Simon of Cyrene

As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. (Luke 23:26)

Before my trip earlier this year to Israel I had grown a bit weary of the "Stations of the Cross." My walk last month through the streets of Jerusalem on the Via Dolorosa (in the rain!) changed that, however, and made a big impact on me. This Lent I have returned to the practice of praying the Stations on Fridays. It has been a big help to use John Peterson's A Walk in Jerusalem, because the prayers seem to me to be real and contemporary, and at times haunting. They do not allow the pray-er to stay in first-century Roman-occupied Palestine, but rather invite and insist that we walk "the way of the Cross" in our own time and place.

In his commentary for the fifth station, Peterson (who was formerly Dean at St. George's College) writes: "At this Fifth Station of the Cross, we are given the opportunity to lift up our own prejudices and fears to God: prejudices and fears that stem from our own weakness, that make us less than human because of the anxieties they provoke."

Some seem to think that we are now "color-blind" (whatever on earth that means!) because a black man sits in the Oval Office. No doubt we have come a long way, but it is within my own lifetime that George Wallace ran for that same office on a platform dedicated to segregation. While the gains we have made as a nation ought to be celebrated, anyone who says racism no longer exists is either in denial or willfully disingenuous. In 2008, President Obama stated in an extraordinarily honest and real speech on race that "the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexity of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect."

As Christians we are called, especially in this holy season and especially at the Fifth Station where an African takes up the cross on our Lord's behalf, to take strides in working through "the complexities of race." We are called first, I think, to introspection about our own complicity with racism and the recognition of our own fears and prejudices and anxieties. But true repentance invites us beyond introspection and into the day-to-day work of reconciliation. To allow God to work in us, and then through us, is to share in that continuing work of perfecting our Union and doing the work God has given us to do, toward the day when all people from every tribe and language and people and nation will be judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character.