Thursday, April 17—Day 44

And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate. And Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” And he answered him, “You have said so.” And the chief priests accused him of many things. And Pilate again asked him, “Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you.” But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed. Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. And he answered them, saying, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, “Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” And they cried out again, “Crucify him.” And Pilate said to them, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him.” So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor's headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. And they began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.
Mark 15: 1-20

THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS
Malcolm Guite

I. Jesus is condemned to Death
   The very air that Pilate breathes, the voice
   With which he speaks in judgement, all his powers
   Of perception and discrimination, choice,
   Decision, all his years, his days and hours,
   His consciousness of self, his every sense,
   Are given by this prisoner, freely given.
   The man who stands there making no defence,
   Is God. His hands are tied, his heart is open.   
   And he bears Pilate’s heart in his and feels
   That crushing weight of wasted life. He lifts
   It up in silent love. He lifts and heals.
   He gives himself again with all his gifts
   Into our hands. As Pilate turns away
   A door swings open. This is judgement day.

II. Jesus is given his cross
   He gives himself again with all his gifts
   And now we give him something in return.
   He gave the earth that bears, the air that lifts,
   Water to cleanse and cool, fire to burn,
   And from these elements he forged the iron,
   From strands of life he wove the growing wood,
   He made the stones that pave the roads of Zion,
   He saw it all and saw that it is good.
   We took his iron to edge an axe’s blade,
   We took the axe and laid it to the tree,
   We made a cross of all that he has made,
   And laid it on the one who made us free.
   Now he receives again and lifts on high
   The gifts he gave and we have turned awry.

III. Jesus falls the first time
   He made the stones that pave the road to Zion
   And well he knows the path we make him tread;
   He met the devil as a roaring lion
   And still refused to turn these stones to bread,
   Choosing instead, as love will always choose,
   This darker path into the heart of pain.
   And now he falls upon the stones that bruise
   The flesh, that break and scrape the tender skin.
   He and the earth he made were never closer,
   Divinity and dust come face to face.
   We flinch back from his via dolorosa,
   He sets his face like flint and takes our place,
   Staggers beneath the black weight of us all
   And falls with us that he might break our fall.

IV. Jesus meets his mother
   This darker path into the heart of pain
   Was also hers whose love enfolded him
   In flesh and wove him in her womb. Again
   The sword is piercing. She, who cradled him
   And gentled and protected her young son,
   Must stand and watch the cruelty that mars
   Her maiden making. Waves of pain that stun
   And sicken pass across his face and hers
   As their eyes meet. Now she enfolds the world
   He loves in prayer; the mothers of the disappeared
   Who know her pain, all bodies bowed and curled
   In desperation on this road of tears,
   All the grief-stricken in their last despair,
   Are folded in the mantle of her prayer.

V. Simon of Cyrene carries the cross
   In desperation on this road of tears
   Bystanders and bypassers turn away.
   In other’s pain we face our own worst fears
   And turn our backs to keep those fears at bay,
   Unless we are compelled as this man was
   By force of arms or force of circumstance
   To face and feel and carry someone’s cross
   In Love’s full glare and not his backward glance.
   So, Simon, no disciple, still fulfilled
   The calling, ‘Take the cross and follow me.’
   By accident his life was stalled and stilled,
   Becoming all he was compelled to be.
   Make me, like him, your pressed man and your priest,
   Your alter Christus, burdened and released.

VI. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
   Bystanders and bypassers turn away
   And wipe his image from their memory.
   She keeps her station. She is here to stay
   And stem the flow. She is the requilary
   Of his last look on her. The bloody sweat
   And salt tears of his love are soaking through
   The folds of her devotion and the wet
   Folds of her handkerchief, like the dew
   Of morning, like a softening rain of grace.
   Because she wiped the grime from off his skin,
   And glimpsed the godhead in his human face
   Whose hidden image we all bear within,
   Through all our veils and shrouds of daily pain
   The face of God is shining once again.

VII. Jesus falls the second time
   Through all our veils and shrouds of daily pain,
   Through our praised bruises and re-opened scars,
   He falls and stumbles with us, hurt again
   When we are hurt again. With us he bears
   The cruel repetitions of our cruelty;
   The beatings of already beaten men,
   The second rounds of torture, the futility
   Of all unheeded pleading, every scream in vain.
   And by this fall he finds the fallen souls
   Who passed a first, but failed a second trial,
   The souls who thought their faith would hold them whole
   And found it only held them for a while.
   Be with us when the road is twice as long
   As we can bear. By weakness make us strong.

