1. Pilate Condemns Jesus to die.
Two thousand-plus years ago, and politics still played a part in the trial of Jesus the Christ. Pilate was out to keep his job, and that meant making the mob happy (his base, I guess you'd say). While Pilate saw no reason to convict Jesus, he eventually gave him over to the mob for the carrying out of the capital punishment form of the day, death by being nailed to a cross of wood. There is a temptation to give Pilate a bye because he, personally, doesn't see Jesus as a criminal. However, regardless of what he personally believed, he went with his base to spare his own neck, and Jesus was sentenced to die. I guess there are three things that never change: death, taxes, and politicians.
2. Jesus accepts his cross.
An old hymn says, "He could have called 10,000 angels, but he died alone for you and me." He probably could have, and I'll bet more than 10,000 would have showed up. From what we read of angels in the Bible, one would have been sufficient, with the flaming swords, shouts that paralyzed crowds of people, and the like. But Jesus took the cross. He'd already had that "come to Jesus' Father" meeting in Gethsemane, where he tried to pass the cup, but his resolve was set by the time he left the garden. We can argue all day about what the cross means, but the Bible and the witness of the church is clear that without the cross there is no redemption. I'm not a "blood atonement" theologian, as Jesus seems to parallel himself with the Paschal lamb, which was the lamb of freedom and deliverance, and not atonement, and the cross is clearly about delivering humanity from its sin, but from much, much more--things like mob rule, standing up for my "rights" (with God, all things are privileges), and believing that some people are better in God's eyes than others.
3. Jesus falls for the first time.
The cross was heavy, and Jesus had been scourged, which was about the nastiest beating a person could have. My guess is that the weight of the cross was infinite, because the slavery from which humanity needed to be delivered and set free was cumulative over the whole of history. When it was on Jesus' shoulders, he made Atlas look like a wuss. Under that weight and in such a weakened state, is it any wonder that Jesus fell? Maybe the first fall can be seen as standing for the fall of humanity in the earlier garden mentioned in the Bible.
4. Jesus meets his mother, Mary.
We never really know what Mary knew, beyond what the angel told her when she became "with child," that Jesus would "save his people from their sins." What did that mean? Would he be the kind of conquering king "messiah" that would overthrow the Romans? (Judas and the other Zealots sure hoped so.) Or would he be a great teacher who would lure everyone into obedience to the Torah? I'm guessing she hadn't figured on him getting beaten to a pulp, sentenced by a kangaroo court presided over by a stooge politician, and then spindled to a cross in front of Pilate's political base. It must have been shocking for her to see him laboring along that path, which, by the way, is very narrow and usually jammed shoulder to shoulder with people, even today.
5. Simon helps carry the cross.
Simon sounds like a compassionate guy. Or was he just afraid that maybe some of the stuff Jesus said about being the "Son of Man" might be true, and he was just hedging his bets? I'd give Simon the benefit of the doubt--that he had a big heart. But then our current president's White House physician, the one who gave him an overly glowing, patronizing, puffed-up, and unprofessionally prophetic medical report--was just made Secretary of Veterans Affairs, so who knows? Maybe helping Jesus carry his cross was Simon's way of getting to sit at his right hand in the Kingdom of God, and if so, it was probably a much better ploy than the argument that the "Sons of Thunder" had around the dinner table.
6. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.
This is one of the not-very-scriptural stories that has been passed down. However, I'm sure that since women were attracted to Jesus, one would have stepped out of the crowd to wipe his brow as he fought the cross. Now, when I say "attracted," I am not suggesting that it was physical, as Isaiah's prophecy of the Messiah says that he would be "nothing to look at." He did speak as one having a quiet, yet genuine authority, wasn't a bully, and never--even once--acted superior to women. If anything, he was the first historical figure to totally get them, to speak publicly with them, and to praise their faith. He seemed to have much more patience with women than he did with men, and who can blame him? Even in his day, testosterone was a rabid problem. He always seemed to relaxed around women, except that time when he got torqued at his Mom for rushing him into the wine-making game.
