GOOD FRIDAY
Worship
The Word Has Come Down
Six Midweek Monologues and Services for Lent
Object:
The Witness of the Crowd
Matthew 27:32-54
Opening Hymn
"Glory Be to Jesus"
Opening Prayer
Pastor: Let us pray:
Congregation: We are still the crowd, Lord Jesus, careless and perhaps even unaware that it was for us that you died. Turn us to you Lord. Turn us away from our own fears, our own greed, and our sick desire for belonging at any cost. Turn us to you, O Lord, and give us peace. Amen.
Desperation
A Reading
Mark 5:24-34
A Meditation
The word desperate comes from the same place the word despair comes from. They both indicate the place that hope is preparing to desert. On our Good Friday journey, we first see our Lord's greatest and most pervasive enemy, the crowd, nearly crushing him in their despair, in their desperation. Out of this pool of misery, we see that same hope reaching out in the form of a woman whom her society has cast off for twelve years. Because of her flow of blood, she should not even have been in the crowd to begin with. One of the saddest moments in the gospel, we realize that this woman has "heard" about Jesus. Unlike most sick people in the gospel, this poor woman had not been brought by a daughter or a mother, or a neighbor or a niece. She had just heard about him. She had never even been told. This woman is a total outcast. Outcasts are largely the people who were drawn to Jesus. Because they had little power over their own lives, first of all because many of them were poor, and secondly because, as in the case of this woman, they had had to use many of their resources in order to regain their health, even if they wanted to, they couldn't have defended Jesus, so would have been his enemies. But in their desperation, like all the other people we have encountered this Lent, they are the enemies of Jesus because of the anger that comes from despair.
In 1986, a woman living in San Antonio, Texas, was diagnosed as having the AIDS virus after she received a blood transfusion. Eight years later, she took another AIDS test with a false name and discovered that a terrible mistake had been made and that she had never had the virus. This might have made her happy. But during those eight years, she had spent much time, energy, and money on cures. She was subjected to the terrible and exhausting side effects of drugs that were never necessary and, worst of all, she watched her two sons' anger change from rage to alienation and finally to desertion.
When we despair, we become our Lord's enemies. We become people who commit the sin Luther calls shameful. We need to be like the woman whose hope reached out to her Savior's cloak and claimed healing.
Pastor: Let us pray:
Congregation: Sweet Holy Jesus, teach us to cling to you and your almighty love. Steer us back to you so that we may find joy, purpose, courage, and peace in your love. Amen.
Avarice
A Reading
John 6:25-27
A Meditation
The word avarice comes from the Latin word for greed. And what we see in this text we have before us is not greed in the traditional sense, but it is greed, nonetheless. After Jesus had fed them, the crowd came to find Jesus. Their confusion at the beginning of the text is easy to explain. In every gospel, Jesus walks on water shortly after he feeds the multitude. This explains the confusion on the part of the crowd when they say, "Rabbi, when did you get here?" They literally don't know how he swung it. He didn't come across the lake as the crow flew but as the fish swum. But Jesus tells them that they came after him because they had had their fill of the loaves; not because they heard his message.
Recently on the radio, there was an exposé on prosperity preachers: preachers who preach that God wants us to be rich. The reporter did not take issue with these preachers' theology but rather how rich they got telling others God wants them to be rich. To preach such a thing is to entirely miss the point. By chasing after Jesus for another free meal is worse than buying a famous painting in order to have canvas in which to paint a sign announcing your garage sale.
It is to entirely miss the point and more terribly, it is to entirely miss the opportunity that Jesus has for us. Jesus did not come to give us another free meal. Jesus came to give us salvation. Here the crowd was our Lord's enemy not just because they did not have the wherewithal to help defend him. They are our Lord's enemy because they detracted from his message. Throughout the gospels, we hear Jesus telling those who had followed him not to tell of what he has done for them. For millennia, people have tried to figure out why. From the perspective of the crowd, it seems pretty clear.
Jesus does not want to be known as someone who hands out free lunches, who is a healer, and he certainly does not want to be known as someone who wants us to be rich. The crowd was Jesus' enemy because they clouded his identity. He was, and is, above all, Savior.
