Stations of the Cross (2) Jesus Falls

Friends from St Michael’s will be joining us on the Walk of Witness on Friday and whilst I was in their church attending the Revd Debbie’s Institution and Induction last week I noticed they had placed handmade Stations of the Cross around the building.

It’s traditional to have Jesus falling on his journey to Golgotha – and to have him doing that not once but up to three times.  In scripture we are told he simply was too weak to carry the cross so he fell and Simon of Cyrene was press-ganged into service to do it for him.

So this is Erspamer’s drawing of Jesus’ first fall.

First falls can be shocking yet truly character forming. 

First falls pulsate with disbelief – the sort that comes from that moment when you realise the person you married isn’t perfect, the job you so much longed for isn’t much different than the one you’ve just left or the church you’ve recently been inducted to bears no resemblance to the profile they submitted during the settlement process!

First falls have the potential to knock the stuffing out of us and crush us.  How could this happen?  It wasn’t what I was expecting.  This isn’t the way I thought the world was, they were or I am.

More importantly First Falls move us from idealism to reality.  And faith has to cope with how life is rather than a sugar coated version of it.

That’s why it saddens me sometimes when people pray a prayer like this before a service:  Lord, as we come to worship help us to leave all our troubles and worries behind so that we might concentrate fully on you.

To pray like this is to miss the point that part of our worship is to make that vital, transformative connection between our lives as they really are both inside and outside of the church. 

So if the bible readings we listen to, the sermon we hear, the hymns we sing and the prayers we say touch our troubles and worries with God’s love, hope and strength then surely our worship has been meaningful. 

For this to happen we need to acknowledge that we do fall down and life is far from perfect for any of us. 

The Franciscan writer, Richard Rohr puts it like this: We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than doing it right.

Last week, in a Christian organisation I chair, I finished working with someone on their annual appraisal – that would have been a wonderful line to have included don’t you think: We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than doing it right.  It’s rather like the line that has sometimes thrown me at a job interview – please could you tell us what you are not good at!

Because so often we want to be seen as successful, especially by our peers.  I used to dread the Christmas Round Robbins that told me just how annoyingly perfect our friends’ children had become.

The story of the Prodigal Son surely tells us that the message at the centre of the gospel – at the centre of this day we call ‘Good’ – is that falling over, getting it wrong and making a mistake doesn’t have to be the last word.  What is so important is how we pick ourselves up, turn around, face a new direction and walk home to the welcome of that loving, open armed Father we call God.

None of this explains our falling and failings away because we need, in picking ourselves up to face our demons, ask for forgiveness, hold out a hand of reconciliation or simply understand our situation and context with greater honesty.

I have sometimes heard folk say: I don’t know if I’m worthy enough to join your church or take communion.  Well the truth is none of us are in a way. 

Here’s what the English Dominican Friar, Timothy Radcliffe says about all this: God smiles on us as we are, warts and all.  We may not be perfect but neither are we despicable worms.  We are fallible human beings who fumble our way to the kingdom, keeling over from time to time.

Prayer:

Welcoming God thank you that you smile on us.  Thank you for this picture of Jesus falling.  And on this day when we remember cross shaped grace – enable us, with your help and inspired by your love to pick ourselves up from our falling and to continue our pilgrimage knowing ourselves better, reconciled to neighbour and more conscious of you.  Amen