Stations of the Cross 2026

Okay, welcome everybody to our stations of the cross on Monday night.

The handouts looked a little different, but the words are all the same.

Should all be the same or roughly the same.

If it's okay, I wanted to just give you just a visual of what this would have looked like.

And it's changed quite a bit.

Tell you a little bit about it briefly, and then the stations do their own, they do their own thing.

And then after that, we can gather for uh just an informal Eucharist.

That's the plan.

So here's a map of this is a scale model of Jerusalem.

Speakers on.

Oh yeah.

Um here's a scale model of Jerusalem when Jesus was around.

And so uh if you're here yesterday and you heard me say that this is clearly the temple map in any wonder of the world.

Here's what's called the Antonia, where the Roman legion would have come to suppress any kind of wild ideas that people had during Holy Week.

The population might have gone up by 50 to 100 times what it was.

Just think about that, right?

That's pretty significant.

So the trial would have been here, and then Jesus would have been taken outside the city gates to be crucified.

Can you see where that is?

Maybe right there.

Probably more like over here than we think.

The journey probably was about 300 yards at the most.

More like 150.

Today, if you walk the Via Dola Rosa, it's about two miles.

And the reason being the city grew and grew over time, right?

And buildings got put in the way.

So it's very turny.

In this diagram, it's just out there.

It's just straight out.

Why outside the gates?

Because you don't want blood and corpses where people live and do business, right?

That's the story.

So you do all that stuff outside the gates.

The stations of the cross were an invention of the crusades.

People who lived in Scotland and Ireland came on Crusades, people in Germany, and they found something really fantastic about trying to walk the literal road and think through, oh, okay, there were like moments, discrete moments.

Not all of them are biblical, so many of them came up through tradition, like Jesus falling three times.

You wouldn't read that in the scriptures.

That was them imagining what this journey would be like.

And like the Veronica story, you won't find that in the scriptures.

You find that actually in the Orthodox Church.

In Georgia, you can actually find the real veil of Veronica, which is Jesus' face, like painted on it because she wiped his face off, but it's stuck.

So you have, I don't want to call it legend as it's fake.

What I want to say is you have these other traditions that kind of entered the story as acts of contemplation on the way.

And if you go to Jerusalem today, every station has a chapel.

So it's like a one and a half, two-mile walk on the Via Dolor Rosa, which goes up and down, up and down.

That makes the way of suffering, right?

And it would have been flat at the chapels, just to be clear.

So people, when they left the Holy Land from the Crusades, they said, you know, there's something to walking the story.

Something really important about walking the story.

And that's where the stations of the cross came from as we do it.

So there are many, many ones out there.

I've made a few tweaks to this one that I really like, and I'm going to tell you it's very social justice oriented, and it surprised me, because I like it.

So I'm going to invite you to walk the stations with me.

We won't even be doing a hundred yards.

We'll be walking around the sanctuary.

And of course, all of the bold and the italicized lines are for us to say in comment.

And then otherwise I'll sort of lean through.

Everyone has a description, everyone has a prayer, and we'll start over here at station.

So I invite you to join me at station one.

We remember Jesus was captured at night, taken away by soldiers, stripped of his garments, interrogated, tortured, crowned with sharp thorns, and now handed over to be condemned to death by Pontius Pilate.

Death on a cross.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Jesus is condemned unjustly by those who understand him, and by those who were frightened of what he did and said.

Perhaps they sensed that this man could make a difference, and he could turn their world upside down.

We continue to condemn people unjustly today.

People are condemned because of the color of their skin, their gender, their beliefs, because they are born with a disability, because they don't conform to our way of thinking.

The list is endless.

There are also people who have been justly condemned, who have been found guilty, serve their sentence, and ask for forgiveness.

Does our society really forgive?

Really believe that people can change, or do we continue to condemn them over and over again?

Let us pray.

Jesus, what a terrible injustice to see you condemned to death.

Your own people, the Roman judges and the soldiers, didn't recognize you were the Son of God.

Give us grace to see, respect, and love you in all people, both innocent and guilty.

Change our hearts that we may see with new eyes those we might otherwise condemn.

Amen.

Jesus was led away carrying the cross by himself.

The cross is not just a piece of wood, it is everything that makes life difficult.

Jesus carried the crosses of his life without a complaint as a poor person and as an itinerant prophet.

