Sometimes you just know when you’ve done something right. There are so many other times when you second guess yourself or you feel like if you had done something with a little more this or a little more that then you would have hit the mark. Other times you are quite certain that whatever it was you had hoped to do, you were so off that the bigger hope is that no one was looking, that what you had focused so intently on was so insignificant to everyone else, that you can slink back into your private hole and just wait for the dust to settle. Yesterday I had one of those ‘done something right’ experiences.
When we began our Lenten walk together as a faith community more nearly forty days plus or minus a few, we chose to embrace the theme of ‘Holy Way’. In our words, prayers, reflections, sermons, music, intentions, we would try to unpack what it means to walk in a holy way after the example of Jesus. It was and is a noble endeavor, one that is of course impossible to ever attain. We would also try to help the community visualize this and embody it in some way.
As the theme began to unfold I was reminded of the act of walking the Stations of the Cross. While this is more often an Episcopal or Roman Catholic tradition, who is to say that United Methodists could not also benefit from this way of entering into the story of Jesus’ last days? Seriously. So we decided to invite people within our community, artists and those who like to create, to take the traditional messages of the different stations and see them with new eyes. We asked them to create a ‘station’, a stopping off point along the Holy Way, where people might reflect on the story of Jesus movement in the world, and in their own lives, in new ways.
As the stations began to arrive at the church, to say I was overwhelmed with the depth of them is such an understatement! What was created by an array of generations was beautiful, touching, raw, despairing and hopeful. A perfect set of descriptors for this terrifying and miraculous story.
Yesterday our Holy Thursday services centered on people walking the stations…..walking one kind of Holy Way. Those who attended walked singly or in groups, reading aloud the words that described the message of each station and then praying the prayer: “By the power of your Holy Way, O God, help us to love and change the world.” Pausing at each unique station, created by people they might know, the worshipers became pilgrims. Like the countless people who have labored to unpack and understand, embody and employ the sacred story, these travelers saw things in the Passion story they had not seen before. Things not preached to them from a pulpit by those ‘trained’ in theological reflection. Instead, the message came through the lens of those who wrestled to make the gospel message real, alive, inspirited in this time in which we all live.
As these stations of the cross were created,theology became practical, real. The movement of God became present, not in some dusty place of tradition, but in the headlines and back rooms of every day living. Questions were asked. What does Jesus’ courage and despair mean in my life? How does crucifixion happen today and to whom and what? Whose tears are shed? Where is the passion for the way of love in our time? What can this mean for how I, how you, walk the holy way of our lives? Where am I entombed? Who is rolling away the stone? How are we, all of us, rising from the dead places that are in speech of us?
In creating these stations, people embodied the gospel story and offered that to others. In walking the stations, people allowed the gospel message to seep into the cracks and crevices of their prayer, their path. For me this is one way the Word has become flesh….and dwells among us. The blessing of this will carry me through this Good Friday into the glory of Easter morning.
Blessing…..blessing….blessing….
