Good Friday 2014

"It was certainly our sickness that he carried, 

and our sufferings that he bore, 

but we thought him afflicted, 

struck down by God and tormented." 

-- Isaiah 53:4

Common English Bible

This is the graphic from Episcopal Church of the Ascension's Good Friday bulletin.

We attended the 7:30 service; there was also a noon.  This is our first Holy Week at Ascension, we started attending in July.  

It was an interesting combination of Wednesday's Tenebrae service -- including the responsive reading of a Psalm -- and last Sunday's Palm Sunday (Sunday of the Passion) service -- including another dramatic reading of the Passion.  

It was strange and hard to see the altar and all behind it stripped bare -- especially as last night's Stripping of the Altar (at the end of the Maundy Thursday service) had so powerfully reminded me of the closing of Episcopal and other churches, including my own home church back in Boston.  How much more so, to see the more than half life-size plain wooden crucifix lying against it.  I noticed that the Book Of Common Prayer said that you could bring it in at some point during the service, but I don't think that that would be good, or at least not as good.

It was also very striking to see the cupboard in the wall where part of the communion supplies are kept with its small wooden door wide open, revealing the empty white box of its inside, like a tiny tomb.  

I think a lot could be -- and probably has been -- done with Isaiah's description of the Lord's servant as 'ugly', "inhuman, his appearance unlike that of mortals", disabled, ill etc. (our first reading was 52:13 - 53:12, the Common English Bible version). 

I appreciated that the sermon started with a long bit about the anti-Semitism stemming from the misunderstanding of the Judean / Jewish authorities' role in Jesus' death.  

And of course it was all a very interesting way to begin Shabbat!