The Stations of the
Cross is an meditation on Jesus' journey from his trial to his
burial, and some of the events involve him meeting various people
including the women of Jerusalem, Simon of Cyrene and his mother,
Mary. A production of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Liverpool Empire
that I saw many years ago, started with that journey and on the way
Jesus met Judas, with a television news crew. Judas sang to Jesus
“Why d'you choose such a backward time in such a strange land? / If
you'd come today you could have reached a whole nation. / Israel in 4
BC had no mass communication.” The irony, intentional or not,
being that even though he chose “such a backward time” he's still
being worshipped and followed today.
Judas also expresses
some common questions about Jesus' death: “Every time I look at you
I don't understand / Why you let the things you did get so out of
hand. / … Did you mean to die like that? Was that a mistake?”
The answer to that question is found in Matthew 16:21, which records
that “Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to
Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the
chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed
and on the third day be raised to life.”
But knowing that Jesus
willingly went to his death without a fight and without going down in
a 'blaze of glory' just raises more questions – it seems to be a
foolish and weak way to die. Paul tells us “This so-called
“foolish” plan of God is far wiser than the wisest plan of the
wisest man, and God in his weakness—Christ dying on the cross—is
far stronger than any man” (1 Corinthians 1:25 The Living Bible).
However, this can only be seen if you understand why Jesus died.
The wisdom of the world
is that if you're good enough you will go to heaven, and that Jesus
came to teach us to be better. If this is true, then his death was
foolish and weak as it achieved nothing except depriving the world of
more years of his teaching and example. However the problem is not
that we're not good enough for heaven but that we can never be
good enough for heaven. Isaiah spoke about Jesus, about 700 years
before he was born saying “We—every one of us—have strayed away
like sheep! We, who left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet God
laid on him the guilt and sins of every one of us!” (Isaiah 53:6
The Living Bible). Jesus took the punishment that we deserve for our
sins and in doing so defeated death itself. His death may look
foolish and weak, but he knew it was the only solution to our
estrangement from God.
The cross silences all
of our human pretensions. If we think we are clever enough or good
enough for God the cross will seem to be weak and foolish. However
when we recognise we can never save ourselves by our own efforts, the
cross becomes powerful and wise, for through it God rescues the
people he loves.
P.S. Details of this year's Stations of the Cross service can be found here: https://en-gb.facebook.com/events/407736576626486/
Picture credits:
Top image by congerdesign from pixabay.com
Explanation of pictures: “We all saw what Jesus did both in Israel and in the city of Jerusalem. Jesus was put to death on a cross. But three days later, God raised him to life and let him be seen. Not everyone saw him. He was seen only by us, who ate and drank with him after he was raised from death.” (Acts 10:39-41)
Bottom image by Ben Steed from heartlight.org
