For Carmen, 26 June, 2023
Thank you so much for leading your pilgrims from St. Alban’s to Jerusalem. As you prayed Station XIV, you extended Jesus’ healing to your parish from the empty tomb. Each Station confronts the Divine Reversal with God turning upside down everything we hold to be so valuable: our wealth, power, authority, and self-importance. All of these are turned upside down by Jesus wearing a crown of thorns. As we pray each Station, we are challenged: which crown am I willing to wear—the crown made of silver and gold, or the crown made out of thorns? God bless you.
So reads the author’s handwritten inscription on the inside of my copy of John Peterson’s book A Walk in Jerusalem: Stations of the Cross. This wonderful little book was our guide when my fellow pilgrims and I walked the Via Dolorosa together in Jerusalem last summer. This wonderful little book will also be our guide here at St. Alban’s, when we gather to walk the Stations of the Cross together in the nave at noon each Friday in Lent.
On Ash Wednesday, I preached about books that contain maps inside to help orient the reader to the trajectory and geography of the story. John Peterson’s book is one of these books. The map of Jesus’s final path through the streets of Jerusalem only covers about 2,000 feet of measurable distance. The journey through the Stations in our nave is even shorter. But it is the unmeasurables that make the path so arduous. How does one measure betrayal? Suffering? How does one measure the weight of every cross carried by the innocent?
When we walk the Stations together this Friday at noon, and next Friday, all the way to Good Friday, we will journey with every pilgrim who has walked this route before. We will journey with all the people of the Holy Land who are walking a route of pain and suffering in this very moment. We will retrace the map that leads not to a crown of gold and silver, but to a crown of thorns. We will walk with Jesus, and he with us. Please come.
Yours in Christ,
Carmen
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