The Women Of Jerusalem Weep Over Jesus

Stations of the Cross #8

^{Luke 23:27} A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. ²⁸ But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. ²⁹ For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’

“Don’t weep for me”, Jesus says, “but for yourselves and all your sons and daughters who will share my fate. Jesus may have been thinking, in particular, of the horrific violence that surrounded the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD. Babies carried in the arms of women watching Jesus go to the cross would be 37 when Jerusalem fell. Those babies might become the rebels in the final uprising before the end of their city and the scattering of their people. They will not live past 37.

Well may Jesus tell the women to weep for them rather than for him.

Since then, so many sons and daughters have been slaughtered in senseless wars. As we weep for Jesus today, we weep for them all.

So let’s pray:

Unmasked
In your body
Are all the forces that use fear
And violence to coerce and to control.
In your body
Every mother sees
The sons and daughters of Gaza,
Of Ukraine, of Sudan, Afghanistan, 
And of Australia’s violent past. 
In your body, Lord,
We see it and we weep:
For you,
For every mother,
And for every son and daughter
In whom your blood has 
Everywhere been shed. Amen.

With love from Rev Margaret

Image photographed and artistically rendered by Lindsay Gardiner