“Whoever does not bear his own cross
and come after me cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:27
It would have been more fitting to
have had the procession of the Cross on Palm Sunday. However, our
visitors from Barquisimeto were not due to arrive until the following
day, so it became part of the opening worship for our three-day
regional retreat for preteens on Monday.
We had the cross made for the
processional. It is a plain, wooden cross three meters in height
(that's an inch and a fraction short of 10 feet). I carried it in
front of the group as we marched around Barrio Las Lomas, singing
hymns. The cross did not seem so heavy at first, but my arms and
shoulders were aching at the end of the trail.
The Ark of the Covenant, symbol of the
promises God made to Israel at Mount Sinai, was solemnly carried in
front of the people of Israel as they crossed the Jordan River into
the Promised Land (Joshua, chapters 3 and 4) and also before the
people in a march around the city of Jericho (Joshua 6). When King
Solomon had built the first Temple of Jerusalem, the ark was carried
in solemn procession into the innermost part. Processions of the
cross reflect
this Old Testament imagery.
Christians
began marching in the streets behind a processional cross in the
fourth century A.D., when such demonstrations became tolerated in the
Roman Empire. The processions moved from church to church, with
participants, alternately saying or singing prayers, psalms, and
litanies.
The procession of the Cross also
embodies another metaphor from the ancient world used in both the Old
and New Testaments, that of the triumphant king's victory parade.
Isaiah 60:11 says.
Your gates shall be open
continually;
day and night they shall not be shut,
that people
may bring to you the wealth of the nations, with their kings led
in procession.
Also 2 Corinthians 2:14:
But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the
fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.
Processions of the cross, with either a
plain cross or a crucifix, also have a
long and honorable history in Lutheranism. The Reformers objected
specifically to the Corpus Christi procession, because it involved
actual public display and adoration of the host (communion bread).
They did not, however, object to the idea of a procession of the
Cross. Many Lutheran churches have never abandoned the practice of
processionals, especially on festival days. For it is a principle of
our confession that the practices of the ancient church, if they do
not conflict with the clear teaching of Scripture, should be
preserved to every extent possible.
In Venezuela, of course, one must walk
a certain fine line. On the one hand, many of the
evangelical/pentecostal sects here consider even the display of a
plain cross to be too “papist”.It is not our intention to give
offense, or create a stumbling-block for the faith of these people
(per 1 Corinthians 8:13), but for Lutherans this position is
completely unacceptable. The cross, and not just the unadorned cross,
but especially the crucifix, is the central symbol of the faith, the
visual expression of what itś all about. We call our theology the
“theology of the cross”, because Christ's suffering and death on
the cross was His victory and ours. He atoned for our sins on the
cross and thus gained for us the hope of eternal life. Certainly, “if
Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in
your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17), but to celebrate Easter without
Good Friday is to preach a gospel of “cheap grace,” of salvation
without atonement.
On the other hand, in popular Roman
Catholic piety here (as elsewhere in the world), people often will
pray to the image of the Crucified. Thus, to avoid tempting anyone to
the sin of idolatry, we chose a plain cross for our procession.
Fun for preteens of all ages
Our guests during the first three days
of Holy Week included Miguelangel Perez, pastor of El Paraiso
Lutheran Church in Barquisimeto, and Sandra Lopez, Katharina Ramones
and two young girls from Nueva Vida Lutheran Mission in Barquisimeto.
The rest of the children attending the retreat were from our
neighborhood in La Caramuca. Total attendance was around 50 people.
Tuesday was devoted to Bible study and
activities reminiscent of vacation Bible school. The theme of the
retreat was “Timothy: A Good Soldier of Christ Jesus” with
special emphasis on 2 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 15:
“And how from childhood you have been
acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise
for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
Wednesday's event was an outing to the
Paguey River. The people from Barquisimeto had all returned home by
end of day Wednesday, but for us Holy Week activities were not over.
