Seventh Waypoint: Jesus Dies on the Cross and His Body Is Laid in the Tomb

We walk to a fire burning in the circle.

AT GOLGOTHA AND A GARDEN OUTSIDE JERUSALEM

At the sixth hour, a darkness came over the land.  The veil of the Temple was torn in two.  Jesus, crying out to God to receive his spirit, breathed his last.  A man named Joseph, from the town of Arimathea, went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.  Given permission, he removed the body of Jesus from the cross and wrapped it in a linen shroud.  He carried the body of Jesus to an empty tomb that had been hewed out of the rock in a nearby garden.  He placed the body of Jesus in the tomb and rolled a large stone to cover the entrance.

The fire goes out.

Jesus body is laid to rest.  We begin the time of waiting in darkness.  Somewhere, deep in our bones, lies the ancient wisdom, the inarticulate knowing, that life arises from death, that love abides, that the world is always ending and beginning again.  The story does not end with the tomb, nor with the unraveled cloth.

The question with which the last waypoint leaves us is a resounding one: do we trust the seed that surely lies in soil, the spark burning in the depths, the life that waits in the dark, the soul-light that will guide us through?