7. Jesus falls for the second time.
I'll bet this second fall is symbolic of the second fall the Jerusalem Temple would soon take, and that being itself symbolic of the fall of the institutional religion that much of Judaism had become. God seems to be a glutton for punishment when it comes to time-and-time again putting trust into human religious institutions. We "religious types" are constantly dogmatizing stuff that Jesus handed out gracefully to all, and drawing lines that God refuses to honor. When Jesus said the gates of Hell would not prevail against the church, was he fearing that human religious leaders were a bigger threat to it than even Satan? Satan is small potatoes, compared to what we've done with the institutions of faith down through the ages--the Crusades, Calvin having the head of Michael Servetus lopped off, religious terrorists, slavery and "separate but equal" sanctuaries, the unruly mob labeled evangelicals today. If this second fall was for Jesus' fears for what we'd make of things, it's amazing that he got back up at all.
8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem.
See Station 6 above. Women definitely come out on top in this Station story, and in the life of Jesus. I think the women came because, unlike most of the men, they got Jesus. In him they saw their full acceptance, inclusion, and liberation. After all, he had a hand in creating them, and they weren't made just to be baby incubators and sexual playthings. They were children of God equal to any man, and superior to most. In Jesus, they got their just due.
9. Jesus falls for the third time.
Third time's the charm. After this stumble, it was on to the cross and then to Hell to release the captives--and the rest of us! This third fall could stand for the pinning of Satan to the mat, or for the last gasp of the enslaving power of sin, selfishness, and worldly power. Jesus wrestled them all to the mat. Game over.
10. Jesus is stripped of his clothes.
He was going to leave this life the way he came. Ultimately, we all do, even though we may be laid out in our Sunday best. That the soldiers gambled for his garments is another sign of human disdain for people who wield gentle power. Testosterone on parade. Of course, the next time these guys see Jesus, he'll be wearing different togs and ready to pull rank on the robe-robbers. (Nope, that's just me wanting him to get even--I'll bet he'll welcome them in grace and love, too!)
11. Jesus is nailed to the cross.
Hammer time. I read a story once about the custom of the debtors' prisons of Jesus' time. When someone was guilty of a debt they could not pay, they would be thrown into a prison cell, and a piece of parchment with the amount of their debt was nailed to the wooden door of the cell. If someone paid the debt for the poor guy, at some point, another piece of parchment with the Greek word tetelestai was nailed over the debt document, and the man was set free. Tetelestai is the word Jesus yelled from the cross: "It is finished," or literally, "Paid in Full!" Cool, huh?
12. Jesus dies on the cross.
Can God really die? Jurgen Moltmann thought so. That was God on the cross, he argued in his landmark book, The Crucified God. Elie Wiesel, the late Nobel Prize winning author and survivor of the Holocaust, told of a time when his group of prisoners was being ushered to dinner, and as they passed a gallows, a small Jewish boy about twelve years old, was writhing from a rope, having been hanged for disobeying a German soldier. As they passed the dying boy, Wiesel thought to himself, "Where is God now?" He would later write that, at that very moment, he heard a still, small voice whisper in his mind, "I'm right up here, hanging with this boy." Wiesel said that his faith was forever altered by this moment. So is ours, when Jesus shoulders the weight of the world's sin and gives up his spirit.
13. Jesus is taken down from the cross.
They could have left him up there, that mob and those soldiers, for his body to bake in the sun, and to be devoured by vultures, or something. Maybe it was the intentionality with which he died? Maybe it was one of those "seven last words" that got them--"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Whatever, they took Jesus' body down, and because he was homeless and poor, they gave his body to those who asked for it, the women and the remnant of the disciples. "They cut me down and I leaped up high, I am the life that will never, never die! I'll live in you if you'll live in me, I am the Lord of the Dance said he!" Shall we dance?
14. Jesus is placed in the tomb.
A tomb could not hold Jesus any more than a jar can hold sunlight. According to the great tradition of the church, Jesus made a few "visits" during the days in that tomb, releasing captives and preparing for a new "glorified" body that has all of the benefits of the one we have, only without the ravages of sin, disease, or the limits of temporal existence. Kind of cosmic stuff. That's why the writer of I John writes, "Beloved, we are children of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (I John 3:2) Tombs are holding tanks for eternal transformation--cocoons, as it were. For Jesus, the tomb was the affirmation of both a death (he really died--he didn't just "swoon," as some skeptics would later say) and a launching pad for new life. The cross is the symbol Christians wear because it was where Jesus was "stapled" to humanity for all eternity, that we may be freed and redeemed, but the empty tomb is what differentiates us from other theological constructs of how God and people relate. "Up from the grave he arose!" (Yeah, I know that the Stations of the Cross end on Good Friday, but since we are the Post-Resurrection Community, it's really hard to not move on to the "Fifteenth Station," the Risen Jesus!)
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