Roads of Hurt and Hope
By Andrew D. Mayes
Resource Publications, 78 pages, $13
TLC’s Amber Noel interviewed author Andrew Mayes — listen on the TLC Podcast.
As in just about every year since 2010, in January I was set to take a group of pilgrims to the Land of the Holy One. The stage was set, the reservations had been made. Then came the horrific, brutal, and tragic day of October 7. The possibility of this pilgrimage changed overnight. As many of us who often travel to this tense but beautiful land know, we sometimes have to rely on memories, and settle for a “pilgrimage in place.” But how to do that?
The Rev. Andrew Mayes, chaplain of St. George’s College in Jerusalem, has a new offering, Roads of Hurt and Hope. It is, to my mind, one excellent way to do this. Of course, the best-known “pilgrimage in place” is the Via Dolorosa, the Stations of the Cross. Just about any Christian pilgrim walks this route through the bustling streets, in the midst of the everyday, in the middle of the tension, the distrust, the hope, the even more fragile peace, in Jerusalem, where all of these different beliefs, approaches, and aspirations come together. We walk the Stations of the Cross. Even on that walk, it takes imagination to take yourself back to the days when Jesus made the journey. One still has to travel through time and space to center oneself.
Yes, in so many ways “visiting” the Land of the Holy One in this virtual, distant way is second best, but at the same time most of us know the deep emotional experience that can come from “virtually” walking the Stations of the Cross inside a church nave, in our hometown, in our mind and heart. This resource paints “the Way” with some beautiful reflections and some provocative questions.
As we Christians enter into our annual journey of walking in the foot-steps of Jesus in place, wherever we may be, something we all do, and have done, over and over, every year, this gift from Mayes has provided one additional creative way to go deeper into that discipline.
On my usual pilgrimages, we try to end on the road to Emmaus. We get on a bus and travel a few miles out of town, and we celebrate Eucharist and liturgically end our pilgrimage. When I preach that event, I almost always add some version of this thought: We came to this place that we call the Holy Land. But the point of this trip, the point of walking in Jesus’ footsteps here, the point of our faith, is the remarkable truth that all land is holy.
I say to the pilgrims, go back to your hometown and try to know it as “holy land.” Use the new eyes you gained here to see the same there. Live that same way there. Try not to ask so many questions of the land and of the people, and instead practice letting the land and people ask questions of you.
Living this way, in whatever land we find ourselves is, to my mind, the way we live out those words found in the Holy Week Collect: “Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
