Introduction

Hello and welcome to Epworth United Methodist Church’s Social Justice Stations of the Cross walk. This is Pastor Kristin Stoneking, and I’m grateful that you’ve joined in this walk either virtually and through the audio tour, or as a self-guided walk. The stations of the cross originated in Jerusalem along the Via Dolorosa. It leads persons along the path that Jesus walked toward his crucifixion. And yet, I do not believe that Jesus came into this world to die. I believe he came into this world to show us how to live, to offer us an opportunity to live with love and justice in ways that would repair us and our broken world. We humans still struggle to accept what he was offering. We hang on to our brokenness and attachments, which results in Jesus’ crucifixion.

Of course, the meaning of the resurrection which came three days after the crucifixion is that the gift never dies, that the offer is always there. We have been promised that he will come again and I believe that he will not come again until we stop crucifying him.

So on Good Friday, the day on which we commemorate the crucifixion, we pause to consider all the ways that we are hanging on to our brokenness. Ways that we participate in suffering. And the ways that we perpetuate the crucifixion. As the body of Christ now on earth we are both crucifiers and crucified. As humanity suffers and our earth suffers, we the body of Christ suffer, too.

May this walk make us conscious of the brokenness that still exists in the world, the signs of hope that surround us, and our responsibility to finish the work of bringing the new heaven and new earth to fruition, this vision of reality which Christ inaugurated.