[3137] Sunday School children experience Via Dolorosa by setting up Stations of the Cross during Easter

Sunday School children experience Via Dolorosa by setting up Stations of the Cross during Easter

Reported by Cheng Yi-hsuan

Translated by Tsai Sheng-hsin

Easter is the day people commemorate and celebrate Jesus’ resurrection. While his resurrection is a joyful thing for all human beings, the pain Jesus suffered on the way to Calvary shows the great greatness of his salvation. In order to help church members learn more about Jesus’ suffering, Hsinhe Presbyterian Church in Tainan held a memorial service each evening during Holy Week. The church also launched a “Via Dolorosa Experience Trip” for Sunday school teachers and students on the Sundays before and after Holy Week.

The trip took place on April 1^st and 8^th. The 14 stops of the trip were designed in accordance with Jesus’ journey to Calvary, also known as the stations of the cross. Therefore, the teachers and the students went through stations such as Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, the Last Supper, Jesus in Gethsemane, Jesus’ interrogation before the Sanhedrin, Jesus carrying the cross, etc.

During the station of “Jesus carrying the cross”, the teachers and the students took off their shoes and walked on the ramp in front of the church with a cross. The teachers carried a big wooden cross and the students carried a smaller one.

At the end of this experience, everyone felt the soreness in their shoulders and pain in feet because of the burden of a cross on their backs and the gradient of the ramp. Rev. Cheng Meng-lu, pastor of Hsinhe Church, said that everyone should be joyful for Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday; however, his heart went out to the congregation when he saw the teachers and the students carrying crosses because he knew that what Jesus went through was much more painful.

The principal of the Sunday school, Elder Kao Huei-sheng said, “This is the first year that we’ve tried to design an activity for Sunday school students to experience Via Dolorosa. The church hopes to help students learn more about how much Jesus sacrificed for mankind.”

During each memorial service during Holy Week, the church played a 10-minute long video of how Jesus was crucified. Most church members choked back tears as they watched the video. Afterwards, the congregation was invited to the front to pray and confess their sins. Huang Chiu-fang, wife of Rev. Cheng Meng-lu, said that the revival of a church starts when its members are willing to confess their sins. From the changes happening in the church among the congregation, including copying the Bible and each person setting aside a sacred space and time for God, Huang was certain that God was working in everyone’s heart through the week’s activities designed to commemorate the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus.