The Stations of the Cross

Growing up Baptist, I never really heard the phrase, "Stations of the Cross" in the Lenten season.  I can recall seeing images of Christ in the Garden, his nearby disciples sleeping (that was always the image that struck me most as a child, Christ looking lonely), or of Joseph of Aramathea taking His body to a newly-carved grave, rolling a stone across its entrance.  I know that the Stations are in thousands of churches, carved in sequence along a thousand walls, keeping watch over a million pews.  But the Stations were not a part of my particular religious upbringing, so they were new to me.

My dear friend, Fiona, planned a hike in reverence to these stations and invited me along.  About a dozen of us showed up on what was, in my memory, the sunniest and warmest Saturday we've had since Autumn.  We traipsed around the Lebanon Hills area, walking 5-10 minutes, stopping to read one of the fourteen Stations, saying the Lord's Prayer, moving on.  I walked mostly with a friend, Matt, and in between our supplications to the Cross we talked about baseball and work and church and various mutual friends. I also spoke with a few people I'd never met before, going over the typical pleasantries of "where do you work?" and "where are you from?" before focusing on Jesus's betrayal by Judas or his taking up of the Cross.

It hasn't been the best couple of weeks.  I was tired as much from being sad as from being busy.  So the sunshine was lovely but a bit too much for my determined-to-be-grumpy mood.  My heart wasn't in the readings, even my insistence in muttering the final lines of the Lord's Prayer when everyone else ended with "deliver us from evil," (lots of Catholics in the bunch, whose shortened form of the prayer just seems unfinished to me) was born as much from habit as from annoyance. Not a great attitude for spiritual reflection.

But by the time we reached the final station, listened to the final reading where the tomb is closed up following Christ's death, my heart had softened a bit.  The last of the stations is dark and desperate, a glimpse of the world without Grace. The tomb sealed, pending Resurrection, and the promise of Easter still yet to be fulfilled.  How sad and unsteady a moment, how heavy must be the World's collective heart.  But, as Christians, we see the glimmer, the Hope, inherent in that rolled stone, because it will soon be rolled away.

I am not grateful enough on any given day for the blessings of Easter.  But I do try to remember those blessings, try to have them in mind, which is what the Lenten season requires of Christians.  I'm haphazard at giving up anything for the season (again, not something Baptists put much stock in), and I often find myself more wrapped up in the prospect of a new Easter dress than a new life in Christ. But with every misstep or failed priority I do try to remember what I should reflect on, the burden I should have had to carry had Grace not lifted it for me.  And at the final station I was moved by how lucky I must be.  I stand in a field on a sunny day with a dozen other believers who think walking around in the last of the snow reading Scripture sounds like a good way to spend an afternoon.  I talk about baseball in between stations and contemplate grocery lists for tomorrow's errands.  I have no wars to wage outside my door, have no fear that my faith will get me killed.  I look up at a Cross in the middle of a field with no anxiety save that for my soul. My heart is heavy for all those who lack that freedom.  And for those, like me, who fail to remember what it may cost.