The calm and courageous way he put up with the threats of the Pharisees and the lack of the understanding of his own disciples, and the way that he carried all the burdens of his life, but in particular, the way in which he carries this awful final burden, he transforms the cross from a symbol of condemnation into one of liberation.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

There are burdens that we all carry.

Some are very obvious, and others we take great care to hide.

There are the burdens of illness, of pain and disability, of old age dependence and caring for someone who no longer knows who we are.

There are the burdens of constant fear, of loneliness, and of isolation.

The invitation of Jesus on the cross is to hand over these burdens to him.

Let us pray.

May we see your presence, Lord, in all the burdens we carry today.

Help us to share our burdens more freely, not to be afraid to acknowledge our fears and our pain.

May we be more aware of the crosses that others bear and make time to alleviate their burden.

May your face shine on each one of us through the crosses we bear.

Amen.

I invite you to join me in station three.

It's a small line to see.

Jesus falls.

Here Jesus shows us that being heroic does not mean staying on one's feet at all costs.

Being heroic means getting up again after falling and starting off on the roaches.

Human beings will never resign themselves to stay flat on the ground.

By Jesus, they will get up again, pick up their crosses, and keep on searching for our promised land of total liberation.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Look at Jesus fall under his cross.

He might have fallen into the gutter or be slouched into a doorway on Skid Row.

He doesn't look much like God there, but he didn't look like God when he fell into the dirt on the way to Calvary either.

The crowds forgone with disdain at this man whom they see as a sinner, who has been condemned to death by the authorities.

Like the crowd, we often have only condemnation and rejection for those we see as sinners.

We judge them without knowing about their trials, scourging and crowning them with thorns.

Do we even suspect the part we might have played in knocking them down?

What do we do to help them?

Let us pray.

Jesus, it's easy to see your image and saints.

Help us to see you and the sinners too.

You had a place in your heart for the divorced Samaritan woman, that he is the good thief, and for those who crucified you.

Give us the same compassionate heart.

Amen.

At Station 4, we remember Jesus meeting his mother.

When Jesus and his mother meet, they just look at each other.

Words cannot express how they feel.

What he saw in his mother's eyes must have hurt him more than the raw pain of his wounds.

This is perhaps for Jesus the most painful time of all.

This is his bereavement.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Jesus carries the heaviest burden of the loss of his family, a sundering of the earthly loving relationship between mother and child.

This was not of his making.

The violence inflicted upon him etched into the very heart of his mother as she watched the agony of her son.

We see Mary's pain, the mothers and fathers who watch their children giving up their life to drugs, addictions, and suicide, and the women and men who suffer violence and the ongoing threat of violence in every home from spouse or child.

We see Mary's pain in a child could be with the breakdown of a parent's marriage, and the couple trying desperately to rebuild their relationship and family anew.

Let us pray.

Jesus, we remember the gaze that rested between you and your mother.

In that moment of pain, there was also a moment of deep and enduring love.

Jesus, give us the courage to bring that love into the deepest recesses of our homes, to our children, to our spouses, to those places of fracture and disharmony in our circle of relationships.

Amen.

Simon and Cyrene, a stranger in the city, did not know Jesus.

But that did not matter.

What matters here is that at this moment it be Simon was capable of lending his shoulders to one and given out, of offering his strength to one who had nothing left, of taking on himself the cross, which Jesus can no longer carry.

We adore you, Christ and we praise you.

Be called as by your Holy Cross, you who have deemed the world.

Look at Jesus who lies hidden and unknown beneath every person in need.

Across our world, we see human suffering in the faces of strangers, in the faces of those struggle for democracy in the Middle East and beyond.

The faces of those dealing with the loss of life and the destruction of property.

People we know of, but may not know, must live with the aftermath of the ravages and destructive, fortunate forces of nature, coping with floods drought, with the devastating effects of climate change.

Let us pray.

Lord, help us to grasp our opportunities to be a designer in our life.

In those times when we can help, let us have the generosity to do so.

May we continue the spirit of Side through our support and agencies, such as the Lord of the States, abyssal relief and development, and all the word to alleviate suffering in our world.

Lord, may we have the humility to accept all the sirens along our road who reach out to help us in our moments of need.

Amen.

Station 6, we refer to Veronica wiping the face of Jesus.

Veronica was so moved by the side of Jesus' suffering that she courageously came down from the crowd to wipe the blood and sweat his face with a towel.

She was rewarded when the image of his face was transferred to the tower.

