I’ve heard the Easter story my whole life. I still remember my childhood impressions of the angry mob that lined the road to Calvary. I imagined their faces, red with wrath. I imagined their curled lips and shaking fists. I imagined their words, flung with spit and bile. I wanted to stop the whole thing, to free him of the beam, and liberate him from his impending death. I remember how Christ’s journey through Passion Week, as described in the Gospels and read to me by my parents, propelled me into a deep sympathy for The Lord.
I could see him trudging up the Via Dolorosa (The Way of Pain), his dragging footsteps made of blood, staggering under the beam of his own cross. The din of the crowd, their foul breath, and their pressing bodies were all quite real to me. I grew convinced that the mob’s frantic cry from only hours before, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” (Matthew 27:22), still rang in his ears. Many of them were likely chanting it still, and their chant was like the back of an iron shovel brought down on his head. He stooped lower and lower under the blows, and finally stumbled altogether. “Then they compelled a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus, as he was coming out of the country and passing by, to bear His cross” (Mark 15:21).
Well, you know the rest of the story. He was crucified, just as they wished. Enormous nails were driven through his wrists and feet to keep him from slipping off the wood. Most of his blood was already trailed along the road, but it still dripped down his face and body. The crown of thorns dug their way into his head and his skin, pealed open from all the lashes, began to stick to the wood.
I have, nearly my whole life, felt deep hatred for that crowd. My imagination willingly caricatured them into brutes because I love The Lord, Jesus Christ.
He is the “man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3) and the Son of God (John 5:25-29), born of Mary. “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). When John saw Jesus coming toward him, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17), “He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself” (Hebrews 7:27).
For whose sins did Christ sacrifice himself? He carried my sins on his back when he went to the cross. My sins were buried with him and his death cast them as far as the East is from the West (Psalm 103:12).
And that’s why, dear friends, it is essential to remember that if I was shoved into a time machine and sent back to the first Easter, you would find me worming my way through the crowd. I’d be rubbing shoulders with all those people on the Via Dolorosa, most of them knowing not what they did (Luke 23:34). I’d be remembering that I’m very much like them. After all, we share the human condition. The bloodlust, the spite, the need for a scape goat is ours to share. I would be right there with them…were it not for Christ.
But I wouldn’t join them this time. Though a part of me would rather stop the entirely brutal proceedings, I would likely be powerless to do so. I certainly would not offer to take Christ’s place (God forbid!). Only Christ, the Son of God, could save me from myself. No, I’d be working my way to the front until I could see Christ with my own eyes. Then (O Lord, give me courage!), I would throw myself into the street. While the others called out hatefully, my broken heart would swell with gratefulness. Buckled by grief, my hands smeared by the blood he left on the ground, even on my knees perhaps and all tied up with nausea, I would speak to him. “Behold, you are the man of sorrows, the Son of God, born to save us from our sins!” With tears of gratefulness streaming down my face, I would say, “Thank you. Thank you. O my dear Lord, thank you.” We would wind our way to Golgotha together; Christ, staggering under the weight of the world; me, weeping and whispering praise and honor and glory.
So when you read the story of Good Friday and Easter found in Luke 22-24, imagine me there. Imagine me fighting through the frothing crowd, raising my hands in praise, closing my eyes to the brutality, perhaps, but finally stumbling next to Jesus. I am not always so eager to be with him-often distracted, often selfish, often cynical-but I’d like to be more eager. This is who I would like to become. This is how I’d like to be remembered. To that end, I will spend this week imagining a time machine, the jostling crowd, and the Man of Sorrows staggering up the street.
Come. Find me there and, if you’d like, pick your way through the mass and take your place beside me. Bring your friends, your children, your parents and we will walk the Via Dolorosa together. He has paid the price for our sins. He died so that we might live. He has risen and we are risen with him. Let us walk the way of pain with him, therefore, on our way to death and to the glories of resurrection.
Praise be to the Son, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.
A Brief Notice: I am taking next week off and invite you to do the same. Instead of reading my blog post on Saturday, spend some time meditating on the deep significance of Christ’s death. Walk that Via Dolorosa-that way of pain-in your heart. Marinate in that grief as preparation for the great getting up morning on Sunday.
