In the traditional Good Friday devotion known as Stations of the Cross, worshipers trace the last days of the life of Jesus through a symbolic pilgrimage. From condemnation to crucifixion and entombment, the 14 prayer stations tell of cruelty, grief and murder in a brutal story that has persisted for more than 2,000 years.
The Federated Church of Martha’s Vineyard has updated the tradition, including contemporary issues to highlight how the atrocities are ongoing in present-day society. The new pilgrimage made its debut last year and returns this Good Friday at the Edgartown church.
“Anyone can come and just make their way through the stations at their leisure,” said Mr. Winters, who engaged artist Julie Jaffee to create images for the prayer stations.
Mr. Winters became settled pastor at the Federated Church in 2023. Before coming to the Vineyard, he worked with Episcopalian minister Elizabeth Molitors to develop the contemporary Stations of the Cross.
This Friday, the church will be open from noon to 7 p.m. for all who wish to follow the path, he said. Parish volunteers will be on hand to assist as needed.
The goal, he said, is to contemplate the true cost of the Good Friday sacrifice.
“The question for me as a Christian, essentially, is, what does it mean for God... — for those of us as Christians understanding Jesus as the literal incarnation of the almighty God — to be on the receiving end of this kind of brutality [and] dehumanization, with the explicit purpose to intimidate, to terrify, to put an oppressed people in place? What does that mean from a spiritual standpoint?” Mr. Winters said.
Tamir Rice, Matthew Shepard, the children of Sandy Hook and 1935 lynching victim Rubin Stacy — surrounded by his killers in a postcard photograph — are among the counterparts of Jesus represented in the Federated Church’s Stations of the Cross.
The anguish of Jesus’s mother Mary is reflected by Sylvia Guerrero, who helped end “gay/trans panic” as a legal defense in California after her daughter’s murder.
Sister Helen Prejean, the nun whose work with the condemned inspired the film and opera Dead Man Walking, evokes the compassionate woman who wipes the sweat and blood from Jesus’s face.
Mr. Winters also included the children of Gaza who have died of exposure, representing Jesus’s death on the cross.
It’s a tense moment to be invoking some of these contemporary issues, Mr. Winters said.
“It’s become a harder time for churches in terms of what is seen as being political or divisive, or, you know, partisan,” he said.
“For me, Jesus did take sides, and it was always on the side of who was getting hurt, who was left out, who was being judged,” Mr. Winters continued. “He was never on the side of the accuser, only on the side of the accused. And to me, it’s hard to ignore that for the sake of harmony... when people are getting hurt,” he said.
Comments
Comment policy »