I love Good Friday, from the paradox hidden in the word “good” to the shadows and somber solemnity of our service. N.T. Wright has written brilliantly about the crucifixion, calling it The Day the Revolution Began (a must read for clergy). I buy into that (although I wonder if the revolution really began at Christmas, or even at conception in Mary's womb!), but the whole program feels too active, too much like a campaign for the quiet calm, the dark sorrow of the service. Maybe a mention, and follow up next month?

I preach on Good Friday, but “preach” is too strong a word. “Homily” is even too grandiose. I meditate, and briefly — or like a docent in a museum, with just a few words I point to the wonder, the horror, the beauty and majesty. Maybe I just sigh, or shudder. That would be a good enough sermon. Maybe the choir will bail me out with Gilbert Martin’s “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” or one of the others listed at the end of this blog. As I ponder and prepare, I’ll listen to that moving crucifixion moment in Jesus Christ Superstar.

And I'm going to ask my musicians to play, just after I speak, or maybe later on where it fits, that elegiac, emotionally powerful piece from the end of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical — "John 19:41." Preparation for Good Friday involves the preacher sitting, being very still, and weighing deeply an image, or images of the crucifixion. Grünewald? Rouault? Some other choral pieces that are lovely and moving for Good Friday: “Drop, Drop, Slow Tears” by Kenneth Leighton; Dan Forrest’s “Forsaken”; “Thy Will Be Done,” by Craig Courtney; or Al Travis’s “Beneath the Cross of Jesus.” 

At our church, we do the Gospel reading in stages, gradually extinguishing lights and then candles until we are immersed in total darkness. A childhood friend of mine, who lives in another city, called the church last year at the end of the service he was livestreaming, saying "I can't see anything!" Indeed.  We can't see. We can hardly speak. On Good Friday, more than any other day, we are humbled by our inability to say anything, just as Jesus was all but silent as he hung for hours. On this day, more than any other, we realize we do not need to make the Bible relevant, or to illustrate it. We can and must simply trust the reading to do the work it has done for 2000 years. I love this:

Robert W. Jenson, after assessing the historic doctrines of the atonement, quite shrewdly concluded, “The Gospels tell a powerful and biblically integrated story of the Crucifixion; this story is just so the story of God’s act to bring us back to himself at his own cost, and of our being brought back... The Gospel’s passion narrative is the authentic and entire account of God’s reconciling actions and our reconciliation, as events in his life and ours. Therefore what is first and principally required as the Crucifixion’s right interpretation is for us to tell this story to one another and to God as a story about him and about ourselves.”

Fleming Rutledge's amazing (and long!) Crucifixion highlights an astonishing sermon by Melito of Sardis, maybe around the year 190, which includes this: "The Lord suffered for the sake of those who suffered, was bound for the sake of those imprisoned, was judged for the sake of the condemned, and buried for the sake of the buried. So come, all families of people defiled by sin, and receive remission. For I am your remission, I am the Passover of salvation, I am the Lamb sacrifice for you, I am your ransom, I am your life, I am your Resurrection, I am your light. I am your salvation. I am your king. I lead you toward the heights of heaven, I will show you the eternal Father, I will raise you up with my right hand."

And so, in awe, we pray, perhaps with St. Francis: