CAMINANDO WITH JESUS: Walking with Jesus

Jesus went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, because Jesus often met there with his disciples. So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them, "Whom are you looking for?" They answered, "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus replied, "I am he." Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. When Jesus said to them, "I am he," they stepped back and fell to the ground. Again he asked them, "Whom are you looking for?" And they said, "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus answered, "I told you that I am he. So if you are looking for me, let these men go." This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken, "I did not lose a single one of those whom you gave me." Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest's slave, and cut off his right ear. The slave's name was Malchus. Jesus said to Peter, "Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?"

Continue reading the Passion Gospel.

- John 18:1-19:24

Walking with Jesus. That is what this week is all about. Lent is a season of turning: turning back to God, turning away from habits and behaviors that harm us or others, turning toward love. But in Holy Week, we turn with Jesus, to the cross.

Never is our lifetime have we needed Jesus more than we do this week. In the face of this virus, we have all turned to God for help, for comfort, for healing, for companionship, because the road we are traveling is hard and strange and painful.

The hymn we sing this day has new meaning for us this year. “Were you there…?” Well, no, most of us weren’t allowed to be there, in our sacred spaces, in our sanctuaries, to be with Jesus and with one another.

Were you there when a friend was taken ill and in the hospital, when a member of the parish was near death? No, we were instructed not to become a vector of transmission, so we had to find other ways to pray with, to bring comfort to, to convey the promise that God is still here, that we are walking with Jesus, without being physically present.

And today, this Good Friday, it is essential for each of us to remember and hold on to the hope that is hidden in the cross. There is no place we can go where Jesus has not already been. There is no suffering, or absence, or agony that Jesus has not endured for us, for love. This is the promise of the cross.

This is Jesus' passion for us. This is what we need to know about love. Love stands with, risks with, suffers with and even dies for another. This year we see Jesus’ passion at work in the compassion of others, the medical teams, the doctors and nurses and hospital staff, the first responders, the essential workers, the food providers - those who risk their own safety for our well being.

Many have surely heard the story of the Italian priest, Don Giuseppe Berardelli, a faithful and beloved village priest who voluntarily gave up his ventilator to save the life of a younger patient. Greater love has no one than this…. But our smaller sacrifices are connected to such ultimate sacrifices. This is part of the mystery of the cross.

And the cross is the way of love for us, too, as we find ways to connect with, to be with, to stay with, to pray with, in and through these restrictions. This year we are joined more deeply, as the Body of Christ, to the cross of Christ. His passion becomes our compassion.

Never have I felt that prayer for mission from Morning Prayer more keenly than this year: “Lord Jesus, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace, so clothe us in your spirit, that we, reaching forth our hands and hearts in love, may bring those who do not know you…” to you, to your love.

We know the worst of this is still ahead in this pandemic. We know that we have been called to stand together, to find creative ways to be with one another, to connect across the physical distance, to trust in the promise of the cross, to walk with Jesus on this hardest part of the journey. To recognize his presence in the expressions of love that still surround us, that even surprise us.

This year the movement of Holy Week has a surreal quality. The drama of Jesus’ passion seems to be unfolding in real time and we are, more than ever before, caught up in it. The via dolorosa, the way of the cross, seems to be the road we are traveling, together.

The tradition of the stations of the cross is not just a mark of our devotion this year; it is the journey we are on. More than ever before we feel the weight of the cross on Jesus as he carries it, we hear the cries, and we stand and watch and wait, with Mary, and the women, and John.

And we recognize that even in these most harrowing and fear-filled moments, love is being born, new community is being formed, hope breaks out, love is being reimagined. Jesus says to Mary, “Woman behold your son,” and to John, “Behold your mother.” A new family is formed, a new community is born, there at the foot of the cross (Porter Taylor, "Meditation in a time of Pandemic").

This year we are finding new ways of creating beloved community, of celebrating our connectedness in Christ and of walking with Jesus on the hardest part of the journey. This year we are living into the promise that the way of the cross becomes, for us, none other than the way of life.

Last week Debbie and I, sheltering in place, went to our old neighborhood where we first lived when we moved to Raleigh, to go for a walk. As we wended our way through the mostly quiet streets, we began to find, written in colorful chalk on the sidewalk beneath our feet, messages of love and hope, written by neighborhood children, probably encouraged by their parents when out on a walk themselves.

“What are you thankful for?” “Stay curious….” “Keep going!” “You are not alone….”

These became for us a kind of contemporary stations of the cross, of the journey we are all on this Holy Week, a reminder of the promise of love in a time of fear. Our via dolorosa.

Jesus has walked this way. Jesus is on this road with us. We are following in his footsteps. His passion becomes our compassion. New expressions of communion and community are being born, even here, even now, among us, within us. We are not alone…. AMEN.

The Rt. Rev. Sam Rodman is the bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina.