11-24-19 Stations of the Cross Reflections and Prayers

Today is Christ the King Sunday.

The church in her wisdom has put today at the end of the church year to remember that Christ is not only enthroned in glory, but continues to be enthroned in suffering.

And so I want you to hear these stations as we walk through them today, as our invitation to pursue restorative justice in our world, and particularly as Advent begins next week, for us to open ourselves for Christ to come into our lives, to our world, our community anew this coming year.

As we accompany Jesus on his journey to Calvary, let us take a moment to remember how difficult that journey was.

He carried his cross through the narrow, crowded streets of Jerusalem.

It was Passover time, and so the city was full of people, many of whom mocked, jostled, and took pleasure in watching as Jesus struggled with his heavy burden.

The way was often steep.

The journey that Jesus made on that day remains a symbol of Christianity and the world as it struggles with its own crosses and failures and the challenges of modern life.

The streets of our towns are filled with people who carry their personal crosses, who are bruised, battered, and broken.

Through these stations of the cross, Jesus is inviting us to journey with Him and to reflect on His suffering as it continues in the lives of His people.

In solidarity with all who suffer, let us pray that we will be open to whatever He wants us to see, hear, and understand.

You are, of course, invited to join us in front of each station, but the facsimiles of each are also in your bulletin, should you choose to remain where you are.

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.

Because you have redeemed the world.

Perhaps they sense that this man could make a difference, that 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 the 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.

Your own people, your own injustices, and souls and recognize that you could somehow give us the grace to see, respect, and love you of all people, both innocent and guilty.

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

Station 2.

Jesus takes up his cross.

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 complaint as a poor person and as an itinerant prophet.

In the calm and courageous way he put up with the threats of the Pharisees and the lack of understanding of his own disciples.

In 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.

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, 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, and 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.

Station three, Jesus falls for the first time.

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 road chosen.

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

Like Jesus, they will get up again, pick up their crosses, and keep on searching for a 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 look on 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 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, easy to see your image and saints.

Help us to see you in sinners too.

You had a place in your heart for the divorced American woman, the case, the good deed, and for those who crucified you.

Give us the same compassion of heart.

Amen.

Station four.

Jesus meets 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 in his wounds.

This for Jesus is 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 Lord.

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

This was not of his making.

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

We see Mary's pain in the mothers and fathers who watch their children giving up their lives to drugs, addiction, and suicide.

In the women and men who suffer violence and the ongoing threat of violence in their home from a spouse or child.

We see Mary's pain in the child coping with the breakdown of a parent's marriage, in the couple trying desperately to rebuild the 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.

Station five, Simon helps Jesus.

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

But that did not matter.

What matters here is that in this moment of need, Simon was capable of lending his shoulders to one whose own had given out, of offering his strengths to one who had nothing left, of taking on himself the cross, which Jesus could no longer carry.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed 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 struggling for democracy in the Middle East and beyond, in the faces of those dealing with the loss of life and destruction of property.

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

Let us pray.

Lord, help us to grasp our opportunities to be a Simon in our world.

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

May we continue to serve Simon through our supportive agencies such as the Lord of the Streets, the Fiscal Relief and Development, and all who work to alleviate suffering in our world.

Lord, may we have the humility to accept all the Simons along our road.

Reach out to help us in our moments of need.

Amen.

Station 6.

Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.

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

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

It is a suffering face, disfigured with wounds.

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

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 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 scars 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.

Station 7, Jesus falls for the second time.

Stretched to 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 Christ and we praise you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

All around us, 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 to continue your journey.

Lost your strength to keep going, even when hope is dead.

Amen.

Station eight.

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 for 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 that 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 shadows 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 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 nine, Jesus falls for a third time.

Jesus falls for 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, and 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.

Because by your Holy Cross you can have to be the Lord.

Many in our world today feel that they are at that moment a 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 fall of Jesus reminds us that even in our moment of complete helplessness or our experiences of depression in our own Calvary, we can stand up again.

Jesus is with us and Jesus is our strength.

Let us pray.

Lord, we pray that when our strength fails, when our whole faith, 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 of action, of comfort to another, in our moment of meaningless depression, despair.

Amen.

Station 10.

Jesus is stripped of his clothing.

The clothes were ripped from Jesus.

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

Jesus sacrifices everything.

He holds nothing of himself back.

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

He surrenders everything in order to ransom all.

We adore you, O Christ.

We praise you.

Because on your holding his cross, you have indeed the world.

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

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

Society takes on the role of judge and jury as we curiously devour 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 prying into people's lives.

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

Let us never expose anyone.

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

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

Amen.

Station 11.

Jesus is nailed to the cross.

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

Iron through human flesh.

The flesh must yield.

There is no defense.

Jesus, nailed to the cross, cannot move.

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 crossed.

Because by our 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 are maimed, 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.

Station twelve.

Jesus dies on the cross.

As the life of Jesus ebbs away, his words are not of condemnation or of pity for himself, but of 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 redeem the Lord.

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

Hunger, poverty, violence, abuse, war, neglect, corruption, the list seems endless.

Each one of us praying these stations could 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 span the silence.

Lord, let our love and forgiveness speak your praise.

Amen.

Station 13, Jesus is taken down from the cross.

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

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

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

She remembers the days when the crowds followed him, and she is full of sorrow.

We adore you, O Christ.

We replace you.

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, and those who died suddenly or after illness.

Mary grieves with all whose sorrow for loved ones, parents, siblings, family members, friends.

Let us pray.

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

Help us to offer our loved ones back to you.

As Mary offered your son, based at 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.

Station 14.

Jesus is laid in the tomb.

That night his body lay in the dark earth 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 left.

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

Because by your holy cross you are redeemed the world.

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

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

The world is now the tabernacle of God.

The grain of wheat sown 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 you 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 dream and our own death approaches.

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

Amen.