Share the desolation of the Good Friday story.

With contemporary music, poetry, multi-sensory engagement and gospel narrative, Christ Church op/en present a traditional Good Friday meditation service for a modern and challenging world.

A Service for Good Friday

Christ Church Gipsy Hill, 22 April 2011

Abel looked at the wound
His brother had dealt him, and loved him
For it. Cain saw that look
And struck him again. The blood cried
On the ground; God listened to it.
He questioned Cain. But Cain answered:
Who made the blood? I offered you
Clean things: the blond hair
Of the corn; the knuckled vegetables; the
Flowers; things that did not publish
Their hurt, that bled
Silently. You would not accept them.

And God said: It was part of myself
He gave me. The lamb was torn
From my own side. the limp head,
The slow fall of red tears - they
Were like a mirror to me in which I beheld
My reflection. I anointed myself
To the doomed tree you were at work upon.

Psalm:

Women:

Men:

Women:

Men:

Women:

Men:

Women:

Men:

Wisdom 2:12-20

Let us lie in wait for the righteous man,
because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions;
he reproaches us for sins against the law,
and accuses us of sins against our tradition.

He professes to have knowledge of God,
and calls himself a child of the Lord.

He came to us and challenged our thoughts;
the very sight of him is a burden to us,
because his manner of life is different from ours,
and his ways are strange.

He considers us to be beneath him,
and he avoids our ways as unclean;
he calls the last end of the righteous happy,
and boasts that God is his father.

Let us see if his words are true,
and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;

for if he is God’s child, God will help him,
and will deliver him from the hands of his enemies.

Let us test him with insult and torture,
so that we may find out how gentle he is,
and how forbearing.

Let us condemn him to a shameful death,
for, according to what he says, he will be protected.

Participation:

Sand (music and live whispered words)

‘I will never forsake you’, said Simon.
Take a rock.. Squeeze a side, or tap it gently, and feel it crumble to dust under pressure. Offer up your uncertainty your weakness, broken promises and tasks left undone.

Whisper: "So I will call you Peter, which means a rock"
Whisper: "On this rock I will build my church, and death itself will not have any power over it"
Music: The Downward Spiral (Nine Inch Nails)

Gospel:

John 18: 19-24 (Jesus before the High Priest)
John 18:28 – 19:16a (Jesus before Pilate)

Poem:

The Word (R.S Thomas)

Enough that we are on our way;
never ask of us where.
Some of us run, some loiter:
some of us turn aside
to erect the Calvary
that is our signpost, arms
pointing in opposite directions
to bring us in the end
to the same place, so impossible
is it to escape love. Imperishable
scarecrow, recipient of our casts-off,
shame us until what is a swear-
word only becomes at last
the word that was in the beginning.