The Via Dolorosa

Sacrament meeting talk given 4/20/2025 (Easter Sunday)

Note: this talk started off with the obligatory ice-breaking joke, but since it involved people's names, I didn't include it here.

A black and white photo of a trailhead leading into a wooded area. Lined with boulders, it rises, then turns right and out of sight. It’s dark under the trees, but the trail further on promises more light.

At Easter, our thoughts are often focused on the resurrection of Christ, and the joy of his ultimate triumph over our two great antagonists, sin and death. But I’ve been asked to focus my remarks on the week leading up to that most subtle and glorious of victories, beginning with Christ’s arrival in Jerusalem, and culminating in his suffering and death on the cross. Since the joy of resurrection morning is already being covered today, I’ve chosen to take a different approach.

We’re familiar with the story of how Jesus passed triumphantly through the streets of Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday, riding an ancient prophecy, heralded not only by the chorus of hosannas from his elated followers, each hoping for their own form of deliverance, but also the as yet un-voiced shouts of the very stones themselves. As the long foretold “Man of Sorrows” cast his eyes on that joyous scene, how must his vision have been altered by the knowledge that not many days hence, he would travel those roads again, this time condemned, not celebrated; with rough road, rather than a carpet of clothes and leaves beneath his feet, accompanied by a very different chorus?  That time, he would not be borne along by either beast or adoring multitude, but having himself borne their burdens in secret and alone, he would now be forced to publicly carry the weight of insult, injury, and the instrument of his impending death. He who one week earlier was blessed by the multitude for “[coming] in the name of the Lord,” was to be stripped of dignity, reputation, and finally, life itself. Then, at last, the rocks would give utterance to their long-suppressed cries. In voices that would echo from one end of Earth to the other, they would join with all the elements to speak words best translated by an awestruck centurion: “Truly this man was the Son of God.” 

This final, no less prophetically anticipated journey of the Savior’s began with a friend’s betrayal, and led through Jerusalem’s rocky ways to a lonely hilltop, where three tall crosses stood, waiting to be transformed from implements of cruel destruction, to symbols of God’s condescension, and the hope offered to all souls still stumbling through the valley of the shadow of death. 

Christian songwriters Billy Sprague and Niles Borop captured the image in these words:

“Down the Via Dolorosa, called “The Way of Suffering,” 

Like a lamb came the Messiah, Christ the King. 

But He chose to walk that road

Out of His love for you and me. 

Down the Via Dolorosa, all the way to Calvary.”

The message of Easter is that Christ’s “Via Dolorosa” has paved a smoother way for us. The way is “strait and narrow,” and often steep, but it leads to light, to abundance, and to an end of suffering beyond the end of mortal life. And it is a road we need not walk alone.

One of the highlights of my job is taking my classes outside. I regularly get to spend several hours a week walking around Ogden with a pack of camera-wielding teenagers, looking for interesting photos, or shooting scenes for their film projects. A few days ago I took a high school photography class to one of my favorite destinations: a hiking trail that starts just below the Ogden cemetery.   

The cemetery itself is another destination of ours, and two days earlier I had spent time there with a younger class, pondering the lives and deaths of the people memorialized at our feet, along with what comes after each headstone is placed, both for the departed souls there laid to rest, and for those of us yet to make that transition. Well, that’s what I was doing anyway. The students may have had other things on their minds.

A broken headstone at the Ogden cemetery.

But as I walked along the hiking trail two days later, I was keenly aware of the weight of human experience and emotion saturating the hilltop above our heads. I began to contemplate what I might say to you today, praying silently for inspiration. The students ahead of me shouted and explored, sometimes impatient, sometimes delighted. The contrasts between their young lives, the quieter but no less vibrant new life springing eagerly from the mountainside, and the stillness of the silent graves above us, laboring in vain to render memory as eternal as love, played unexpected melodies in my innermost ear. 

I’m sure many of you have had this experience: a feeling of rich connection brought on by an all-too-rare moment of deep, untroubled focus. At times like these the world fades into hazy metaphor ripe with crisp meaning, so that while the moment lasts, it’s as if you can almost see the currents of divine influence flowing around your feet, or hear the notes of the celestial harp strings that tie each of us to everyone and everything else. 

