This week a friend and I went to a local church to walk the Stations of the Cross. In the darkened sanctuary, we stood in front of images of each station, spending time with the art and spending time inside the scripture each image depicted. (The images at this church were the work of Kreg Yingst whose block print book of psalms is something I use regularly).
The stations of the cross are an old practice that follows the path Jesus took to his death, engaging the story in a physical way. Some traditions say that Mary walked this path regularly, visiting the places, the moments of her son’s experience unto death - this seems like something I understand but I’m not sure I could say exactly why yet. Pilgrims began visiting these sites of Jesus’ passion in Jerusalem within decades as a form of devotion. As time went on and getting to the holy land was difficult these moments of Christ’s passion began to be depicted in churches - images and statuary - to help people remember, pray through and be shaped by this way of Christ. The number and content of the stations has varied throughout the ages. The stations we engaged with this year are ones based on the stories found in the gospels.
Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane;
Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested;
Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin;
Jesus is denied by Peter three times;
Jesus is judged by Pilate;
Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns;
Jesus takes up his cross;
Jesus is helped by Simon of Cyrene to carry his cross;
Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem;
Jesus is crucified;
Jesus promises his kingdom to the repentant thief;
Jesus entrusts Mary and John to each other;
Jesus dies on the cross; and
Jesus is laid in the tomb.
As I stepped back from the stations, in the dark sanctuary, I was struck by how at every point, this story is intertwined with a real sort of humanity. Real relations, real people, real fear, real exhaustion, real care. There is nothing abstract about this way to redemption. It has nothing to do with perfection but a deep intertwining with the real life of the world.
And what struck me was how this is THE way we are given to follow. In every image on this way to the cross, a human emotion, a human experience and deeply human needs are fleshed out and we are invited to enter them with Christ. On this way to the cross, humanity is not perfected into redemption, nor tolerated until redemption, nor is it hated until it gains perfection. On this way to the cross, humanity is lived with, it is borne, it is honored, shown bare in its darkness and its honesty. On this way to the cross, humanity is loved all the way onto the cross, loved unto redemption. There is no part of human experience where God cannot work nor refuses to go. Humanity - the good and the dark of us - is not an afterthought. Humanity is not a necessary evil to be conquered on the way to God - living into, wrestling with, being subject to but throughout loving the human experience is THE WAY any of this is redeemed.
Christ was afraid. Christ was in anguish. Christ wanted to follow his God but was worried about how hard it would be.
Christ was betrayed by a friend who thought he was doing God’s work. Christ was condemned for insisting God is bigger than our perceptions of God and Christ was condemned for how much power letting people live with this kind of God takes away from the powerful.
Christ felt the pain of being denied by fearful friends were were afraid of the religious and their death-dealing judgement. Christ felt the pain given by men just doing their jobs. Christ was comforted by women who knew the pain of losing to the powers that be. Christ was helped by a stranger in the crowd, an outsider. Christ was recognized as someone true by a thief who knew his own soul’s shadow side and not by the high priests. Christ knew his mother needed a son. He knew his beloved friend needed a mother. He knew the darkness of feeling abandoned by God and he knew that in the end, all he could control was how he surrendered into death.
How this willing entanglement in real humanity pans out in our real lives is maybe no more mysterious than that it is our real lives, not our perfected ones, where God meets us. Is it that simple? For myself in this year, I think it has to be.
My friend and I, in this dark sanctuary, like us all, walked these stations while being right in the middle of our real lives. Deep heartache, deep anguish, deep joy, and deep meaning - it’s all a jumble and it feels overwhelming. And in this grey week, it is here, in these stories, in these bodies with these people, and these set back and these gifts, that God’s story grows into us, reshaping us, renewing us. For this life and not some far away other. Maybe the invitation on Good Friday is nothing more mysterious than this - that we live as though our utterly human lives were seen, known and loved into life, not removing the dark but with bare hope moving through it. And even in death we trust that this is the truest truth.
I remembered Mary Oliver’s poem Gethsemane today:
The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.
Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.
The cricket has such a splendid fringe on its feet,
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,
and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.
Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, mayb e
the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move,
maybe
the lake far away, where once he walked as on a
blue pavement
lay still and waited, wild awake.
Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not
keep that vigil, how they must have wept,
so utterly human, knowing this too
must be part of the story.
We wait, in our utter humanness. We wait with Christ today. Not perfecting our songs but indeed letting the very roots of our need to sing, deep in our own bodies, tired and mortal, be seen, known and loved into redemption.
—May the way of this dark Friday reveal something true about your humanity, so that you may join in with this dark mystery of life - amen.
-For more on the Stations of the Cross:
Wonderfully written and powerfully intuitive. “…he knew that in the end, all he could control was how he surrendered into death”. This brings me back to a place 8 years ago watching by beloved wife in her last few minutes consciousness bravely facing her journey,needing to ask her and my daughter to help her to the washroom, totally dependent but courageously without contention ‘surrendering into death’.