Good Friday
You are invited to follow along with the St. James Cathedral service for Good Friday at Noon today. You can access that through this link:
The following is a short service of meditation and prayer for your personal reflection.
I find within myself, as I draw closer to Good Friday this year, a deep hush. As the world outside my door, that I am no longer welcome in, gets quieter and quieter, so does my inner world. The invitation this Good Friday, it seems to me, is to sit in the difficult, painful quiet of a world under the spell of pandemic. To sit at the foot of the cross with our grief, our loneliness, our doubts, our pain, our tears. To simply be with Jesus as He is with us.
Hymn: Were You There
Readings: Good Friday Lectionary Readings
From John 19:16-30
Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them.
Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews."
Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, "Do not write, 'The King of the Jews,' but, 'This man said, I am King of the Jews.'" Pilate answered, "What I have written I have written."
When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, one for each soldier. They also took his tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. So they said to one another, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see who will get it." This was to fulfill what the scripture says, "They divided my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots." And that is what the soldiers did.
Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son."
Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), "I am thirsty." A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth.
When Jesus had received the wine, he said, "It is finished." Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Silence
Poem: Can you drink the cup? by Scott Surrency, O.F.M. Cap. (2015)
Can you drink the cup?
Drink, not survey or analyze,
ponder or scrutinize –
from a distance.
But drink – imbibe, ingest,
take into you so that it becomes a piece of your inmost self.
And not with cautious sips
that barely moisten your lips,
but with audacious drafts
that spill down your chin and onto your chest.
(Forget decorum – reserve would give offense.)Can you drink the cup?
The cup of rejection and opposition,
betrayal and regret.
Like vinegar and gall,
pungent and tart,
making you wince and recoil.
But not only that – for the cup is deceptively deep –
there are hopes and joys in there, too,
like thrilling champagne with bubbles
that tickle your nose on New Year’s Eve,
and fleeting moments of almost – almost – sheer ecstasy
that last as long as an eye-blink, or a champagne bubble,
but mysteriously satisfy and sustain.Can you drink the cup?
Yes, you — with your insecurities,
visible and invisible.
You with the doubts that nibble around the edges
and the ones that devour in one great big gulp.
You with your impetuous starts and youth-like bursts of love and devotion.
You with your giving up too soon – or too late – and being tyrannically hard on yourself.
You with your Yes, but’s and I’m sorry’s – again.
Yes, you – but with my grace.Can you drink the cup?
Can I drink the cup?
Yes.
Prayer
O God of broken lives
we pray from behind imposing gravestones-
touchstones of our limitations
our confinement in grief;
our despair in the ache of anger;
the haunting of fear;
the trembling of our soul;
flatness of spirit within the breadth of life.
We pray looking onto and
opposite the gravestone.
Gentle our restrictions,
purify us through doubt,
fashion us through surrender and trust.
Ready us, waken us, raise us as your children,
no longer afraid, but participating in the mystery of your love-
A Love as yet incomplete until we have died to your making of us.
In the name of the one sealed in the tomb. Amen.
Hymn: Jesus Remember Me
(header image by Raheel Shakeel )