Stations of the Cross

A college friend, who went with me and several other students to Israel in January 1990, recently requested that I send him some photos of our trip. This prompted me to go back through my album and scan several of them, uploading them to Facebook and making them available not only to him but to all of my other friends online. Because our computer is slow, that took a good deal of time, stretching out over several weeks, and carried me into Holy Week. Though of course my experience of being in the Holy Land has affected my experience of reading scripture ever since, I don't often pull out these photos and dwell on them at the same time I am reading and meditating on particular passages. This was particularly meaningful to me as I was directing a dramatic reading of the Passion Narrative for our Palm Sunday service, and reading parts for a Maundy Thursday seder service and a Good Friday Stations of the Cross service.

I am glad that my first experience of the Stations of the Cross was at the actual sites in Jersualem where these events (some scriptural and others simply traditional) took place. Of course, a lot has changed in two thousand years, some of the events may have never happened or likely happened elsewhere (according to the best archaeological evidence today), and what sites are most likely to be authentic have ancient churches built over them so that what happened on that spot (if it happened on that spot) looked very different than it does today. Still, the idea of participating in something with millennia of pilgrims living and dead, trying to be faithful to what they believe to be following in Christ's footsteps from the place of his condemnation to the place of his burial, has a lot to commend it, and though I did it as part of a study tour rather than a pilgrimage ("Catholics do pilgrimages; Protestants do study tours"), having been there brings the experience alive to me in a way I can't otherwise imagine.

One of the things that stands out in my memory is the fact that there is (or at least was) a "Fourth Station T-Shirt Shop." I did not go in so I cannot testify as to what they sold there (and how sacriligeous or religious-kitschy it might have been), but the fact of the store's existence and name is a reminder of the struggle between God and Mammon, the sellers of livestock and moneychangers whom Jesus chased out of the temple, and of the thirty pieces of silver Judas collected for agreeing to betray his Lord. The movie version of Jesus Christ Superstar, with its rows of shopkeepers who have turned the temple into a tourist trap really hits the nail on the head here. Yes it's awful how salesmen today are preying on pilgrims, but they were doing it in Jesus' day as well, and so it somehow makes the experience all that more authentic.

Another clear memory of walking the Via Dolorosa with our group was the fact that when we reached the Seventh Station (which alledgedly marks the spot where Jesus fell a second time, one of those things not specifically mentioned in scripture), the site had recently been vandalized and the smell of teargas was still strong in the area. Again one's immediate feelings are "How awful! How inappropriate!", but when one thinks back to the fact that Jerusalem has been a religious and political hotspot since at least the time of Jesus, when Samaritans and Jews constantly strove to desecrate each other's religious sites and Roman soldiers were always after Zealots and other troublemakers, it again reinforces the fact that nothing is new under the sun, and that if we want to truly walk in the way of Jesus, these are the kinds of things we should expect to encounter.

The last several stations are actually on or in the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Although "Gordon's Calvary" is much more what one would expect to see when visiting Jesus' tomb, there is no question among archaeologists as to which site is more likely to be authentic. Much in the church feels overwrought and distracting. But the rock under glass which is purported to be Golgotha seemed convincing to me, and the stillness of being in the actual Sepulchre (once one gets past the fact that all the rock from around the cave has been cleared away to make the church, once one makes it through the line and is out of sight of the crowds and the gold and everything else) is rather moving. The empty tomb is truly empty, and you can sense the disorientation of the women and disciples who ran here. Something is missing, something is not how we expected it to be. The pilgrimage ends in emptiness, but that emptiness is the heart of the Good News. "He is not here, He is risen! ALLELUIA!"