Stations of the Cross in Lent 2025: Letter to the Parish from Mtr. Emily
Dear friends at Our Redeemer,
This Lent we’re doing a special series for Adult Education—and you’ll see the effects of it when you come into the nave on the first Sunday in Lent!
Our focus in Lent will be on the cross—what are the ways that we as Christians can understand or express what happened on the cross? What does it mean that this is the central Christian symbol? What are some ways we can spend time meditating on the cross, time that bears good fruit?
As part of this, we will be hanging something up in the nave. During Lent, there will be 8 small images hung around the church. They are the 8 Stations of the Cross that come directly from Scripture.
The Stations of the Cross come from a very early practice that developed in Jerusalem, where Christians would literally walk the way they believed Jesus had walked on the day he was killed. They stopped at places mentioned in Scripture, and places where people believed important moments had happened. Christian pilgrims came from around the known world to pray in this way.
But not everyone was able to get to the Holy Land, and so pilgrims came home and made a tiny Way of the Cross within their churches, or on their church’s land. They put up images, mosaics, reliefs, or sculptures. This became the Stations of the Cross. Those of us who have spent time in Roman Catholic communities will know that it’s possible to have 14 Stations, including the beloved ones taken from tradition and pious legend, like “Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus.” (If you’ve watched the tv show Derry Girls, you’ve definitely encountered the Stations!) Since this is a newish practice at Our Redeemer, we will be putting up only the 8 which come directly from Scripture. We will also have a variety of booklets available, with different ways to pray the Stations.
Of course, the Stations aren’t entirely new to Our Redeemer! On Good Friday at 10AM, we have an All-Ages Stations of the Cross. It is indeed attended by all ages, and is one of my favorite services here.
This Sunday (March 2nd) after church, there will be many many images set out on tables in the Great Hall. Each table will have the little piece of Scripture that the Station comes from. We’ve been careful to pick images that emphasize a variety of aspects of each Station, and which are not too troubling or violent for the young and the sensitive.
Each person will get 24 stickers, and (like at Annual Meeting!) Rev. Megan and I hope you will put stickers on the images that you like the best, or that are the most moving to you, or that you would love to look at for 6 weeks, or that you think best capture an important element of the Scripture.
We also know that for some, the cross and the story of the cross has difficult or even deeply painful associations. This can be because of how we encountered the cross in earlier years, or how people around us have presented the cross to us. And we also know that the cross has been—in many times and places—an instrument of aggression and oppression by Christians.
For these reasons, Rev. Megan and I hope that you will also make time to come to some of the Adult Forum gatherings that we are putting together. In these times we will be able to share with each other and learn from each other’s experiences, as well as from the greater Christian tradition. Weeks 1, 2, and 6 will also be given online on a weeknight.
A special thank-you goes to our Adult Education Advisory Team: Steve Schaffner, Julie Schaffner, Sam Stevens, and John Bernhard. They took some initial ideas and vastly improved them! Rev. Megan and I wouldn’t have been able to put this together without them. Thank you also to the input and encouragement from the Worship Committee.
The wilderness of Lent approaches, and we are glad to be entering it with you all!
Yours,
Mtr. Emily
27 February 2025
Feast of George Herbert
Eluid Levi Martinez
Ojo de la Cruz-Azul
1990