VIII. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
   He falls and stumbles with us, hurt again
   But still he holds the road and looks in love
   On all of us who look on him. Our pain
   As close to him as his. These women move
   Compassion in him as he does in them.
   He asks us both to weep and not to weep.
   Women of Gaza and Jerusalem,
   Women of every nation where the deep
   Wounds of memory divide the land
   And lives of all your children, where the mines
   Of all our wars are sown: Afghanistan,
   Iraq, the Cote d’Ivoire… he reads the signs
   And weeps with you, and with you he will stay
   Until the day he wipes your tears away.

IX. Jesus falls the third time
   He weeps with you and with you he will stay
   When all your staying power has run out;
   You can’t go on, you go on anyway.
   He stumbles just beside you when the doubt
   That always haunts you cuts you down at last
   And takes away the hope that drove you on.
   This is the third fall and it hurts the worst,   
   This long descent through darkness to depression
   From which there seems no rising and no will  
   To rise, or breathe, or bear your own heartbeat.
   Twice you survived; this third will surely kill,
   And you could almost wish for that defeat
   Except that in the cold hell where you freeze
   You find your God beside you on his knees.

X. Jesus is stripped of his garments
   You can’t go on, you go on anyway.  
   He goes with you, his cradle to your grave.
   Now is the time to loosen, cast away
   The useless weight of everything but love.   
   For he began his letting go before,
   Before the worlds for which he dies were made, 
   Emptied himself, became one of the poor, 
   To make you rich in him and unafraid.
   See, as they strip the robe from off his back
   They strip away your own defenses too,
   Now you could lose it all and never lack,
   Now you can see what naked love can do.
   Let go these bonds beneath whose weight you bow,
   His stripping strips you both for action now.

XI. Crucifixion: Jesus is nailed to the cross
   See, as they strip the robe from off his back
   And spread his arms and nail them to the cross,
   The dark nails pierce him and the sky turns black,
   And love is firmly fastened on to loss.
   But here a pure change happens. On this tree
   Loss becomes gain, death opens into birth.
   Here wounding heals and fastening makes free,
   Earth breathes in heaven, heaven roots in earth.
   And here we see the length, the breadth, the height,
   Where love and hatred meet and love stays true,
   Where sin meets grace and darkness turns to light,
   We see what love can bear and see and do.
   And here our Savior calls us to his side,
   His love is free, his arms are open wide.

XII. Jesus dies on the cross
   The dark nails pierce him and the sky turns black,
   We watch him as he labors to draw breath.
   He takes our breath away to give it back,
   Return it to its birth through his slow death.
   We hear him struggle, breathing out through the pain,
   Who once breathed out his spirit on the deep,
   Who formed us when he mixed the dust with rain
   And drew us into consciousness from sleep.
   His Spirit and his life he breathes in all,
   Mantles his world in his one atmosphere,
   And now he comes to breathe beneath the pall
   Of our pollutions, draw our injured air
   To cleanse it and renew. His final breath
   Breathes and bears us through the gates of death.

XIII. Jesus’ body is taken down from the cross
   His spirit and his life he breathes in all,
   Now on this cross his body breathes no more.
   Here at the center everything is still,
   Spent, and emptied, opened to the core.
   A quiet taking down, a prising loose,
   A cross-beam lowered like a weighing scale,
   Unmaking of each thing that had its use,
   A long withdrawing of each bloodied nail.
   This is ground zero, emptiness and space,
   With nothing left to say or think or do,
   But loo unflinching on the sacred face
   That cannot move or change or look at you.
   Yet in that prising loose and letting be
   He has unfastened you and set you free.

XIV. Jesus is laid in the tomb
   Here at the center everything is still,
   Before the stir and movement of our grief
   That bears its pain with rhythm, ritual,
   Beautiful useless gestures of relief.
   So they anoint the skin that cannot feel
   And soothe his ruined flesh with tender care,
   Kissing the wounds they know they cannot heal,
   With incense only scenting empty air.
   He blesses every love that weeps and grieves,
   And makes our grief the pangs of a new birth.
   The love that’s poured in silence at old graves,
   Renewing flowers, tending the bare earth,
   Is never lost. In him all love is found
   And sown with him, a seed in the rich ground.

XV. Easter Dawn
   He blesses every love that weeps and grieves
   And now he blesses hers who stood and wept
   And would not be consoled, or leave her love’s
   Last touching place, but watched as low light crept
   Up from the east. A sound behind her stirs
   A scatter of bright birdsong through the air.
   She turns, but cannot focus through her tears,
   Or recognize the Gardener standing there.
   She hardly hears his gently question, ‘Why,
   Why are you weeping?’, or sees the play of light
   That brightens as she chokes out her reply,
   ‘They took my love away, my day is night.’
   And then she hears her name, she hears Love say
   The Word that turns her night, and ours, to Day.

Prayer
We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you. Because by your holy cross You have redeemed the world. Amen.

Guite, Malcolm, “The Stations of the Cross,” Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year, (London: Canterbury Press, 2012), pp. 37-44.