GOOD FRIDAY
Stations of the Cross, 2025
What does it mean to be poor in a rich city? Homeless in a neighborhood of mansions? Outcast on a street of churches?
What does it mean to follow Jesus—who was himself poor, homeless, and an outcast—and who stands with those who still suffer the same way today?
STOP 1
GATHERING TOGETHER
IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: St John’s Lutheran Church
REFLECTION: Why We Walk
What does it mean to be poor in a rich city? Homeless in a neighborhood of mansions? Outcast on a street of churches? What does it mean to follow Jesus—who was himself poor, homeless, and an outcast—and who stands with those who still suffer the same way today?
On this holy day when we remember Jesus’ violent death at the hands of the state, we consider how the story of our God-made-flesh intersects with the lives of the poorest among us still. This walk is an act of worship–we’ll read scripture together and pray for one another. It is an act of remembrance, but also of protest, as worship often can be, wherein together we imagine and hope for a day when no more people will suffer and die an untimely death at the hands of power.
This service is an adaptation of the Stations of the Cross, a beautiful tradition that helps us to remember with our bodies Jesus’ death. Today, however, we will not be performing the stations of the cross in simply a traditional sense. In sharing our own stories as we walk through the streets that so many of us call home, we recognize where Jesus stands alongside us, and we name the ongoing crucifixion of the poor. In gathering together and remembering Jesus’ story, we claim God’s presence amid ours, too. As we walk together today, we will remember the reason we gather on this day–we will tell Jesus’ story–but we will also tell stories of how Jesus walks with us still, even when it seems we are in the bleakest stages of our journey.
The walk we embark on today has a history in our community–in many ways it tells the evolving story of our little church. While we have been making this walk for many years now, stops have changed, just as our community has. Our starting place is different this year, because our community was recently displaced. Over the years, many of our stops have honored the lives of members lost to us. The many members we have lost over the last twenty years–many of those deaths related to the hardness and violence of life on the streets–become a part of the story that we honor and remember.
Today, with our bodies we will stand alongside one another and remember the places that Jesus, in the image of our neighbors, walks these streets. Here on these streets, Jesus finds hospitality and refuge. Jesus prays and eats, and encounters violence, too. On these streets, Jesus walks with us still. Jesus saves us.
But, how does Jesus save us all? Rich and poor? Housed and unhoused? Outcast and welcome? Jesus saves us through coming to be with us. And as we embark on this journey together, let us pay attention, that we may be present to one another, too.
STOP 2
JESUS PRAYS IN THE GARDEN
THE GOSPEL: John 17:20-26, 18:1-2
IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: The garden on the backside of St John’s
REFLECTION: A Place of Refuge
During the pandemic, when most church communities were meeting online, our congregation met exclusively outdoors for almost two years in the borrowed outdoor spaces of our partner churches. This peaceful garden was one place where we gathered for meals and worship multiple days of the week. For many months, it also became a stable sleeping spot–a shelter encampment–for many of our members without housing. Each night, people slept right here where we stand. People masterfully used the resources they had to construct as much shelter as they could. They organized and facilitated the space and did what they could to make sure it was as hospitable as possible for those looking to escape some of the chaos of sleeping downtown. It provided a quiet refuge for many of our most vulnerable members with few other options available to them in an uncertain time for us all. The backside of this church served as a literal sanctuary, for worship, fellowship, meals, and the refuge of human bodies. This space was only borrowed for these purposes, and they didn’t last forever, but for a time, this garden was our church. Like the garden that offered Jesus and his disciples a quiet space to rest and pray for a brief time before their peace was disrupted by violence, this too was a place that offered many of us refuge.
STOP 3
JESUS ARRESTED
THE GOSPEL: John 18:1-12
IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: The church where we sleep
REFLECTION: In Trouble with the Authorities
Peter taking a sword and slashing the ear of the soldier? That’s violence and easy to see. Jesus being arrested for no reason? That’s violence, too. But many of us have a harder time calling it that. We have been so trained to respect “law and order” that we do not see the obvious violence in the act itself—because it has “official” trappings. It smirks behind the lofty airs of authority. But don’t get it twisted: this act of officially-approved violence leads directly to false imprisonment, a sham trial, beating and torture, and finally—ultimately—to murder (which also just so happens to be conveniently state-sanctioned). There’s a straight line from his arrest in the garden to Jesus’ death on the cross.
Across the park is a little church. For the purpose of our walk, it serves as a stand-in for all our communities. Sometimes, some of us have slept there, seeking shelter from the storm. But we haven’t always been welcome. On occasion, the police have been called to arrest us, too. Officially, they call it “trespass”—and we are not often forgiven of them.