Voyeurism
A Reading
Matthew 21:7-9
A Meditation
We get this creepy word from the Latin videre and then the French voi both meaning "to see." During the mid-nineties, Americans got a first-hand glimpse of what it was to be a voyeur, if only through television. People have been trying to figure out why thousands of people lined up beside the Los Angeles freeway to watch OJ Simpson lead the cops on a very slow chase in his white bronco. And those of us who were watching at home have been trying to figure out why we couldn't just turn the television off. For myself, I know I had little interest in what happened to this minor celebrity. I grieved for the lives that had been lost, but still I could not turn the set off. And it continued into the summer and into the fall of that year as the OJ trial made daily news, often interrupting "regularly scheduled programming." The trial was such a circus that by the time America had lived through the horror of Oklahoma City, also in the mid-nineties, they were desperate to see our court system act with concern for justice. Such a desirable outcome was impossible because of the circus surrounding the OJ trial.
The horror of the F.W. Murrah explosion sobered America almost instantly. All too often Christians are waiting for God to do something exciting, something worth watching in their midst. Eternal salvation is not enough. It is not enough for many people I think, for two reasons.
First of all, they don't think they're that bad. I believe that is the main reason the OJ trial was of such interest. At least I never killed anybody, I can just hear many in America saying.
Secondly, their relationship with God is entirely self-serving, just like much of America's relationship with OJ and the whole trial experience. Such a crowd surrounded Jesus as he entered Jerusalem that day. They took part in his brutal death by making use of his arrival to entertain themselves and make themselves feel important, in much the same way that America made use of the OJ trial.
God forgive us for waiting until 168 people were killed in Oklahoma City to remember that justice cannot be served when a community or a nation is selfish and self-serving. Nor can we hope to remember heaven unless our relationship with God fills us with love and the desire to serve, not the desire to be entertained or to make us feel important. You would think that knowing that God of the universe died for you would be enough.
Pastor: Let us pray:
Congregation: Holy Lamb of God, protect us from ourselves, from our false desires and shallow intentions and point us to you so that we may point your love out to the world and lift it up and away from the death it seems bent on. Fill us with the life you died to give us, bring us into eternal life right now so we may proclaim that life to the world. In your sweet name we pray. Amen.
Primitive Hymn by Charles Wesley sung to "Martyrdom" the tune of "Alas and Did My Savior Bleed"
O that I could my Lord receive,
Who did the world redeem,
Who gave his life that I might live
A life concealed in him!
Mercy I ask to seal my peace,
That, kept by mercy's power,
I may from every evil cease,
And never grieve thee more
Now if thy gracious will it be,
E'en now, my sins remove,
And set my soul at liberty
By thy victorious love.
In answer to ten thousand prayers,
Thou pardoning God, descend;
Number me with salvation's heirs,
My sins and troubles end.
Nothing I ask or want beside,
Of all in earth or heaven,
But let me feel thy blood applied,
And live and die forgiven.
Manipulate
A Reading
Matthew 27:15-26
A Meditation
So far today as we consider our Lord's sacrifice for us and as we consider the last and perhaps most guilty party responsible for our Lord's death, we have seen the crowd betray our Savior with its desperation, its greed, and its self-centered curiosity. Now we come to its last act against Jesus. Manipulated by the chief priests and the elders, the crowd finally and completely turn on Jesus. The word manipulate means literally to lead by the hand. But that does not mean we are members of that crowd, for that is exactly what we are, members of the crowd that daily, if not hourly, betray our Savior with our lack of trust and unwillingness to care for the world God gave us, simply because we have been manipulated by the world and the powers in it, does not mean that we are not to blame. We are surely to blame.
Discovering that Jesus will not solve our problems this side of heaven will not lift us out of our physical, emotional, and financial difficulty, we betray him by finding a way around them that involves some sort of betrayal of God's love. Discovering that in obeying Jesus, we will not be immediately showered with the gifts of this world, we either desert him or re-imagine him as a god who wants us to be rich. Discovering that the rest of the world no longer thinks believing in God is the shoe-in to the upper echelons of society that it once was, that watching Jesus will end eventually with us watching an ultimate loser, we desert him and take the lesser good with the quicker reward, seemingly sweeter but hollow and destined to disappear.
We are no different than the crowd that screamed for Jesus' blood. We allow the powers that seem to be in control to manipulate us because the rewards are obvious but short-lived, and the eternal rewards Jesus promises seem to us to be too far off. We are the crowd that betrayed our Lord. More so than Judas, the high priest, Peter, Herod, or Pilate, we the crowd, those he came to save, we betrayed our Savior to his death.
