Last year on the first Sunday in Lent, I took the St. Thomas youth group to Seattle’s Capitol Hill. There, we teamed up with the youth group from St. Mark’s Cathedral, and together, we walked the Stations of the Cross—not in the church, but in the city.

The first station was the outdoor stage in Volunteer Park. There, we imagined together the public condemnation of Jesus—the crowds, the shouting, the smells.

The fourth station was Tent City 3, which the cathedral was hosting at the time. We meditated on Jesus meeting his mother on the way to the cross, and we heard the stories of people trying to work their way out of homelessness. We were reminded that Mary’s suffering is that of all those who are unable to do enough to save their loved ones.

And so it went: we continued walking the fourteen Stations of the Cross all over Capitol Hill. The rain came in sprinkles. And eventually, we reached the twelfth station, where Jesus died on the cross. Our walk led us to a house on East Republican Street. In 2006, a gunman had opened fire on a rave party in this house, killing seven people, including himself.

We didn’t dwell there, because the house already had new residents. We just walked past and walked back again, proceeding to our next station. The thirteenth station, where Jesus is taken down from the cross, was represented by a community pea patch one block from the rave house.

We remembered the words of Jesus, paraphrased in The Message: “Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.”

The sprinkles turned to a steady rain that drenched us on the long walk back from the pea patch. We gathered again in the cathedral’s McCaw Chapel for the fourteenth station, where Jesus is placed in the tomb. We were given seeds to take home and plant. We heard a reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians:

“Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything—and I do mean everything—connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you.”

The death and resurrection of Christ is real. It happened just once, and it happens every day. We experienced it last year over three wet hours on Capitol Hill. How do you experience it? How will you share the good news this Easter?