The Very Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
From the time that Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire with the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D., pilgrimages have been made to the Holy Land by the faithful. The climax of every pilgrimage to the Holy Land is walking the Via Dolorosa.
The pilgrimage always starts out by visiting many different sites associated with our Lord’s earthly life and ministry. You visit the site of the Annunciation, where the angel Gabriel announced to the Blessed Virgin Mary that she would conceive and bear the Son of God; the Mount of the Temptations; the Mount of the Beatitudes, where it is believed Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount. You cross the Sea of Galilee and see the home of Peter’s mother-in-law in Capernaum.
Then you board the bus and head for Jerusalem. There you see the Upper Room, the Mount of Olives, and the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed before his arrest. Eventually, the group walks the Via Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross.
The current city of Jerusalem is built on top of the earlier ruins of the city, including the city of Jerusalem of the first century, the city that Jesus knew. In present-day Jerusalem there are still some elements of the first century that are visible, but most of it is covered up by the buildings and streets of the current city. So when I say that you walk the Way of the Cross, what I mean is that, as best as scholars can tell, it is basically the route that Jesus would have followed. That route is charted according to certain landmarks, like the house of Caiaphas, the high priest, and, of course, the end point of Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified.
Episcopal pilgrims most often use the service booklets for the Way of the Cross that we use here at Redeemer for Stations of the Cross. You begin the service in the courtyard where Jesus was tried and condemned to death. It is a beautiful, serene place which is now the courtyard for a church.
Then you move on to the narrow stone streets of the city. At various points your group stops and opens the booklets, listening to the scripture and praying the prayers. Then you move on to the next station. Stations are made at places recalling where Jesus takes up his cross, where he falls the first time, where he meets his afflicted mother, where Simon of Cyrene carries the cross for Jesus, where a woman wipes the face of Jesus, and so on.
Soon you come into the market district. Hundreds of narrow shops line the streets, and the shopkeepers are at all of the entrances to their shops, doing their best to lure you in. It doesn’t matter that you are praying along the way; they are there to eke out a living, and you are Americans with American dollars.
You do your best to keep to the task at hand, to maintain an attitude of reverence and prayer as you head to Golgotha. But it isn’t easy, and most pilgrims become somewhat frustrated. The marketplace is incredibly loud and very crowded, with a constant flow of people, shoulder to shoulder, moving in and out of the shops and up and down the streets. It is difficult to stop and try to hear the scripture and the prayers, and it is difficult to maintain a prayerful attitude.
It occurs to you that what you are experiencing, walking in the Way of the Cross in Jerusalem, is much more like what our Lord experienced than if you had been in a quiet, worshipful setting. The people who were surrounding our Lord as he was tried, the people who mocked him and who shouted, “Crucify him,” were not creating a prayerful setting. And as he walked through the streets of the city, the criminals carrying crosses were an all too common sight to cause much attention one way or another. Business went on much as usual as the Lord of Life went to his execution.
Eventually you arrive at the site of the crucifixion. An ancient church stands over the site, and at the center is the altar, constructed upon the rock where it is believed our Lord’s cross was placed. There has been a church on that site since the fourth century. Here there are many people, but there is reverential silence as pilgrims make their way to the foot of the cross—to see the very stone upon which that cross may indeed have been placed.
What you experience upon the Via Dolorosa contains a couple of important lessons. The first is that the whole incarnation, including Jesus going to the cross, is about God becoming intimately involved in human life. He did not keep himself at a safe distance from human need; he did not keep himself at a safe distance from human sin; and he did not distance himself from pain, suffering, and death. There is no situation in which you and I can find ourselves in which our Lord does not choose to become involved if he is invited. There is nothing too irreligious, too undignified, too painful to lay at his feet in order to receive what he has to offer.
The second lesson is that he tells us to go and do likewise. Don’t compartmentalize your religion, separating it from your everyday life. Let our Lord Jesus inform and be present in your business, your leisure, your friendships. Let your faith be evidence of God’s presence in every aspect of your life, and he will transform every aspect of your life by his presence.
“There is a green hill far away, outside a city wall, where our dear Lord was crucified who died to save us all.
We may not know, we cannot tell, what pains he had to bear, but we believe it was for us he hung and suffered there.
O dearly, dearly has he loved! And we must love him, too, and trust in his redeeming blood, and try his works to do.”
Sermon preached by The Very Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota, Florida
Good Friday, 3 April 2015