We observed Good Friday with a 5 p.m. Service and celebrated Easter
as part of our regular Sunday service. Children who attended the
Easter service received leftover watermelon and other goodies.
"Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities;upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned - every one - to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Isaiah 53:4-6
In "The Varieties of Religious Experience", William James' pioneering study of the psychology of religion, there is a contrast drawn between people James called the "once-born" and the "twice-born."
The "once-born", who James also described as the "healthy-minded", are people who by temperament are "positive thinkers". They prefer to see the world as a safe, sunny place and would rather not dwell on suffering and evil. Therefore, they think of religion as something that should make you feel good about yourself and others, and offer practical rules for living a well-adjusted life. The "once-born" see whatever problems there are in the world as relatively easy to solve, simply a matter of appealing to reason and good will. Most conflicts can be settled by people sitting down together and really listening to the other side. These people indeed may live productive, well-adjusted lives in a well-ordered and civilized society. But if events should shake their worldly order to its foundations, they have a hard time coping, because they do not understand the extent to which evil exists within themselves and the world, nor its horrifying power.
The "twice-born", on the other hand, are those whom James also called "sick souls." They by instinct sense that there is something profoundly wrong with the world and with themselves, and believe that happiness in this world is fleeting, at best, and can only be achieved at great cost. The "twice-born" can only find direction by being "born again", by which James meant and "experience of deliverance" involving surrender and sacrifice. For the "twice-born", a religion of vague platitudes, moralism and outward rituals can never be sufficient; they want something that will allow them to stare evil in the face. They may handle the encounter with evil better than the "once-born," but their weakness is the tendency to despair of any final victory of light over darkness and simply accept the existence of evil in the world with stoic passivity.
This, of course, is not what the Scriptures mean by being "born again" or "from above" by the Holy Spirit. Our salvation depends not on our feelings or inclinations, but on the objective truths of God's Word. Thus, God' s Word has something to say to persons of both these temperaments. C.S. Lewis once said that the Devil encourages two equal and opposite errors about himself: One being not to believe in his existence, and the other to believe and be terrified. "Once-born" people might be described as people who are inclined to disbelieve in the Devil as well as the depth of their own sinfulness, while James' "twice-born" are those inclined to fear evil, or at least live without the joy and hope that might be theirs.
I bring up this psychological typology only as a way of perhaps explaining the importance of the Lenten season. If the secular world today takes note of Lent at all, it may be as the basis of a "romantic comedy" about a young man abstaining from sex for "40 Days and 40 Nights". But those who are comfortable with the world and their place in it need to consider the words of the prophet Isaiah and the hymn those words inspired, "Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted", English words by Thomas Kelly (1804):
"Ye who think of sin but lightly,
Nor suppose the evil great,
Here may view its nature rightly,
Here its guilt may estimate.
Mark the Sacrifice appointed!
See Who bears the awful load!
'Tis the Word, the Lord’s Anointed,
Son of Man, and Son of God."
Christ suffered the punishment the each one of us merited, in order to obtain for us redemption and a new relationship with God.We all need to hear this. The solemn reflections of Lent are not to be forgotten in joy and celebration of Easter. Lent prepares us for Easter.
Especially for those "sick souls", who are all to aware of their own sins and the suffering of the world, must remember, "upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed."
"Here we have a firm foundation,
Here the refuge of the lost.
Christ the Rock of our salvation,
Christ the Name of which we boast.
Lamb of God for sinners wounded!
Sacrifice to cancel guilt!
None shall ever be confounded
Who on Him their hope have built."
Although we have a small group of people that have been baptized and confirmed as Lutherans, our mission actually serves a somewhat wider community. Because there are so few schools with any kind of Christian orientation here, some of the people who send their children to our preschool are devout Roman Catholics or Pentecostalists. The father of one of our little girls is the pastor of a Pentecostalist church, while two of our preschool teachers are Catholic (ideally, all of our teachers would be Lutheran, but Venezuelan law dictates that the preschool have a certain number of state-certified teachers and there are not that many state-certified Lutheran teachers here).