It’s easy to see violence in a gunshot or a knife fight, in balled-up fists or angry words. But the gospel helps us to see that there’s also violence in seeking the arrest of someone whose only crime is untreated mental illness and trying to find a place to lay their head. There’s a passive violence, too, hardly ever named as such, in the closed doors of a sanctuary that could have been opened. Or the burning sting of hard concrete that should never have been a bed.
The cross of Jesus unmasks all the ways violence strikes at the heart of our humanity. By his death, Jesus jams his own body in the spokes of the wheel we have made—and that crushes all of us with violence—and stops the cycle.
STOP 4
JESUS STANDS BEFORE PILATE
THE GOSPEL: John 18:28-40
IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: The Busy Crossroads
REFLECTION: A Moment at the Crossroads
Our next stop is a busy intersection, a literal crossroads. These streets will take you to fancy apartments, shopping centers, and hip restaurants. They lead to public spaces and places of worship, to the resources of downtown, and places to hide in the park. Sometimes groups here hold up signs of protest, other times they are signs asking for help. Though it offers minimal shelter, many have found a little refuge from the rain under the frame of the bus stop here. Others rest across the street on the corner, spread out right there on the concrete with no shelter at all. Most days on this street corner we can find friends and neighbors “flying signs,” a way to make a little cash to cover the basics. Cars zoom by, most too quickly for people to pay us any mind. This intersection can be dangerous, too, especially for those who are vulnerable. Just this year, we lost another dear friend because she was hit by a car, unseen by its driver. If people aren’t looking, if they aren't paying attention, they can miss us. But we’re right here.
This is a place where many people converge, and also where many of the hardships of life on the streets are made plainly visible for those of us willing to look. As Jesus stood before him, Pilate was met with a decision. He saw Jesus, and yet chose to turn his head away. When our neighbors stand before us, will we look the other way too?
STOP 5
JESUS CONDEMNED AND TORTURED
THE GOSPEL: John 19:1-16
IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: The Library
REFLECTION: No Place to Be
Let’s be clear: Pilate is not a good guy. He’s directly responsible not only for Jesus being beaten and tortured but for sending him to his death. Pilate sits in the seat of a judge, but he doesn’t rule in favor of justice. He is nothing more than a crafty and cruel politician who surmises that this Jesus thing is a political powder keg set to blow up in his face if he isn’t careful. He’s afraid, pure and simple.
The politicians on the other side of the aisle, the chief priests and the elders? They’re just as bad. They see Jesus as a challenge to their authority and have decided it’s best for all to get rid of him. So they make up bogus charges and lay the problem of Jesus at Pilate’s door.
A pastor in our neighborhood once said this library ought to put a cross on its roof—because the sanctuary it provides for our sisters and brothers on the street is far more than most of our churches. Somehow a public institution—under no mandate whatsoever to be faithful to the gospel—finds a way to open its doors and provide hospitality to human beings, whether they are housed or not—six days a week.
That’s good news for the library, but it’s an indictment against us, the followers of Jesus. Our actions—or rather, the lack of them—shout “crucify” even as the sound of “hosanna” fades from our lips. Like Pilate and the chief priests and the elders, we’re afraid and left looking out only for our own interests.
STOP 6
JESUS IS CRUCIFIED
THE GOSPEL: John 19:17-30
IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: The Gates at “Old Mercy”
REFLECTION: We Encounter Death
Never will I forget the sound of it. Like a great big hammer, over and over. Five savage blows, feeling like the world was shaking apart. And then as suddenly as we were shattered, it was finished.
I knew immediately what it was, what it had to be. But my brain rebelled. How could that sound be gunshots—gunshots at our church?
Outside, we found Jason on the ground, his precious life bleeding out on this concrete, his eyes looking for comfort in ours.
Since we started it, our walk with the cross has always stopped at a place where someone in our community died: an abandoned house that burned one night while some of us slept there. A ministry house across the way that also burned as a man sought warmth in the cold. In the past few years, we stopped where our friends, the Open Door, used to be—because their absence has felt like a death for us, too.
I never thought it would stop here, outside the gates where our community once gathered.
In his mercy, Jesus unmasks our violence. Violence against the poor because Jesus was poor. Violence against prophets and those who have another world in view because Jesus was a prophet and, like Martin, he too had a dream. Violence against the innocent because Jesus, just like Jason, was guilty of no crime. At the cross, the world—with all its damnable lies about power and might—strikes something that shatters it, breaking it apart, grace upon grace, until it crumbles to dust and we are free at last.
As we stand here with Jesus—and Jason—let us, like John with Mary, take one another home. Let us make our community once again a sanctuary for all of us
STOP 7
JESUS IS BURIED
THE GOSPEL: John 19:31-42
IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: Where We Wait for What’s Next
“The cross of Jesus unmasks all the ways violence strikes at the heart of our humanity.
By his death, Jesus jams his own body in the spokes of the wheel we have made—and that crushes all of us with violence—and stops the cycle.”
— Chad Hyatt