Even today, we may find places that seem Holy. Many battlefields, the sites of blood shed for freedom and for liberation of a people, have that feeling of Holy. Kneeling down and touching the ground at such places and you realize that the trees and grass there have been fed by the blood poured out here many years before.
One other place. Golgotha. Calvary. The place of the Cross.
Tradition and oral history before that, and archeology point to a rocky site, formerly just outside of the walls of Jerusalem and now within the walls of a church as the site of this Holy Place.
It was here that Peter tells us, “Jesus himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:24)
The blood of the son of God was shed here on the Cross, poured out as the sacrifice for the sins of the world.
An outcropping of that rock still exists today, weathered and cracked.
Whether this is the actual rock on which blood was spilt is unknown, but it is very much like the place where Jesus died on a Friday.
That place was Holy because, “Jesus entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” (Hebrews 9:12)
At a Holy Place very much like this, God has brought us near to Him. “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” (Ephesians 2:13)
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