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| Good Friday "Trial and Crucifixion" |
Good Friday The most powerful and moving Good Friday services I have experienced involved plays and dramas that captured people's attention and imagination, that got them, living in the present world, actively involved in an event that took place two millennia ago in a distant country. Unfortunately, I no longer own the copyright on those texts, so I can't offer them to you. So I'll suggest the next best thing. Good Friday is a confessional time. We recognize that human nature just like ours crucified Jesus, for reasons that seemed justified at the time. We also recognize that our human nature continues to crucify the disadvantaged and voiceless both at home and abroad. First, prepare the scene. Get rid of all liturgical symbols – banners, antependia, chalices, paintings... Make the church as stark and bare as a barn. Avoid bright lighting. Begin the service in silence – no prelude, no introit. I would explain that a “normal” service usually moves from Call to Worship, through Praise, to some form of Invocation inviting God's presence, into Confession and Absolution. Then we proceed into hearing what God has to say to us in scripture, we explore that message, and we commit ourselves anew to serving God. In this service, we will halt that process before we receive Absolution; Absolution comes gloriously on Easter morning. Today, we need to confess our complicity in pain and suffering. I would follow the normal pattern of prayers and praise for opening a service, but with subdued hymn(s). I would treat the rest of the service as an extended prayer of confession, alternating readings from Matthew with readings from contemporary news and with periods of meditation. For example, I might pair verses 11-14, where Pilate questions Jesus, with some current court case that drags on and on. Or verses 27-31, where soldiers mock Jesus, with Abu Graib or Guantanamo. I might balance verses 45-61, the death of Jesus, by trying to get inside the emotions of women watching someone they love die. At the end of the service I would not have a closing hymn or a benediction. The story remains unfinished (see also excerpt from Two Worlds in One, below). So I would have a period of silent meditation, and then quietly walk out. And, of course, there should be no coffee or cookies served after this service. Excerpt from Two Worlds in One, (Wood Lake, 1985, page 118) In those final days, Jesus enacted a parable, instead of telling it. The whole story of Passion Week becomes a kind of parable... If Jesus were telling it, instead of living it, it might go like this: “Once there was a sovereign whose realm was organized to be totally just. To make sure that all was in order, he decided to test it for himself. “So he disguised himself as a poor man, one who had no status or authority. Then he went out, and was wrongly arrested. “Yet this ruler had so much faith in the ultimate justice of his realm that he refused to reveal who he really was. He wouldn't even defend himself against false charges. Not even when he was sentenced, not even when he was being executed, did he stop believing that justice would triumph in the end...” If Jesus' untold parable ends there – if it ends on the cross on Friday – we would have to conclude that the ruler's faith was misplaced. We might even consider him an idealistic fool. But if the parable doesn't end until Easter morning, then the ruler's faith was wonderfully, gloriously, justified after all. Wrong did not triumph. JIm's full List of suggestions for preaching these stories
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