A tuna sandwich and a Coke. Such an ordinary lunch after such an extraordinary morning. As I sit at a cafe overlooking Jerusalem, I am pondering an earlier walk down what is known to millions as the Via Dolorosa. “The way of suffering” is the route Jesus walked through Jerusalem carrying his cross.
The thing of it is, the Via Dolorosa today is the way of shopping and dickering and shouting. The most common form of suffering is sore feet and aching backs. It's tough to imagine the real Jesus dragging a real cross up and down the hilly path these people call a street.
Ultimately that path leads to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. If you've yet to visit, the church is a darksome foreboding structure, its cavernous blackness as eager to swallow all light as it is all hope. Despair perfumes the air as your eyes adjust to the shadows.
Up a steep winding staircase, a barely controlled mob is cued up to pray or genuflect or ponder at the “exact spot” (so they say) where Christ's cross was hoisted.
As I walked through the church's massive doors back out into the sunlight, I encountered a woman who was weeping. Tears dribbled down her cheeks as the weight of her experience squeezed hard on her emotions.
And suddenly, I was ashamed. How could I—a follower of Jesus Christ—walk through this church and be so little moved? When—if ever—have I truly wept over the agony Christ took upon Himself for me?
Of course, no one should be guilted into feeling an emotion. But perhaps my lack of tears is evidence I have thought too little of Him for whom no thanks is too much.
For Moody Radio, those are my thoughts, and I'm Jon Gauger.