Tonight we will have our Good Friday Service. If there are 20 people there it will be bigger than the last 2 years (before that it had been some time since a GF service was held here).
It is my experience that many Good Friday services are sparsely attended -- of course this is why Palm Sunday has moved more and more to become Palm/Passion Sunday. SO it brings to mind the question Is the Cross important?
Of course it is you say. Without cross there is no tomb. Without death no resurrection. Without Friday the story makes no sense. But there is more. When we deny the cross, when we move from palms to empty tomb, we deny ourselves the chance to name the truth that injustice is still alive in the world. WE lose the chance to affirm that the powers and principalities are still actve. When we don't name the power of fear then we miss out on the full glory fo Resurrection.
Tonight I will talk about the crosses in the world today. where are people being crucified this day, whose hands are being washed of blood today?
For the past eight years I have been having Maundy Thursday services in this little Baptist Chruch. At first it was "Maundy wha..? What kind of Thursday?" Last night we had 12 in attendance which is more than we have been having on Sunday mornings.
ReplyDeleteI find this interesting. I think as Protestants (and I know that's a generalisation) we don't know how to do Good Friday (Maundy Th. we can handle - sort of - after it's is a Eucharist service) but Good Friday
ReplyDeleteSomehow we want to leap from hosianna to hallelujah - and by doing that we miss the cross.
Now i'm protestant enough not to want to venerate the cross - but we are missing something very important if we miss Good Friday. We give painkillers to numb the pain, instead of facing the cross and crying out - He did it for me -