Last Friday afternoon was my assigned time to conduct the Stations of the Cross. I love that liturgy. Its Franciscan roots speak to my soul. The engagement of the entire person - body, mind and spirit - provides a holistic encounter of the Holy. It can touch the worshiper deeply as they walk between the stations, singing the Stabat Mater, considering the station’s image and then entering into what is happening at that point in Jesus’ life. At that moment, we are there with Jesus.
An appearance…beyond human resemblance
The first of my
three pilgrimages last year was to the Mississippi Delta, starting in Memphis,
continuing to Little Rock Central High in Arkansas and ending at the landing at
Glendora, Mississippi where the bloated, decomposing body of Till was recovered
by two young white boys his age on a fishing trip.
Our pilgrimage had gone to the site, to stand in a circle on the banks of the Tallahatchie River and together lament, voicing our anger, our grief, our fears, our hopes, our prayers. And we did so knowing that the collective Shadow of a racist America which took the life of this beautiful young man has been given license to run rampant in our nation today.
But we were still there, standing together, hoping that the popular maxim will prove to be true: Love is stronger than death.
I had not thought about that day for a long time. Dunn’s account had brought it back into focus. But it was not until we arrived at the Sixth Station, A Woman Wipes the Face of Jesus, that suddenly it became very real to me:
We have seen him without beauty of majesty, with no looks to attract our
eyes. He was despised and ejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with
grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we
esteemed him not. His appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and
his form beyond that of the children of men. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, upon him was the
chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed.
It is my custom when I lead the Stations to have parishioners read the text. This day, I heard this account in a beautiful baritone voice from a young Black man from the Bahamas whose father is an Anglican priest there. As he spoke these words, the memories of Glendora, Mississippi came flooding back, disturbing visions of a young man whose appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, that he was nearly unidentifiable by the local coroner.
His Mother would insist that his funeral be open casket so that the world could see what had happened to her boy. The Black magazine Jet would run the photo of his marred appearance on its cover. It would be a wakeup call for an America in deep denial, the moment America was required to take seriously its acquiescence to – and thus its role in - the terrorism that marked the Jim Crow South.
But that was not the only pilgrimage to come swimming back into focus for
me last Friday.
The Gospel Was Hazardous to
the Health of the Preacher
As a seminarian, I had taken two pilgrimages to El Salvador in the early
1990s, the first during the cease fire overseen by the United Nations
peacekeeping team. I was there with a group of observers of the cease fire
under the direction of the World Council of Churches.
The Episcopal calendar observes the Feast Day of the Salvadoreño Martyrs on March 24. They include the beloved Archbishop Oscar Romero. On March 23, 1980, he had just delivered a sermon by nation-wide radio which concluded with the words, “In the name of God, and in the name of this suffering people... I beg you, I implore you, I order you, stop the repression!" The very next day he was shot down while celebrating the eucharist at the chapel in the convent where he resided.
On our visit there I stood on the gold star implanted in the terrazzo floor
of that chapel at the spot behind the altar where Romero was standing. As I
looked to the open door where his U.S. trained paramilitary soldier stood,
taking aim at a saint, a coldness washed over me that disturbed me down to my
very core. This was a place where evil temporarily had its way.
We also visited the University of Central America whose Jesuit priests had been slaughtered by the paramiltary at their dormitory along with their housekeeper and her daughter. Preaching the Gospel in an authoritarian state driven by the global corporate interests had proven hazardous to the health of Salvadoreño clergy who dared speak out against the terrorism employed to to keep the populace under control.
In addition to the Jesuit priests whose liberation theology called out systemic
evil as a sin, that terrorism would take the lives of the the Maryknoll Sisters
whose only crime had been to minister to the young women of El Salvador,
seeking to provide them food, education and medical care.
Their raped and mutilated bodies would be found dumped on the road to the international
airport, a warning to those entering El Salvador of what the powers that be demanded
of anyone entering their borders. Like the Rome that was willing to use the
body of Jesus for propaganda in a public crucifixion, the point was clear: We are in control here, do
not resist us. We will crush you.
Upon entering the UCA Chapel, I would feel my life breath sucked right out of my body. The Stations in the Chapel were all charcoal drawings of victims of the terrorist activities of an authoritarian state upheld by my own country. Its paramilitary agents who carried out that terror had been trained in the School of the Americas directed by our “security” agencies and funded by American taxpayers. The stations did not depict mythical figures of a religious rite. These were real human beings who, like Jesus, had become targets of the empire.
The images of those Stations were deeply disturbing. And as they came flooding
back into my mind’s eye as I led the liturgy in our memorial garden, the words
of our Sixth Station were unavoidable:
His appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond
that of the children of men. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities, upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
and with his stripes we are healed.
The Stations Tell a Story
About Humanity
As I stood at the Sixth Station in our memorial garden last Friday,
listening to my Bahamian parishioner read the text of that station, I found
myself back in that Chapel, breathless, devastated by the evil in front of me. And
I found myself standing on the banks of the Tallahatchie River in Glendora,
Mississippi, painfully aware of how these words reflected my experience there.
In my
understanding, what makes the Stations so powerful is not that they remember a
single event in human history. Rather, they tell a story about humanity that
continues to occur all around us. That is why we walk those 14 Stations,
remembering Jesus’ last day, knowing that his life story speaks to our own, knowing
that they raise a question about how we will respond to these events here, now,
in our own lives.
The Stations
are a lament, a willing entry into the suffering of our world. It would be easy
to engage this rite and walk away congratulating ourselves on having met our
Lenten duty. But the Stations demand more from us than that.
Jesus continues
to suffer in his people here, now, all over the world, in places with names
like Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Venezuela, and Minneapolis. The Stations connect us
to “the people of God” to whom we offer “the gifts of God” each eucharist. All
of them. That includes those who are suffering and those who cause that
suffering.
When Pilgrimages Return….
And sometimes
the pilgrimage, permanently etched in the pilgrim’s soul, returns when they least
expect it.
Pilgrims know
there is nothing they can do to heal the wounds they have chosen to engage, even
as they may ask themselves what possessed them to do so, as I have often done.
But they have come. And they return to their homelands with wounded hearts,
disturbed souls and stories of suffering that they will feel compelled to tell
others, knowing that most do not want to hear them even as they know they must speak their truth nonetheless.
A Privileged Pilgrim’s Gratitude
This day I am
conscious of the role that the Franciscan spirit has played in our world. Francis
insisted upon meeting with the Sultan in the middle of a war zone, hoping to end
the Crusades he rightly saw as destructive and thus completely counter to the G-d
both the European knights and the Islamic Saracens believed they served. That
Franciscan connection would play out in a long pattern of guardianship of
Christian holy sites in lands controlled by Muslims who had come to trust the
Franciscans. And the friars would bring back a liturgy reenacting Jesus’ final
day in the form of the Stations of the Cross that soon would spread to parishes
across Europe.
I am grateful
for my rootedness in an order founded by a Francis who gave up his life of
privilege to work with the poor, the sick, the outcast. And I seek to follow
the Way of a Jesus who, as Richard Rohr notes, can always be found in the
Gospels by going to where the suffering is occurring, knowing that suffering
which is not transformed will always be transmitted.
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If the
unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it
religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do
not come in sound bites.
Those who
believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma
Gandhi
For what
does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk
humbly with your G-d? - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures
Do not be
daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are
you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish
Sages (1993)
© Harry Scott Coverston, 2026
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