Of course we do not demand that faithful members of other churches join ours in order to send their children to our preschool. Attendance at our Sunday services is alway be invitation. Therefore, we strive to maintain a solidly Lutheran position in doctrine and practice while respecting the beliefs of those who subscribe to other confessions.
The preschool will be closed for Holy Week, therefore we are using this week to teach the preschool children that Holy Week means something other than vacation time. One of our teachers, Yosaira, had approached me with her huge family Bible. It was a "Catholic" Bible, including the "deuterocanonical" books in its Old Testament and some beautiful color-plate illustrations of the traditional Stations of the Cross. Yosaira thought perhaps we could scan the illustrations and use them to teach the children about the events of Good Friday.
The Stations of the Cross were first mentioned in writings from the fifth and sixth centuries as a series of numbered stops for pilgrims to meditate and pray while retracing the Via Dolorosa, or Christ's path from the Garden of Gethsemane to Golgotha, in Jerusalem. Supposedly these were places where Jesus paused on His way to the Cross, except for the last four which involve Him actually being nailed to the cross, dying, and being taken down and laid in the tomb. Eventually a list of 14 "stations" became the accepted norm and every year to this day hundreds of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem follow this pattern in following the Via Dolorosa.
Somewhat later, since relatively few people had the time or money to travel to Jerusalem, it became a devotional practice to recreate the path to the Cross with paintings or crosses along a circumscribed route in a church or elsewhere. For example, in Colonia Tovar, a German-Catholic enclave in the mountains north of Caracas, the main street of the town is marked with crosses representing the Stations of the Cross as it winds down to its end at St. Martin of Tours Church.
The imagery of the Stations of the Cross have provided inspiration for Christian art for centuries. Not only paintings and sculpture, but also Christian theater, as the European "Passion Play" tradition incorporates dramatizations of the various stations. This includes Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ," which is essentially a Passion Play on film (see postscript on Passion Plays).
However, there is a problem with the traditional Stations of the Cross: Not all of them are really part of any of the New Testament narratives. The traditional 14 Stations of the Cross are as follows:
Jesus is condemned to death
Jesus is given his cross
Jesus falls the first time
Jesus meets His mother
Simon of Cyrene carries the cross
St. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
Jesus falls the second time
Jesus meets the daughters of Jerusalem
Jesus falls the third time
Jesus is stripped of His garments
Jesus is nailed to the cross
Jesus dies on the cross
Jesus' body is removed from the cross
Jesus is laid in the tomb and covered in incense
Only eight of these stations have clear Scriptural foundation. Numbers 3, 4, 6, 7 and 9 do not and the traditional representation of Jesus' body being placed in His mother's arms as it is lowered from the cross in number 13 is an embellishment of the New Testament story. The Roman Catholic Church today recognizes this and, as I pointed out to Yosaira, in 1991 Pope John Paul II approved an alternative form of the Stations of the Cross that is completely consistent with the Scriptures. This form also was approved by Benedict XVI in 2007. This is the new pattern:
Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane
Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested
Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin
Jesus is denied by Peter
Jesus is judged by Pilate
Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns
Jesus takes up His cross
Jesus is helped by Simon to carry His cross
Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
Jesus is crucified
Jesus promises His kingdom to the repentant thief
Jesus entrusts Mary and John to each other
Jesus dies on the cross
Jesus is laid in the tomb
Jesus rises from the dead on the third day
I told Yosaira I would have no problem with using this form of the Stations of the Cross. We used most of the pictures from her Bible and I filled in the gaps with graphics from the Wisconsin Synod Web site.
There is another problem with the Roman Catholic interpretation of the Stations of the Cross and that is this form of devotion still is considered an "act of reparation" or, in essence, a meritorious work.
