Posts Tagged ‘Good Friday’

If Friday is “Good” do we need the resurrection?

March 30, 2024

Easter Day – 2024

Matthew 28:1-18

Marian Free

In the name of God, who in Jesus shows us how to be truly free – of our fears, our anxieties and our insecurities. Amen.

Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!

If Friday is Good, if on the cross Jesus defeated evil and death and deprived them of their power why did he need to rise? What can the resurrection do that the cross has not done?  

If you have been a part of our liturgical celebrations over the past few days, you will know that they are of one piece. During the Last Supper, Jesus turned convention on its head and demonstrated that there was another way to do things. He showed that powerlessness was not weakness, that service was not enslavement and that death, and the powers of this world were not to be feared.

On the cross, Jesus exposed the ineffectiveness of worldly power and authority. By submitting to a wrongful arrest, false accusations and an unjust punishment, Jesus denied them their ability to coerce and deprived them of their ability to force him to their will. By refusing to fear death, Jesus rendered death incapable of exerting power over him.

But there was still more to do. If Jesus’ death on the cross signalled the defeat of evil and death, then the resurrection provided proof positive that the refusal to engage with the powers of this world renders them impotent, and that when we hold fast to the values of the kingdom, instead of being seduced by the false values of this world we open the doorway to a different ending to the story,  a story in which evil and death do not have the final say and do not determine our response to life’s circumstances. Jesus’ resurrection is evidence that in the final analysis love will triumph over hatred, that vulnerability freely chosen is stronger than force, that meeting violence with non-violence strips violence of its power and that true freedom is won when one seeks not one’s own well-being but the well-being of all people.

Conversely, the resurrection demonstrates the futility of using force to kill love, the foolishness of using the law to suppress goodness, and the uselessness of relying on oppression to quench the thirst for freedom or the desire for justice. The resurrection makes it clear that ultimately love cannot be extinguished, that freedom will not be denied and that in the end good will triumph over evil. 

Jesus’ resurrection is proof positive that we can choose not to be consumed by worldly values, a desire for wealth and power, the need for external recognition or the protection of our personal safety and comfort. Jesus’ resurrection informs that we, and therefore the world, will only be truly free when we, like Jesus, refuse to be bound and limited by hatred, greed, bitterness, resentment, anger and unhealthy relationships. Jesus’ resurrection is a reminder that if we resist the urge for external affirmation or gratification and if we rise above the pettiness of human existence then we, like Jesus, will be truly free and the powers of this world will have no power over us. We with him will be raised from the sordidness of competition, ambition and desire, freed to be truly ourselves – created in the image of God.

The resurrection means that we are:

free to truly live – unconstrained by all those things that bind and limit;

free to embrace our own divinity – unfettered by those things that threaten to overwhelm our true nature;

free to step into the future – released from all those things that would threaten to hold us to the past; and

free to love selflessly and unconditionally – unencumbered by all those things that separate us from each other.

Friday is Good, because death and sin are defeated and the resurrection is proof that the only power they have over us is the power that we give them. 

So let us claim the victory of the cross and live in the power of the resurrection.

Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!

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A Good Friday

April 6, 2023

Good Friday – 2023
John 18:1-19:42
Marian Free

In the name of God, who shares our joys and triumphs, our sorrows and defeats. Amen.

Several decades ago, in a Bloor Street United Church in Toronto, Canada, a sculpture of a woman arms outstretched as if crucified, was hung below the cross in the chapel.  (Almuth Lutkenhaus’s sculpture Crucified Woman.) 

https://maryloudriedger2.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/crucified-woman-photo-by-ivana-dizdar.png
On seeing it, a woman who had experienced sexual abuse as a child wrote the following poem.

This poem, by an anonymous author, was included in a magazine published in conjunction with the Ecumenical Decade 1988-1998, Churches in Solidarity with women: Prayers and Poems, Songs and Stories.

Women in a Changing World, January 1988, no 25, a publication of the World Council of Churches, 150, route de Ferney, 1211 Geneva 20/Switzerland.)

By his wounds you are healed
1 Peter 2:24

O God,
through the image of a woman
crucified on the cross
I understand at last.

For over half my life
I have been ashamed
of the scars I bear.
These scars tell an ugly story,
a common story,
about a girl who is the victim
when a man acts out his fantasies.

In the warmth, peace and sunlight of your presence
I was able to uncurl the tightly clenched fists.
For the first time
I felt your suffering presence with me
in that event.
I have known you as a vulnerable baby,
as a brother, and as a father.
Now I know you as a woman.
You were there with me.
as the violated girl
caught in hopeless suffering.

The chains of shame and fear
no longer bind my heart and body.
A slow fire of compassion and forgiveness
is kindled.
My tears fall now for man as well as woman.

You, God,
can make our violated bodies
vessels of love and comfort
to such a desperate man.
I am honoured to carry this womanly power
within my body and soul.

You were not ashamed of your wounds.
You showed them to Thomas
as marks of your ordeal and death.
I will no longer hide these wounds of mine.
I will bear them gracefully,
They tell a resurrection story.

In the body of a crucified woman, this woman saw the story of her own suffering. She understood in that moment that she was not alone, that God in Jesus had suffered and was suffering with her. So powerful was her experience that, in a verse that I was tempted to omit, she even gives value to that suffering.

On the cross, Jesus showed once for all that the God in whom we believe does not stand aloof, remote, and indifferent to our suffering, but is intimately connected to and directly engaged with all humanity. God in Jesus endured betrayal, abandonment, and denial; he experienced a sham trial, humiliation, brutality and finally the cruellest of deaths.

On the cross, Jesus demonstrated that God stands in solidarity with all who have been violated, abused, and oppressed, with all who have been tortured, falsely accused, and wrongly executed, with all who have been colonised, neglected, overlooked, and abandoned. In the crucified Christ, all who suffer trauma, indignity, or humiliation, see someone who identifies with and shares their pain.

Only a God who fully identifies with our sufferings, can reassure us that God knows what we are going through. Only a God who suffers as we suffer can help us to endure (and even overcome) our own suffering. Only a God who fully enters the human condition can reassure us that God truly knows what it is to be human.

God does know – and that is what makes this Friday “Good”.

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Good Friday – 2020

April 9, 2020

Good Friday 2020

Service of the Passion
and
Recognition of the Cross

2009_good-friday

 

 

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.)

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The absence of God- what makes this Friday “Good”?

April 18, 2014

Good Friday 2014Good Friday – 2014

(Read in conjunction with the Good Friday liturgy on this site

https://swallowsrest.wordpress.com/good-friday-liturgies/)

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

A bare church, an empty altar speaks to me of absence – God’s absence.

The Bible is full of God’s absence, times when people have called to God and have been met with silence. Of all the biblical images of absence, Jesus’ cry from the cross and his ultimate death are the most poignant.

If Jesus is God, where is God when Jesus hangs dying on the cross? Is there a moment when there is no God?

If Jesus is God – and we believe that he is – then God is Jesus and Jesus is dying/dead.

How can it possibly be Good Friday? The shocking failure of Jesus’ potential, Jesus’ promise, the destruction of the hopes of all who followed him, the brutality of the crucifixion are anything but “good”.

“My God, my God, why?

The paradox is this – God’s apparent absence is also God’s ultimate presence.

The cross confronts us with the uncomfortable truth that God is so intimate, so completely identified, with the human condition, that God would go so far as to share a human death. You can’t get any closer to human experience, to us than that.

This is perhaps the ultimate contradiction. Not only that Jesus’ death is God’s death, but that God’s death is a confirmation of God’s deep, unswerving, unreserved love for us – a love shown by God in Jesus who not only goes through the motions of dying, but who actually dies – dies a we will all one day die.

It is a contraction – God’s absence serves to demonstrate God’s intense, immediate, never-ending presence with us and in us.

 

And that is what makes this Friday “Good.”

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There is no river

March 28, 2013

Good Friday

 

In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. Amen.

(Eli, Eli, by Judith Wright,

http://reflectionsonlandusetranslationsmorebycew.com/Judith_Wright/Wright_Poems.html)

And all the while he knew there was no river.

One of the things people most struggle with in regard to faith is the fact that God does not intervene. “Why does God let that happen?” people ask in the face of untimely death, natural disaster, war, disease or terror. Where is God when the drunken driver swerves on to the footpath, when the megalomaniac leader tortures and kills any opposition, or when unprincipled greed leads to the sale of addictive drugs and to the violence and murder of drug wars?

Where is God, silent and inactive while the world tears itself apart? Where is God?

The silent, suffering God is nailed to the cross, enduring the agony of watching those whom He created with such confidence destroying themselves and each other.

On the sixth day, God created humankind in God’s own image. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. If the world is less than perfect, it is by and large because we have made it so. Humanity, the “very good” of God’s creation, has chosen a path other than that which was intended by the creator. Given the choice, humankind chose competition with rather than cooperation with God – with disastrous results.

And though God in Christ holds out love and faith, humanity will not take it God’s hand. We would rather be in control of our own destiny and despite the evidence that we are making a very poor job of it, we continue to hold ourselves apart, to believe that the solution lies in our own hands. We continue to turn our back on God, and on all that is good, and in so doing we reduce God’s power to intervene to nothing.

There is no river but the morass we create for ourselves. There is no river but that of our own making. There is no river, but our own self-absorption, our need for power and control and our desire to make decisions for ourselves.  These are the nails that hold Christ to the cross. These are the causes of God’s apparent inaction. These are the wounds which we continue to inflict and which God in Christ continues to bear.

There is no need to drown in the river. If only we would let go of our pride and take the hand that is offered, the love that is proffered and the faith that is ours to claim we would learn that there is no river except that which we ourselves have created.

There is no river, but Christ will hold our pain and sorrow on the cross until at last we let go of ourselves and turn to him.

 

 

Intercessions

 

Suffering God,

open our eyes to the suffering in the world

and to the part we play in causing harm to others.

Give to us the gift of discernment

so that we might be wise in our decision-making

and alert to the broader consequences of our actions.

God who allows us to make our own mistakes.

Guide us into the way of your wisdom.

Holy God,

empower your church to proclaim your gospel and

to confront evil and injustice.

Help her to resist the temptation to conform and

to name greed and selfishness

especially when it destroys the lives of others.

Be especially with your church in the Middle East

and Palestine, that it might give wise counsel on

ways to bring about peace.

God who allows us to make our own mistakes.

Guide us into the way of your wisdom.

God of love,

be with those whose wounds are self-inflicted

because they cannot or will not accept your love

or the love and care of those around them.

Show us how to share your love with those whom we do not understand

and those whom we find to be unloveable.

God who allows us to make our own mistakes.

Guide us into the way of your wisdom.

Wounded God,

heal the bodies, minds and souls of all who turn to you for help and give them confidence and peace.

Endow with compassion and resilience those

whose task it is to heal broken bodies and minds

and be especially with those who work at the cutting edge of accident or disaster.

God who allows us to make our own mistakes.

Guide us into the way of your wisdom.

Dying Christ,

as you gave yourself completely to God,

so may we give ourselves completely to you

that in this life we may know peace and wholeness

and in the life to come may share your kingdom with all who have gone before us.

God who allows us to make our own mistakes.

Guide us into the way of your wisdom.

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