Good Friday 2020
Service of the Passion
and
Recognition of the Cross
Hymn: 345 Were you there?
Greeting:
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Let us pray:
God of life and death,
we come before you with all our complexities –
the good and bad in ourselves,
our certainties and our anxieties,
the joys and sorrows in our lives,
our triumphs and our failures.
Open us to the possibilities that life offers,
give us strength for life’s journey
and draw us always into your presence. Amen
Collect:
God who shares our suffering,
give us courage to face abandonment, loss and insecurity.
Remind us that you walk beside us on the way, sharing our pain and holding us fast.
Help us to live through this and other adversities
so that we with Christ might rise to newness of life
in the present and for eternity.
We ask this through Jesus our Saviour
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.
Poem: Sheila Cassidy – “Starting over – fighting back”
Sheila Cassidy, who quotes this poem, was an Australian born English doctor who was practicing in Chile when she was arrested, held without trial and tortured for 59 days . This verse seems to fit our times.
We without a future,
Safe, defined, delivered
Now salute You God,
Know that nothing is safe,
Secure, inviolable here.
Except You,
And even that eludes our minds
at times.
Reflection
“My God, my God why?”
a God who is absent,
who allows suffering
can confuse, disappoint and dismay.
We have to hold on through the darkness, however bleak
confident of coming to the resurrection morn.
Ministry of the Word
Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12
Psalm 22
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me:
why are you so far from helping me
and from the words of my groaning?
My God, I cry to you by day, but you do not answer:
and by night also I take no rest.
But you continue holy;
you that are the praise of Israel.
In you our forebears trusted:
they trusted and you delivered them.
To you they cried and they were saved:
they put their trust in you and were not confounded.
But as for me, I am a worm and no man:
the scorn of all and despised by the people.
Those that see me laugh me to scorn:
they shoot out their lips at me
and wag their heads, saying,
“He trusted in the Lord – let him deliver him:
let him deliver him, if he delights in him.”
But you are he that took me out of the womb:
that brought me to lie at peace on my mother’s breast.
On you have I been cast since my birth:
you are my God, even from my mother’s womb.
O go not from me, for trouble is hard at hand:
and there is none to help.
Many oxen surround me:
fat bulls of Bashan close me in on every side.
They gape wide their mouths at me:
like lions that roar and rend.
I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint:
my heart within my breast is like melting wax.
My mouth is dried up like a potsherd:
and my tongue clings to my gums.
My hands and my feet are withered:
and you lay me in the dust of death.
For many dogs are come about me:
and a band of evildoers hem me in.
I can count all my bones:
they stand staring and gazing upon me.
They part my garments among them:
and cast lots for my clothing.
O Lord, do not stand far off:
you are my helper, hasten to my aid.
Deliver my body from the sword:
my life from the power of the dogs;
O save me from the lion’s mouth:
and my afflicted soul from the horns of the wild oxen.
I will tell of your name to my companions:
in the midst of the congregation will I praise you.
O praise the Lord, all you that fear him:
hold him in honour, O seed of Jacob,
and let the seed of Israel stand in awe of him.
For he has not despised nor abhorred
the poor man in his misery:
nor did he hide his face from him,
but heard him when he cried.
The meek shall eat of the sacrifice and be satisfied:
and those who seek the Lord shall praise him –
may their hearts rejoice forever!
Let all the ends of the earth remember
and turn to the Lord:
and let all the families of the nations worship before him.
For the kingdom is the Lord’s:
and he shall be ruler over the nations.
How can those who sleep in the earth do him homage:
or those that descend to the dust bow down before him?
But he has saved my life for himself:
and my posterity shall serve him.
This shall be told of my Lord to a future generation:
and his righteousness declared to a people yet unborn,
that he has done it.
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
For the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Hymn: 342 When I survey
The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John Chapter 18 beginning
at verse 1.
Glory to you Lord Jesus Christ.
For the Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.
Intercessions:
Let us pray for the world and for the church (please add your own prayers here).
Response: Loving God, hold our hands when we weep.
And give us strength to continue.
Lord’s Prayer: Accept our prayers through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who taught us to pray:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil,
for the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and forever. Amen.
Confession:
Though the world might be confusing and hard to control, God never abandons us. God comes to us in human form, sharing our experiences and revealing a depth of understanding and sympathy for our condition.
Let us then have confidence to admit our weaknesses, the ways in which we have failed God and ourselves.
Crucified Saviour,
with your disciples we abandon you
and the world for which you suffered,
seeking our own safety and
meeting our own desires.
Through our selfishness and greed
we inflict needless suffering on others
and wreak destruction on the planet.
Forgive us.
Give us grace to look beyond ourselves
and a willingness to be part of the solution and not the problem. Amen.
Absolution:
God who formed you and who suffered for you,
loves you unconditionally and forgives your sins.
Be set free to change and to grow. Amen.
Recognition of the cross:
Hymn: 341 My song is love unknown.
(Recognition of the cross. At this time you might like to reflect on the cross and Jesus’ willingness to suffer. Ask yourself if you are prepared to sit with pain to see what it has to teach you.)
Blessing:
Hymn: 351 Lift high the cross.
Copyright. Marian Free, 2020
From Richard Rohr
All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. Creation has a pattern of wisdom; and we dare not shield ourselves from it, or we literally will lose our soul. We can obey commandments, believe doctrines, and attend church services all our lives and still daily lose our souls if we run from the necessary cycle of loss and renewal. Death and resurrection are lived out at every level of the cosmos, but only one species thinks it can avoid it—the human species.
I am afraid that many of us with privilege have been able to become very naïve about pain and suffering in the United States and the Western world. We simply don’t have time for it. However, by trying to handle all suffering through willpower, denial, medication, or even therapy, we have forgotten something that should be obvious: we do not handle suffering; suffering handles us— in deep and mysterious ways that become the very matrix of life and especially new life. Only suffering and certain kinds of awe lead us into genuinely new experiences. All the rest is merely the confirmation of old experience.
It is amazing to me that the cross or crucifix became the central Christian logo, when its rather obvious message of inevitable suffering is aggressively disbelieved in most Christian countries, individuals, and churches. We are clearly into ascent, achievement, and accumulation. The cross became a mere totem, a piece of jewellery. We made the Jesus symbol into a mechanical and distant substitutionary atonement theory instead of a very personal and intense at-one-ment process, the very reality of love’s unfolding. We missed out on the positive and redemptive meaning of our own pain and suffering. It was something Jesus did for us (substitutionary), but not something that revealed and invited us into the same pattern. We are not punished for our sins, we are punished by our sins (such as blindness, egocentricity, illusions, or pride).
It seems that nothing less than some kind of pain will force us to release our grip on our small explanations and our self-serving illusions. Resurrection will always take care of itself, whenever death is trusted. It is the cross, the journey into the necessary night, of which we must be convinced, and then resurrection is offered as a gift.
In this time of suffering we have to ask ourselves, what are we going to do with our pain? Are we going to blame others for it? Are we going to try to fix it? No one lives on this earth without it. It is the great teacher, although none of us want to admit it. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it in some form. How can we be sure not to transmit our pain onto others? (Daily meditation, March 30, 2020. Sign up for daily emails from the Centre for action and spirituality)
EASTER CELEBRATIONS
We will live-stream a service on Easter Day at 8:30am.
ANZAC DAY
There will be no service to commemorate Anzac Day – a candle will be lit and the names of those for whom we’ve been asked to pray will be read out at 8:00am.
(If there is anyone for whom you would like us to pray,
Please call Marian or the office.)
Swallowsrest 