"Reparation is a theological concept closely connected with those of atonement and satisfaction, and thus belonging to some of the deepest mysteries of the Christian Faith. It is the teaching of that Faith that man is a creature who has fallen from an original state of justice in which he was created, and that through the Incarnation, Passion, and Death of the Son of God, he has been redeemed and restored again in a certain degree to the original condition. Although God might have condoned men's offences gratuitously if He had chosen to do so, yet in His Providence He did not do this; He judged it better to demand satisfaction for the injuries which man had done Him. It is better for man's education that wrong doing on his part should entail the necessity of making satisfaction. This satisfaction was made adequately to God by the Sufferings, Passion, and Death of Jesus Christ, made Man for us. By voluntary submission to His Passion and Death on the Cross, Jesus Christ atoned for our disobedience and sin. He thus made reparation to the offended majesty of God for the outrages which the Creator so constantly suffers at the hands of His creatures. We are restored to grace through the merits of Christ's Death, and that grace enables us to add our prayers, labours, and trials to those of Our Lord "and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ" (Colossians 1:24). We can thus make some sort of reparation to the justice of God for our own offences against Him, and by virtue of the Communion of the Saints, the oneness and solidarity of the mystical Body of Christ, we can also make satisfaction and reparation for the sins of others."
Certainly Colossians 1:24 read in context does not support the above assertions. Paul writes in Colossians of the redemptive work of Christ as being sufficient to atone for all the sins of all men. In verse 24, he says that he is able to endure "the sufferings of Christ", that is, the difficulties that he, as a preacher of the Word, experiences above and beyond the normal problems of life for the sake of Christ, as being something that will benefit Christ's body, the Church. If he, Paul, is able to endure these sufferings, then perhaps the Church will be spared some suffering for the sake of Christ. But as in baptism Christians share in the resurrection of Christ, they also will share some of the same sufferings as Christ (persecution and rejection by the world). In no sense, however, do our sufferings add anything, or need to add anything, to the price Christ paid for our sins on the cross.
I addressed this issue in an introductory talk to parents and children on Monday and again in my presentation of the pictures on Wednesday, saying that our worship and praise during Holy Week were not required of us to earn His love and favor, but rather were our response to what Jesus did for us on the cross. Through His suffering and death on the cross He paid the full price for our sins and that therefore we are justified before God through faith in Him, not through any of our works. Therefore, the Stations of the Cross ares simply a tool for us to remember and appreciate Christ's sacrifice for us.
No preschool next week, but our Holy Week schedule includes services on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Postscript on Passion Plays
When Luz Maria and I visited my family in South Dakota in 2006, we stopped at the Spearfish Amphitheater in Spearfish, S.D., which for nearly 70 years was the main venue for the Black Hills Passion Play. The Black Hills Passion Play was presented on a 350-foot outdoor stage with seating for 6,000 people. Performances were Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays during the summer months.
In 1932 a troupe of Passion Players from Lünen, Germany, where a Passion Play had been presented since 1242, began touring the United States. One of them was Josef Meier, a seventh-generation Passion Player. Their script was in German, which meant their engagements were limited to theaters and churches frequented by German-speaking immigrants. Because of political and economic conditions in Germany, Meier decided to stay in the United States. He had the script translated into English, hired American actors to replace the German cast, and while touring various towns, began looking for a permanent home for his Passion Play. Spearfish was chosen in part because of the site's excellent natural acoustics. The amphitheater was built in 1939. During its heyday, the Black Hills Passion Play company not only made special appearances throughout the United States and Canada, but in 1953 established a winter home in Lake Wales, Florida, where the play was presented until 1998.
There were no performances scheduled for the winter of 2006, but Luz Maria and I were given a personal tour of the Black Hills Passion Play Museum by Guido Della Vecchia, husband of Johanna Meier, Josef's daughter. Guido spoke Italian while Luz Maria spoke Spanish, and they were able to communicate to a limited extent.
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