The Sacred Way
Rome marks all its streets with giant engraved stones. Often these markers are embedded within walls, but what happens when every wall gets abandoned over time left to the soil, ants, and worms of centuries? Then Rome does the next best thing and places a new engraved street sign on its own post.
Via Sacra means “Sacred Street,” and in ancient Rome it connected the path between the government buildings, temples, and shops of the Roman Forum to the giant amphitheater that had a statue of Colossus in front of it from which we get the name Coliseum today.
Magma within the earth spewed out over prehistoric Italy to provide the perfect substance for Roman roads—hard black lava that still paves the streets of central Rome today. I was prepared to see ruins and imagine the past while In Rome, but I couldn’t believe that I was stepping foot on the same pavement that hosted the dusty feet of Caesars, senators, soldiers, gladiators, priests, and prisoners.
At the top of this re-discovered sacred way is an arch dedicated to General-turned-Caesar Titus and his brother Domitian. One side of the arch has an eroding depiction of the parade that took place on this very path, depicting the ransacking of Herod’s temple in Jerusalem a mere few decades after Jesus ascended into the heavens (AD 70). A giant golden menorah towers over the Roman soldiers as they plunder the Israelites.
Rome threw lavish parties to celebrate all their conquering. Victorious Generals would often drag behind their legions of happy soldiers a few important prisoners from the losing side. Paul uses this word picture to depict Christ’s victory on the cross: “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he [Jesus] made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Col 2:15). A different kind of victory. An even more sacred way. Elsewhere Paul says the most excellent way is that of love.
The morning after I walked along ancient Rome’s sacred way, I gathered at the Lord’s Table to take part in his even more sacred way. We eat his body and drink his blood – his triumph becomes our triumph. And if Rome and the book of Revelation have taught me anything it is that God always laughs last.
Imagine the procession of Jesus when he returns to usher in his kingdom. The spectacle. The triumph. Instead of producing magma to support the event, the earth will produce a crystal river flanked by a renewed Tree of Life whose leaves will heal the nations. And one day I will look down at my feet and think to myself, “I can’t believe I am now walking the most sacred way in New Jerusalem.”
May God continue to use us to point as many people as we can to his sacred way. And may the celebrated ways of the world—still full of violence, exploitation, oppression, and consumption—continue to crumble and ruin.