It is a suffering face, to speak it with wounds.

Yet this is the only image of himself that Jesus chose to leave with us according to his tradition.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you.

Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Today the visible face of Christ, the church, stands before us, still wounded and disfigured, disfigured by its own sins of abuse of children and power, increased with the wounds of hurt and betrayal.

Bearing the scars of the Murphy and Ryan reports, the face of Christ calls us to look upon and heal the sin of our church.

Let us pray.

Jesus, give your wounded church the courage of Veronica, so that we may wash the face of Christ clean from the disfigurements of our sin.

Help us to bring healing to the stars that hide the beauty of your face to our world.

Give us the faith to continue to build your church as a visible sign of your love and compassion.

Amen.

Stretched to a breaking point by his awful scourging, bowed under the weight of the cross, worn out by the abandonment of all his friends, Jesus stumbles again.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you.

Because by your Holy Cross, you have redeemed the world.

All about his people are overburdened by the crosses they carry, they struggle and sometimes fall.

There are those who have lost their jobs and feel that they have little hope of finding another.

Those who live with the prospect of unemployment and those who struggle to keep others in work.

There are those who suffer because of failures in our financial health and political systems.

Jesus is with each one of us, however we fall, and there he chooses to love and save us.

Let us pray.

Jesus from deep within yourself, you found the courage and strength to get up once again and continue the journey.

Give us your strength to keep going even when hope is dead.

Amen.

At station 8, we remember Jesus speaking of the women at Jerusalem.

The women of Jerusalem wept when they saw how Jesus suffered.

Jesus recognized their distress.

He broke his silence for the first time, spoke to them, and said, Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me.

Weep for yourselves and for your children.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Look at Jesus and listen to his message for us today.

Weep for the children who are abused.

Weep for the women who are victimized.

Weep for men and women who suffer from the tyranny of today's body image, who controls their lives and prevents them from feeling lovable.

Weep for the young who cannot find a job or a way in life.

Weep for the old who are forgotten.

Weep for people who starve in the shadow of abundance.

Weep for people who are homeless in exile or seeking refuge.

Weep for them.

Let us pray.

Lord, open our hearts to the suffering of all people in our world.

Give us the generosity of the Spirit to help us recognize their pain, the courage to challenge the systems that place intolerable burdens on them, and the compassion to support them.

Amen.

Station 9, we contemplate the tradition of Jesus falling a third time.

Jesus falls a third time, broken and exhausted physically and emotionally.

Lying on the ground, Jesus must decide.

Does he get up once more or does he just stop and give up?

We see him rise again with all his power.

He continues on his journey.

Jesus shows us that we can go on, even if nobody else thinks that it is possible.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Many in our world today feel that they are at that moment of final falling, that their burden is too much to carry, they cannot bear anymore.

Crushed by the weight of their cross, they feel unable to get up, unable to go on.

Some may look for relief and addiction, some may look to escape through suicide.

In Jesus, we find our hope and our encouragement.

The third floor of Jesus reminds us that even in our moment of complete helplessness, or our experiences of depression, in our own Calvary, we can't stand up again.

Jesus is with us and would be our strength.

Let us pray.

Lord, we pray that when our strength fails, when our hope fades, and when our spirit grows weary, that we will put our unbounded trust in you.

In turn, may we bring your love in a word or action of comfort to another in their moment of meaningless depression or At Station 10, we remember the moment in which Jesus was stripped by the soldiers of his clothing.

The clothes were ripped from Jesus.

He was stripped of his dignity in front of an irreverent mob and of his own mother.

Jesus sacrifices everything.

He holds nothing of himself back.

Here in the threshold of death, even more intensely than during his lifetime, he is a need for others.

He surrenders everything in order to ransom all.

We adore you, O our extent, and praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the Lord.

Look at Jesus in the absolute indignity inflicted upon him by society.

Jesus continues to be stripped of his dignity in those who have had their good name taken from them and the intimate details of their lives exposed from the media.

Society takes on the role of judge and jury as we curiously devoured the details.

Jesus is stripped again when men, women, and children are portrayed as objects in a pornographic manner in magazines, DVDs, on television, and the internet.

Let us pray.

Forgive us, Lord, for being an irreverent mob crying into people's lives.

Forgive us for being consumers of gossip under the name of news.

Let us never expose anyone.

May we respect the dignity of others and be of judgment to God.

Let us see the good in those around us and so enable them to reach their full potential.

Amen.

Huge iron nails are hammered to his wrists and to his ankles.

Iron to human flesh, the flesh must yield.

There is no defense.

Jesus nailed to the cross cannot move away.

The hand that has wiped blindness from the eyes, the hand that opened the seal of deafness, the hand that touched a heart and cured a leper, the hand that blessed children and those with a disability.

The carpenter's hand is joined to the wood again.

As the cross is put in place, he hangs there between us and God, a blood-stained victim for love.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Jesus continues to be crucified in the ten children who die every minute of hunger in our world.

He is crucified in all who remained, damaged, and displaced because of war.

He is crucified in all who are marginalized in our society because of their race, sexuality, or gender.

He is crucified in those who are abused physically, sexually, or emotionally.

He is crucified in those who are trafficked across the world.

He is crucified in the exploitation of the earth and its resources.

Let us pray.

Jesus, we pray on behalf of those who cannot reach out to you at this moment.

We pray for all victims of violence, those who suffer it and those who inflict it.

We pray especially for children, for the elderly, and those too vulnerable to defend themselves.

May victims of cruelty and oppression know that you are always with them.

Amen.

Here at Station 12, we remember that Jesus died on the cross.

As the life of Jesus ebbs away, his words are not of condemnation or of pity for himself, for their forgiveness.

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

In the midst of his anguish and suffering, Jesus calls upon his Father to forgive those who are putting him to death.

This is the real challenge of the cross: forgiveness even of those who hurt us most.

We adore you, Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

There is much to seek forgiveness for in our world today.

Under poverty, violence, abuse, war, neglect, corruption, the list seemed endless.

Each one of us praying to these stations to continue the list on our own behalf, and indeed on behalf of those who have hurt us.

As Jesus dies on Calvary, he challenges us to love our enemies, to let go of hurt, to ask for forgiveness, and when we cannot find it in our hearts to forgive, to ask God to do it for us.

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Let us pray.

Let us stand with those who watched and prayed in silence while Jesus breathed his last.

As we cannot measure love, so we cannot dilute this ultimate act of love and forgiveness with words.

Let our love stand silence.

Lord, let our love and forgiveness speak your praise.

Amen.

Station 13, we contemplate Jesus' dead body being taken down from the cross.

Now Mary takes the broken body of her son in her arms.

In her grief, she remembers the words of her son over the bread, this is my body broken for you, and over the wine, this is my blood poured out for you.

She remembers that little lady in Bethlehem worshipped by shepherds and kings.

She remembers the days when the crowds follow him, and she is full of sorrow as she holds her body and her blood.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Mary's grief is our grief too.

As Mary cradles the lifeless body of her son and offers him back to the Father, she stands with all parents who have held their children close to them in death.

Those lost through accidents or acts of violence, those who have died by suicide, those who have died suddenly or after illness.

Mary grieves with all those sorrow for loved ones.

Parents, siblings, family members, friends.

Let us pray.

Help us, Lord, to accept the partings that must come.

Help us to offer our loved ones back to you as Mary offered her son.

Faced with the silence of death, let us not despair but find hope.

May the finality of death not oppress us.

Help us to trust in you, the Lord of the living and the dead.

Amen.

His body lay in the darker of the world, a seed dying in the winter of all spirits.

All those who had loved him felt emptied and exhausted.

There seemed no longer any sense or purpose in anything.

But at least no more harm could come to him.

They closed the tomb and they left.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

There are times when we are overcome by the darkness of the tomb, by the countless deaths that we experienced each day.

But the answer to all our grieving and despair lies in this place.

The world is now the tabernacle of God.

The grain of wheat sound in darkness and in death has indeed yielded a rich harvest.

Our presence here gives witness to that.

Jesus' death was not in vain.

Let us pray.

Jesus, each day who put before us life or death, help us always to choose life.

We pray for all those we have known who have died, and for those who have no one to pray for them.

We ask for the gift of faith when we are faced with the darkness of the tomb and our own death approaches.

May we have eyes to see the promise of new life, that the darkness can hold.

Amen.

I'm going to invite you as you like to come maybe to these towards two middle rows at your own speed.

And I'd like to offer you nourishment.

This is an earthy reading, isn't it?

It's an earthy reading.

So I'd like to invite you to come.

I'll give you a little booklet and offer you nourishment from God's table for the evening.