The Offering
The Prayers of the People
Closing Hymn
"Were You There?"
The congregation will leave in silence.
Matthew 27:32-54
Opening Hymn
"Glory Be to Jesus"
Opening Prayer
Pastor: Let us pray:
Congregation: We are still the crowd, Lord Jesus, careless and perhaps even unaware that it was for us that you died. Turn us to you Lord. Turn us away from our own fears, our own greed, and our sick desire for belonging at any cost. Turn us to you, O Lord, and give us peace. Amen.
Desperation
A Reading
Mark 5:24-34
A Meditation
The word desperate comes from the same place the word despair comes from. They both indicate the place that hope is preparing to desert. On our Good Friday journey, we first see our Lord's greatest and most pervasive enemy, the crowd, nearly crushing him in their despair, in their desperation. Out of this pool of misery, we see that same hope reaching out in the form of a woman whom her society has cast off for twelve years. Because of her flow of blood, she should not even have been in the crowd to begin with. One of the saddest moments in the gospel, we realize that this woman has "heard" about Jesus. Unlike most sick people in the gospel, this poor woman had not been brought by a daughter or a mother, or a neighbor or a niece. She had just heard about him. She had never even been told. This woman is a total outcast. Outcasts are largely the people who were drawn to Jesus. Because they had little power over their own lives, first of all because many of them were poor, and secondly because, as in the case of this woman, they had had to use many of their resources in order to regain their health, even if they wanted to, they couldn't have defended Jesus, so would have been his enemies. But in their desperation, like all the other people we have encountered this Lent, they are the enemies of Jesus because of the anger that comes from despair.
In 1986, a woman living in San Antonio, Texas, was diagnosed as having the AIDS virus after she received a blood transfusion. Eight years later, she took another AIDS test with a false name and discovered that a terrible mistake had been made and that she had never had the virus. This might have made her happy. But during those eight years, she had spent much time, energy, and money on cures. She was subjected to the terrible and exhausting side effects of drugs that were never necessary and, worst of all, she watched her two sons' anger change from rage to alienation and finally to desertion.
When we despair, we become our Lord's enemies. We become people who commit the sin Luther calls shameful. We need to be like the woman whose hope reached out to her Savior's cloak and claimed healing.
Pastor: Let us pray:
Congregation: Sweet Holy Jesus, teach us to cling to you and your almighty love. Steer us back to you so that we may find joy, purpose, courage, and peace in your love. Amen.
Avarice
A Reading
John 6:25-27
A Meditation
The word avarice comes from the Latin word for greed. And what we see in this text we have before us is not greed in the traditional sense, but it is greed, nonetheless. After Jesus had fed them, the crowd came to find Jesus. Their confusion at the beginning of the text is easy to explain. In every gospel, Jesus walks on water shortly after he feeds the multitude. This explains the confusion on the part of the crowd when they say, "Rabbi, when did you get here?" They literally don't know how he swung it. He didn't come across the lake as the crow flew but as the fish swum. But Jesus tells them that they came after him because they had had their fill of the loaves; not because they heard his message.
Recently on the radio, there was an exposé on prosperity preachers: preachers who preach that God wants us to be rich. The reporter did not take issue with these preachers' theology but rather how rich they got telling others God wants them to be rich. To preach such a thing is to entirely miss the point. By chasing after Jesus for another free meal is worse than buying a famous painting in order to have canvas in which to paint a sign announcing your garage sale.
It is to entirely miss the point and more terribly, it is to entirely miss the opportunity that Jesus has for us. Jesus did not come to give us another free meal. Jesus came to give us salvation. Here the crowd was our Lord's enemy not just because they did not have the wherewithal to help defend him. They are our Lord's enemy because they detracted from his message. Throughout the gospels, we hear Jesus telling those who had followed him not to tell of what he has done for them. For millennia, people have tried to figure out why. From the perspective of the crowd, it seems pretty clear.
Jesus does not want to be known as someone who hands out free lunches, who is a healer, and he certainly does not want to be known as someone who wants us to be rich. The crowd was Jesus' enemy because they clouded his identity. He was, and is, above all, Savior.
