GOOD FRIDAY

March 29, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

The cross is the archetypal symbol of Christian faith. Apart from its historical role as an instrument of torture and death, some commentators see its intersection of vertical and horizontal beams as a visual symbol of Incarnation. The vertical beam symbolizes transcendence. It points to heaven above, and to eternity. The horizontal beam symbolizes immanence. It points to the world around us, the here and the now. So, the cross’s intersection of vertical and horizontal beams signifies the union of eternity and time, spirit and matter, divine and human, in the Person of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. 

 

The Lord’s actual death on a wooden cross on the hill of Golgotha two thousand years ago also exhibits vertical and horizontal dimensions. Up the vertical axis, the suffering Jesus offers to his Father in heaven the one, full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world; and the Father looks down from heaven lovingly accepting his Son’s sacrifice. Along the horizontal axis, the dying Lord stretches out his arms of love to gather in all humanity and all creation; and conversely his life, forgiveness, grace, and strength flow out from his outstretched arms to the world’s remotest ends.

 

This ancient Good Friday liturgy exhibits a fourfold structure, which oscillates back and forth between these vertical and horizontal emphases. First, our attention is drawn upwards, vertically, to Jesus lifted high upon the cross. Then, our attention is redirected outwards, horizontally, to the world he died to save. And then the pattern repeats itself. So let’s look at how this pattern plays out in our worship today.

 

We begin with the Liturgy of the Word, culminating in the Passion according to Saint John. It focuses our attention vertically, upwards, towards Jesus and what happened to him on Good Friday. The Passion Gospel is read dramatically, with readers taking the various spoken parts. That kind of reading is very effective and moving. In parishes that have the resources to do so, the Passion is sung to the ancient chants, with the cantors and choir taking the various parts. Either way, the goal is a performative recitation, aiming not merely at remembering something that happened long ago, but at making it vivid and real, transporting us back into the past, so that we become virtual eyewitnesses; or, conversely, bringing it forward into the present so that we experience it here and now in all its naked terror and awe. In this way, we’re able to answer affirmatively the question posed in the old spiritual, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” Yes, we were there. We are there.

Then, following a sermon or homily, which is ideally kept brief, we turn our attention from the cross outwards, horizontally, towards the world, reciting the ancient prayers known as the Solemn Collects. This movement has a deep inner logic. It’s not simply that since we really have nothing to say, we may as well just say some prayers. No, having just listened to the Passion Gospel, we ask God to apply the benefits of his Son’s death “to all people everywhere, according to their needs.” We make these prayers in the assurance that “God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.” The Church’s liturgical response to the proclamation of the Lord’s death is thus to pray for all those for whom he died.

 

Continuing our alternation from the horizontal to the vertical, we turn our attention once again to the cross, this time in loving adoration. A cross is brought in for the congregation’s veneration. The rubrics actually specify that this cross must be made of wood, like the cross on which Jesus was crucified. This ceremony dates back to fourth-century Jerusalem, where worshippers at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher would line up for hours on Good Friday to kiss a large fragment of the true Cross that would be unveiled and exposed for that purpose.

 

Then comes the fourth part of the liturgy, the Mass of the Presanctified. We retrieve from the Altar of Repose the Blessed Sacrament reserved at last night’s liturgy of the Lord’s Supper. There is no fresh offering of the Holy Eucharist, but Communion from the Reserved Sacrament—an extension of the single extended Triduum liturgy that began last night.

 

This Holy Communion of Good Friday conveys the Lord’s life, grace, and power to all who receive it. Having venerated Christ on the cross, we receive him into ourselves—not just for comfort and consolation, but also for empowerment as ambassadors of Christ’s forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing. So we have another turn to the horizontal. Just as in the Solemn Collects we prayed for the world that Christ died to save, so now in receiving Communion we offer ourselves as living vessels to carry forth Christ’s salvation into that same world. 

 

Following Communion, we leave in silence. There’s nothing left to say. For the time being, the Incarnate Word has been silenced. We do well to keep silence too, waiting in trembling hope and expectation for what God will do next.