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Over Easter weekend, my husband and I are in New Harmony, Indiana, celebrating our anniversary. Friday afternoon, Andrew wants a nap. I am restless. “I’m gonna do the Cross Walk,” I tell him, envisioning an architectural tour of the seven churches in town.
Instead, I find myself in the middle of a deeply faithful, creative version of the Stations of the Cross, done here every Good Friday for more than thirty years, the local principal letting the kids off school so they could join the walk. At each church, scripture will be read, gradually telling the story of the crucifixion. After each reading, we will sing a verse from “Amazing Grace” or “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?”
I swallow hard. Here I am in leggings and tennis shoes, camera in hand, ready to learn about gothic and other forms of sacred architecture—not be drawn back into a way of life I left years ago.
But it all comes back, easy as the proverbial bicycle ride. I sit demurely on hard wood, murmur responses, and warble with off-key sincerity, just as I always did. A painting of—is it a boat on a lake? On the Sea of Galilee?—is lit behind the central lectern. I stare, hoping this looks prayerful. Growing up Catholic, I saw only stained glass or marble in that spot, and the centerpiece was the altar, not the pulpit. Would this have felt more accessible, less ethereal? Would I have been less likely to doze off if the sermon had seemed like the centerpiece of the service? A plain wood cross hangs on the wall, but there is no corpus. Corpus delicti, the body of the crime. The evidence. How do you imagine Jesus’s suffering without gazing upon that resigned, bloodied face, those thorns digging into soft skin, those nailed palms about to tear?
Catholicism never lacked for drama. But maybe it is a greater act of faith to imagine without the lurid visual aids.
The part of the reading we in the pews get to recite is in boldface: “Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’” Words I have lately muttered about politics, which I suppose is sacrilege. Is it, though? Jesus might have rendered unto Caesar, but he was definitely political, enraged by the marketplace greed that seeped into the temple…
After the first church’s mini-service ends, we are each given a small wood cross to carry, and we line up behind the kid with the big cross. He has been deputized to shoulder that heavy cross and lead us through town. There are golf carts for anyone who prefers to ride, but a fortyish woman using a cane tells a family member she thinks she can walk it. She will manage the entire route without a sigh or squeak of protest. Multiple sclerosis? I wonder, though it is none of my business. Crosses come in all sizes—and when they are carried easily, the rest of us are deceived into thinking them light.
As we set out, I overhear members of the first congregation congratulating each other on the size of the crowd. Faith needs company. A certain pride swells when people flood into the sanctuary that brings you comfort, and nothing feels quite so desolate as a church service with only a few people in the front rows, the rest of the space hollow and echoey.
One woman is exasperated with herself because she did not think to wear her church T-shirt, as two couples have, in solidarity. This makes me realize how long it is since I have felt a strong sense of membership in an institution or club. Groups of friends, yes. But something official? The last time I felt that t-shirt feeling, that regret for not doing the just-right thing to display my staunch membership, was when I showed up for some high school alumni function and saw that a friend was wearing her class ring.
Mine no longer fit.
The same is true of so many institutions through which I have passed: they no longer fit. I admire people who stay with things, nurturing and cherishing their relationship to places and groups that have shaped them. I loathe being fickle, flitting away because I have changed. But how do you, decades later, squeeze a teenage ring back onto a finger plump with experience?
On we go, in what is starting to feel like a Dickensian outing with the ghost of Easters past. The next church is a low-ceilinged building with aluminum windows, siding, industrial carpet, and fluorescent lighting. The best this particular congregation could afford, and as true an assembly as any in a cathedral. But it makes me wonder why old Catholic churches are always so grand. Surely the immigrants to this country did not plunk enough money into the collection baskets to buy all that marble, those gold chalices, those rich oil paintings? How did they pay for the carved wood and stained glass?
Was the young U.S. considered a missionary project, I wonder, and therefore supported by the Vatican? All that Calvinism had to be competed with…. Later I will look this up, and sure enough: until the early twentieth century, the United States was “mission territory.” Then the Vatican eased its funding over to poorer countries, and other funding mechanisms took hold. That early support was smart, though, making possible those soaring arches and flying buttresses, rose windows and Pietas. All that beauty was hard to leave.
At the third church, there is more scenery, again a marine theme, as the focal point. I squint: is Jesus in that boat? I cannot tell. Later I will learn that Protestant churches have often replaced the icons of the Roman church with landscape paintings, which glow with the values of modesty, personal piety, and a respect for the natural world as God’s creation. How did I not know this?
In this reading, soldiers are dividing Jesus’ clothes among themselves and casting lots for the seamless tunic, rather than rip it apart. Why did they want those clothes? This is the first time it has occurred to me to ask. Souvenirs from a high-profile execution? Resale to his groupies? A secret suspicion that he might just be the real deal? That was my childish assumption. But just as crucifixion was common, not the bizarre torture devised just for Jesus, as my child’s mind pictured it, so was dividing the criminal’s possessions. Standard practice, as a monetary compensation for the guards. Clothes were all Jesus had, and his seamless tunic was the only garment anyone might have coveted, so rather than destroy it, they made it a gamble. The real point of the passage is to show a thousand-year-old prophecy fulfilled, but it also underscores Jesus’s humiliation, stripped of the fabric that had protected him, his shirt turned into a casually cruel token.
Unlike the t-shirt that woman forgot to wear. She is bemoaning that fact all over again. “I can’t believe I didn’t wear my T-shirt,” she moans as we walk. I think of Greek life, another social belonging I skipped. My friend pledged Tri Delt and started signing all her letters with three little triangles and a heart, which I was nauseated to learn meant Delta Love. Now I wonder what is wrong with me, that I do not “buy the t-shirt.” A hangover from being an only child, never in a group? I am always wistful, yearning for the shared rituals and memories, but as soon as I am in one of these things, it starts to feel a bit too self-conscious. Or maybe I start to feel a bit too self-conscious?
A tiny splinter in my small cross snags the pad of my thumb. How can I mind, given what that cross represents? This might be one of the biggest benefits of Christianity: a sense of proportion that leaves you ashamed of kvetching over insignificant miseries.
The sky grows dark, almost thunderous, though rain is not expected until tomorrow. As a little girl, I was fascinated by how often the sky went dark around 3pm on Good Friday. Not once did I stop to think of time zones or countries halfway around the world. I was in the stormy Midwest, it was spring, and the skies were acknowledging Jesus’s death. Would weather bother to confirm our beliefs? And, the less comfortable question, why does it still feel eerie to see that darkened sky?
We walk on, past lively Main Street. It would be bad form to sneak off for an ice cream. But see, that is the thing: our lives go on. Our crucifixions are small by comparison, and so are our joys. Christianity is a bit misleading that way, demanding an imitation of Christ from such flawed, broken mortals. My Jewish husband tells me that is the problem: Christianity expects too much. Instead of doing tikkun olam, a bit of DIY to repair your corner of the world, Christians have to at least try to do the impossible: live as saints. They are expected to leave their family, friends, job, and 401(k) to become disciples, cleaving to a counterculture prophet who just might be crazy. They are expected to give as much of their money as possible and hate themselves for what they keep. To live in simplicity, alongside the poor. To only be sexual creatures in a certain way, for a certain number of years, with one person, ideally to make babies. To stay in a marriage as painful and angry as an inflamed boil. To suffer and be glad of it, because that brings them closer to Christ. To turn the other cheek.
Granted, nobody does all that. The ideal is so far from reality that most Christians do some fancy rationalizing, then do as they please.
The next church has big LED boards angled on either side of the lectern. Someone behind me whispers—do I hear a hint of that deadly sin envy?—that they seem to have a new sound system. How different churches are, in what they think will impress, convert, make the sacred emphatic enough to cut through the daily noise. There is no surefire formula, no point to the rivalry.
By now, our group has settled into a flocklike peace, walking behind our shepherd from place to place. I could do this all day. The repetition is soothing and the experience solemn: we are all participating wholeheartedly in the shared ritual. Except me, I guess. I try, but my mind pulls back, scans the horizon. There is nothing wholehearted about cynicism.
On the other hand, faith that is not tempered by a little cynicism is credulous and childlike.
The balance, I think, is to pull beauty and meaning from these traditions without thinking they are certain guarantees, absolute truths, and an automatic end to our restless questioning. Humans are famous for restless questioning. We walk from one sanctuary to the next, learning as we go. That looks disloyal to some, but meaning is everywhere, and life is more of a scavenger hunt than a burlap-bag race. We need to be able to move freely if we are to follow whatever clue might lead us somewhere significant. And sometimes those clues take us away from the place where we thought we belonged.
Read more by Jeannette Cooperman here.
