I watched the mist lift off its own soft burden,
Permitting not believing my own sight.If there were sudden noises I dismissed
Them as a trick of sound, a sleight of hand.
Not by a natural joy could I be blessed
Or trust a thing I could not understand.Maybe I was a shadow thrown by one
Who, weeping, came to lift away the stone,
Or was I but the path on which the sun,
Too heavey for itself, was loosed and thrown?I heard the voices and the recognition
And love like kisses heard behind thin walls.
Were they my tears which fell, a real contrition
Or simply April with its waterfalls?It was by negatives I learnt my place.
The garden went on growing and I sensed
A sudden breeze that blew across my face.
Despair returned but now it danced, it danced.
(Elizabeth Jennings, New Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2019)
Book of Revelation 21:
21 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
6 And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