A mountain trail passes between several trees with trunks that arch toward each other, like a tilted cathedral ceiling. Often our path seems off-kilter with what we perceive in the heavens.

In this mood, the path I followed among the trees seemed like the course of a life: my life, or any life. It was sometimes narrow, though anything but straight. Sometimes fallen trees blocked the way forward. There were dips, rises, twists and turns, and things to see and do along the way. Many reasons to stop, and more to continue on. 

For all the times I’d walked that path, I’d never been to the end. But on that day, for whatever reason, we moved faster than usual, and decided to press on. So we did, capturing memories made of light and time, and each step was a choice taking us closer to something I couldn't have foreseen. 

Sooner than expected, our journey was over. The path widened, the trees thinned, and there, standing with us on the hilltop, overlooking the east bench of Ogden, and framed in the almost unreasonably picturesque light of a rising sun behind the gray morning clouds, stood three tall crosses. 

If you asked me to write a scene for a movie in which a Christian character found the inspiration he was looking for, I couldn’t come up with anything more on the nose. And yet, there I was, finding that my path literally ended at the foot of the cross as we emerged from the forest and the light broke in the east. 

The three crosses just described standing on a grassy hill with mountains in the background. The sun glows behind one of them. I didn’t have time to photograph this as well as I would have liked, since we needed to get back to the school.

One of my students, who is working on a project about his own relationship with God, excitedly told me how perfect this all was. I couldn’t help but agree. As we walked back, the lyrics I quoted earlier echoed in my mind:

“Down the Via Dolorosa, called “The Way of Suffering,” 

Like a lamb came the Messiah, Christ the King.” 

I felt the voice of the spirit prompt me: “speak about that.”

So what about that, brothers and sisters? What do I see in His path? Just like that day in the woods, I see a metaphor for ours. 

Jesus’s road to the cross was straight, undeviating, marked by milestones like, “not as I will, but as Thou wilt,” or “to this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world.” 

Our road to Calvary is more winding. We may see our purpose less clearly, and comprehend God’s will less completely. Even if our determination to follow in His footsteps remains firm, we, the chronically imperfect, rely upon his grace for every step. 

In this day so like the days of Jesus’ mortal ministry, when popular leaders, whited like sepulchres, demand obedience while refusing to model more than the mere appearance of righteousness, when, like Barabbas the insurrectionist, the guilty go free while the innocent stand condemned, when iniquity abounds, the love of many wax cold, the laws of God are trampled under foot, and the laws of men do not guarantee safety for the stranger within our gates, or succor for the poor, or relief for the outcast and the afflicted—on this long and weary way of suffering, I ask, what are we who take the name of Christ upon us doing to make the way straighter for our fellow travelers? 

When we look around us on this scene, who do we see, and who will we be? Do we see offended Pharisees, casting false accusations against our faith? Do we see weak and impressionable followers, basking in the light of the world one day and condemning him the next? Do we see mocking, persecuting gentiles who know not what they do, but do it anyway? Do we see sinners, rejects, apostates with whom we should not associate, and to whose voices we should turn a deaf ear? Or do we see in each face the image of the Son of God, carrying an incomprehensible cross against all-too-knowable opposition?

Who among us will be Simon of Cyrene, helping to carry it? Who will be the woman of Bethany bringing the sweet smell of friendship and respect to one on the verge of great trials? Who will be Joseph of Arimathea, doing what little he can after unspeakable tragedy? Which of us, faced with betrayal, will put away our swords, choosing healing over violence? Who, with willing spirit, will watch with the sorrowful for as long as our weak flesh is able? Who will be a ministering angel, appearing in a moment of heaviness to strengthen the needy?

Though we may at times fear the consequences, I pray that we may not abandon those we see targeted by the angry mob with their proverbial (or real) swords and staves. I pray that we may not linger in the wings, waiting to see the end before deciding how to act, all the while denying our true identities as His disciples. I pray that we will remember this admonition: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

“[Christ] is [already] despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,” and so are so many of the rest of us. At this Easter season, may we determine not to “[hide], as it were, our faces from Him,” but turn to each other in openness and mutual esteem, not heeding whether the world despises us for it. We need not fear coming to grief, because “surely, he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.” He has walked the Via Dolorosa, so that none of us need walk any further alone.