Click here for Palm Sunday scripture readings.

Beneath the iconic golden dome of Johns Hopkins Hospital, once the entrance to this mecca of Western medicine, welcoming everyone, stands a 10.5-foot sculpture of Christ the Consoler, arms outstretched, right foot forward, eyes downcast.  Etched in the pedestal on which the sculpture stands:

“Come to me all you who are weary and heavily burdened and I will give you rest.”(MT.11:28)

Given as a controversial gift to this secular hospital in 1896, the statue has been the subject of stories ever since, capturing the solace and hope people seek from touching the toe of Christ the Consoler.

As someone who spent over twenty years as a hospital chaplain, I was intrigued by what happened beneath this golden dome.  Years ago, I decided to begin my annual retreat by spending a few days ‘keeping watch’, under the dome, in the gaze of Christ the Consoler.

A woman’s heels clacking against the marble floor are silenced as she comes before the imposing image. A surgeon pauses to touch the toe of Jesus and vanishes into his day. Staff leaving after a long night, nurses arriving to begin their shift, reach up to touch the toe of Jesus.

Housekeepers, techs, specialists of all kinds pause to pray. Patients wearing slippers and dragging IV poles walked softly into the rotunda craning their necks to look into the face of Jesus.

Frightened patients fearful of a devastating diagnosis, families wrenching with fresh grief, couples about to give birth, children bald from chemotherapy…all reaching to touch the toe of Jesus.

A close look reveals that generations of touch have worn the marble smooth.

This silent Christus spoke across chasms of difference and diversity to our shared vulnerability and suffering.  Faith-filled or bereft of faith they came.

Ukraine…the Middle East… a fragile democracy in our United States… an epidemic of mass shooting… pervasive racism…the lament goes on and on.

Jesus asks his disciples: “So you could not watch and pray with me for one hour?"  (MT.26:40)

“Watch and pray.”  Pay attention. Reach for the toe of Jesus. Look into his suffering face. If we but look, we see that Jesus locks us in his gaze.  He invites us to follow that gaze to the people and places where the passion is happening today.

We are tempted to look away; it is all too much. Yet Jesus beckons us to “Watch and pray"...to bear witness. 

Something changes within us when the suffering Christ draws near.

Where am I being called to "Watch and pray"...to  bear witness…to  accompany…to lift up….to touch the toe of Jesus?

May these holy days be not memory but invitation.