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Marcy asks a pretty good question:
What is Good Friday about? Or, to put it another way, if you were planning a worship service to be held on Good Friday, what would you include, emphasize, focus on, etc?
She seems to be asking because her church is emphasizing service to the poor on Friday:
On Friday there will be a Good Friday service, including Communion. At this service the money we have been setting aside for a partner church in Peru, and a mission trip there, will be collected, and we will have what the pastor is calling a hunger meal, which sounds like it might be a dinner typical of what a family in poverty might eat.
It's worth looking at her discussion about the poor and Christ, something we've had to deal with in the PowerPoint Church, but for now, let's answer the primary question: What is Good Friday all about?
I have to do the sermon tomorrow. I never really know what is going to happen until I get done, but I spend a lot of time preparing. The guy that they had lined up for our preacher-less startup church couldn't come, so on Thursday I got a call to see if I would "step up to the plate". (Bad metaphor for someone in a church.) I've been thinking that we needed to talk about forgiving each other. The problem with preaching is that it does a number on you. I know that I never get as much out of the scriptures as when I prepare to speak them to others.
Jesus speaks about forgiveness in many places. Most of the statements he makes have the same theme as the line from the Lord's Prayer:
Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us
[Luke 11:5, NIV]
Or debts and debtors [Mat. 6:12].
In this phrase, it seems like God will only forgive us if we first forgive others. It's pretty clear from other scriptures that this isn't so: we love because he first loved us, we forgive because we have been forgiven. So let's look at this.
J, in a comment on a recent post, raised a point I discussed recently about the problems of hospitality, this time in dealing with the church serving the mentally ill:
2. "Even so, we should be able to take in one crazy person per congregation."
Another interesting thought. I agree, but with some caveats. Most notably, we need to take steps to ensure we don't put anyone in harms way by taking in the psychotics. To have one's wife or children harmed or endangered is not required to display God's Love.
I'll just come out and say this: I'm not so sure. I'm beginning to wonder if living out the Gospel of Jesus Christ doesn't by it's very nature put our children at risk.
Lisa Deam has written a wonderful article on finding the grace of Christ in her experience of living with a port-wine birthmark on her face, published in the Trinity 2006 edition of The Cresset. Highly recommended.
In my memory, I am in seventh grade, sitting in my science class next to a boy I like. The boy sits to my right. This is good, because my right side is definitely my best. At one point during the hour I go to the front of the room to collect an assignment. As I walk back to my desk, I am facing the boy from the other direction. That's not so good, because it means that he's seen the left side of my face. Now he's looking into my eyes. He's asking me a question, but he doesn't use words. Instead, he takes his index finger and traces a pattern down the side of his own face.
"It's a birthmark," I say, in answer to what he obviously wants to know. Ikeep my voice level and my eyes down, like a virtuous young woman from the Middle Ages.
"Oh," he said. "I thought it was a rash or that maybe you got burned."
I sit down, and I don't say anything else. What else is there to say? But I remember. Mostly, I remember the way my classmate's finger moved down the side of his face, as if tracing the pathway for a coursing tear. And I remember feeling accused. In my mind, the boy's slender finger grows long and bony, and he points it at me in a gesture of horrified discovery of what I really am: a marked woman.
The complete article is at the Cresset site:
Lisa Deam's "stigm(at)a: facing the mirror of the wounds of Christ"
Last year, the staff at the Church of PowerPoint asked me to put together our combination Maundy Thursday and Good Friday service. I sat down with the pastor for an hour and talked over something. I knew that I wanted to unflinchingly look at a dead Jesus. Not a "going to rise again" Jesus. A dead Jesus. Cold, dead, buried. I wanted to stare into Friday, stare into what the world is like for those who do not know the resurrection of their dead souls.
So I wrote a radio play of sorts. It's below.
I had some limitations. It had to be thrown together quickly. I wanted to use men and women, which meant picking up Mary Magdelene. I had only certain people who could and would do the readings. I needed to make the very un-sacred space of the church offices (think really bad 1970s insurance firm with no money) fit a service. I wanted to connect with our traditions so I used the tennebrae format of extinguishing candles.
So, I put together a play that would be read mostly, acted out only to extinguish candles. I used some music from John Hunt, a marvelous song-writer here in NW Indiana. He wrote "The Road to Golgotha", and we used it. It fit my service perfectly. His wife had complained about it because it wasn't hopeful enough. It's a definitely about Jesus dying. Beautiful, haunting. I still hear it. Too bad the music part isn't available.
This is what we did.
I can't say whether or not we were successful. We wanted to start Easter Sunday with Mary running in, with James and John on the platform chatting. Her yelling about Jesus, about an empty tomb. And them all tearing out the side door.
I'd say the aftermath but it seems pretentious. It did its job. We felt Friday.
The Bible readings are taken from The Message because it was unexpected. "Don't play games with me, Judas!"
This piece is not covered by the Creative Commons License. Reuse or performance requires permission from Daybreak Community Church.
"Deserting Jesus At His Death: A Service for Maundy Thursday / Good Friday" (PDF)
Have you lost your sight?
Have your eyes grown dim as you grew older?
Eli's did. He was the priest-judge in Israel who raised up Samuel, Israel's prophet and last judge. Scripture says that he lay in bed because his eyes were bedimmed. But not just physically. For the utterance of the LORD came to Samuel, saying that Eli had lost his insight, not seen the sin of his sons against the LORD. Eli judged Israel, a chosen among the chosen. But he lost sight of the vision that the LORD had given him, lost insight into the ways of the God of Israel, took his eyes from heaven.
It wasn't just his sons who took advantage of their position. They learned it from their father, who sat in the tent of the LORD on a throne.
For losing sight, the LORD destroyed Eli and his entire line. All in one day.
So, have you lost your sight?
I've not been saying what I'm reading online lately. Of course, with my new life, it's hard to have the energy to read much. I'm going to ramble mindlessly on topics in which I have no expertise or knowledge. So just like always.
Today, let's spin through the blogsphere.