Voyeurism
A Reading
Matthew 21:7-9
A Meditation
We get this creepy word from the Latin videre and then the French voi both meaning "to see." During the mid-nineties, Americans got a first-hand glimpse of what it was to be a voyeur, if only through television. People have been trying to figure out why thousands of people lined up beside the Los Angeles freeway to watch OJ Simpson lead the cops on a very slow chase in his white bronco. And those of us who were watching at home have been trying to figure out why we couldn't just turn the television off. For myself, I know I had little interest in what happened to this minor celebrity. I grieved for the lives that had been lost, but still I could not turn the set off. And it continued into the summer and into the fall of that year as the OJ trial made daily news, often interrupting "regularly scheduled programming." The trial was such a circus that by the time America had lived through the horror of Oklahoma City, also in the mid-nineties, they were desperate to see our court system act with concern for justice. Such a desirable outcome was impossible because of the circus surrounding the OJ trial.
The horror of the F.W. Murrah explosion sobered America almost instantly. All too often Christians are waiting for God to do something exciting, something worth watching in their midst. Eternal salvation is not enough. It is not enough for many people I think, for two reasons.
First of all, they don't think they're that bad. I believe that is the main reason the OJ trial was of such interest. At least I never killed anybody, I can just hear many in America saying.
Secondly, their relationship with God is entirely self-serving, just like much of America's relationship with OJ and the whole trial experience. Such a crowd surrounded Jesus as he entered Jerusalem that day. They took part in his brutal death by making use of his arrival to entertain themselves and make themselves feel important, in much the same way that America made use of the OJ trial.
God forgive us for waiting until 168 people were killed in Oklahoma City to remember that justice cannot be served when a community or a nation is selfish and self-serving. Nor can we hope to remember heaven unless our relationship with God fills us with love and the desire to serve, not the desire to be entertained or to make us feel important. You would think that knowing that God of the universe died for you would be enough.
Pastor: Let us pray:
Congregation: Holy Lamb of God, protect us from ourselves, from our false desires and shallow intentions and point us to you so that we may point your love out to the world and lift it up and away from the death it seems bent on. Fill us with the life you died to give us, bring us into eternal life right now so we may proclaim that life to the world. In your sweet name we pray. Amen.
Primitive Hymn by Charles Wesley sung to "Martyrdom" the tune of "Alas and Did My Savior Bleed"
O that I could my Lord receive,
Who did the world redeem,
Who gave his life that I might live
A life concealed in him!
Mercy I ask to seal my peace,
That, kept by mercy's power,
I may from every evil cease,
And never grieve thee more
Now if thy gracious will it be,
E'en now, my sins remove,
And set my soul at liberty
By thy victorious love.
In answer to ten thousand prayers,
Thou pardoning God, descend;
Number me with salvation's heirs,
My sins and troubles end.
Nothing I ask or want beside,
Of all in earth or heaven,
But let me feel thy blood applied,
And live and die forgiven.
Manipulate
A Reading
Matthew 27:15-26
A Meditation
So far today as we consider our Lord's sacrifice for us and as we consider the last and perhaps most guilty party responsible for our Lord's death, we have seen the crowd betray our Savior with its desperation, its greed, and its self-centered curiosity. Now we come to its last act against Jesus. Manipulated by the chief priests and the elders, the crowd finally and completely turn on Jesus. The word manipulate means literally to lead by the hand. But that does not mean we are members of that crowd, for that is exactly what we are, members of the crowd that daily, if not hourly, betray our Savior with our lack of trust and unwillingness to care for the world God gave us, simply because we have been manipulated by the world and the powers in it, does not mean that we are not to blame. We are surely to blame.
Discovering that Jesus will not solve our problems this side of heaven will not lift us out of our physical, emotional, and financial difficulty, we betray him by finding a way around them that involves some sort of betrayal of God's love. Discovering that in obeying Jesus, we will not be immediately showered with the gifts of this world, we either desert him or re-imagine him as a god who wants us to be rich. Discovering that the rest of the world no longer thinks believing in God is the shoe-in to the upper echelons of society that it once was, that watching Jesus will end eventually with us watching an ultimate loser, we desert him and take the lesser good with the quicker reward, seemingly sweeter but hollow and destined to disappear.
We are no different than the crowd that screamed for Jesus' blood. We allow the powers that seem to be in control to manipulate us because the rewards are obvious but short-lived, and the eternal rewards Jesus promises seem to us to be too far off. We are the crowd that betrayed our Lord. More so than Judas, the high priest, Peter, Herod, or Pilate, we the crowd, those he came to save, we betrayed our Savior to his death.
The Offering
The Prayers of the People
Closing Hymn
"Were You There?"
The congregation will leave in silence.
