Teaching Sermon - Easter Triduum - Good Friday

Sermon preached at 9.15am and 11am Eucharists in St Alphege Church, Solihull
Third Sunday of Lent – Year C

Teaching Eucharist – The Easter Triduum – Good Friday


This Lent we have a series of teaching Eucharists which aim to help us to grow in our appreciation of the really important liturgies (church services) of Holy Week. Fr Patrick talked about Palm Sunday, and then last week Fr Tim started to talk about the Triduum, the three big services of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Eve. He spoke about Maundy Thursday. This week I am talking about Good Friday. But it is important to remember that these three liturgies hang together, like one Triduum liturgy in three separate parts.
And through these liturgies we seek to draw close to Jesus as he walks through the extraordinary events of his passion death and resurrection. The key word here is participation. By talking part in these liturgies we try to share with Jesus in the experience of his passion, death and resurrection. We try to enter into that experience of Jesus so that it becomes part of our lives, part of our own story. And ultimately this changes everything, we are converted, everything is turned round, and we start trying to live our own lives as part of the life of Jesus, as part of the body of Christ, the Church.
Now someone might object; “But I don’t want to participate in this story, especially not on Good Friday. The crucifixion is about violence and pain and death. It is horrible and I don’t want anything to do with it!
Well I think this is a mainstream way of thinking in the society in which we live. Certainly we all feel the desire to minimise and avoid suffering, but this is not Christianity. Christianity is absolutely about the death and resurrection of Christ. We are baptised into Christ’s death and resurrection (Romans 6). At every Eucharist we “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Corinthians 11: 26). And we do this because of the resurrection. The good news is that Christ life is stronger than death, Christ’s love overcomes hated, hope in Christ overcomes fear. So in the church we are not afraid to engage with suffering and death, because precisely these events of Holy Week that we re-enact in the Triduum. Precisely through this experience, Jesus has shown us how to make suffering and death the gateway to forgiveness, restoration and eternal life.
So through the Good Friday liturgy we are seeking to participate with Christ in his death. And it is devastating! Everything falls apart. Everything is torn away. The liturgy is stark and shocking. The church is stripped bare before it even starts. And then right at the start there is another powerful symbol of devastation. The service starts in complete silence. Let’s watch a clip of that, in silence and then discuss it.
[video clip – 40 seconds]
So what happened there? [Priests prostrate before the altar]
And what does this express? [abasement, dependence on God, shock, our fallenness, devastation]
So the Good Friday liturgy starts in this way and then we have the collect, or opening prayer. And that is the end of the Gathering rite.
And why is the gathering rite so brief and minimalist? [Continuation of yesterday]
After the Gathering Rite we have the ministry of the word. And this is dominated by the reading of the passion from John’s gospel. We always read John’s passion of Good Friday. On Palm Sunday we read one of the passion narratives of Matthew, Mark or Luke in a three year cycle.
And reading the passion narrative is a powerful reminder of the story. And to help us to enter into the story we start standing for the final part, and when we reach the moment of Jesus’ death we all bow or kneel.
In this church we have a homily and the special Good Friday intercessions. Then we come to the veneration of the cross. Now I have another video clip here of the cross arriving and the start of the veneration of the cross, so let’s watch this.
[video clip – 1 minute 20 seconds]
Now first of all I would like to talk about the music. We just heard the choir beginning the singing “The Reproaches”. Now these reproaches are a very ancient Good Friday text. They are words that Jesus could have said from the cross, “My people, my people, what have I done to you? How have I offended you? Answer me?” And Jesus asks this question many times, and he intersperses it with all the good things that Jesus has done for his people, and the evil with which we have repaid him. And of course there is no answer that can be made. It is clear that we are sinners, and our sin has driven Christ to the cross, Christ who has done nothing but good for us. There is no answer that can be made, and the cumulative effect of listening to all these reproaches is, once again, devastating.
Now what about veneration of the cross? What are we doing? Well we all get the opportunity to come forward and stand before the cross. And once again the liturgy is stark and shocking. We place ourselves right in front of the image of the crucified Christ, and there is no escape. There is no proper response that can be made. Many of us choose to bow, or to kiss the cross, or even kiss the feet of the image of Christ on the cross. And why do we do this? Well, through our little carved image of Christ on the cross we seek to honour and adore Christ. And we honour and adore him precisely in the moment of his great sacrifice for us, the sacrifice that takes away our sins and restores us into fellowship with God. This is the moment when Jesus looks least lovable; his is broken and disfigured by our sins. Yet this is the moment when he wins our salvation, this is precisely the moment when we are called to love him most.
So now we come to the final part of the Good Friday liturgy when we receive Holy Communion. We don’t normally celebrate a Eucharist on Good Friday, because a Eucharist is an act of celebration, and Good Friday is the most solemn and sombre of days. However we do receive communion from the reserved sacrament which we laid to rest on the altar of repose on Maundy Thursday. And there is a very solemn ritual that we re-enact here. We take Christ, present in the consecrated bread and wine, up from the garden of repose, which represents the garden of Gethsemane where Jesus went after the last supper, and we carry Him with great reverence up to the high altar, which reminds us of altar in the temple of Jerusalem; the place of sacrifice. And as we make this journey we can think of Jesus being led around after his arrest; first to Annas, then to Caiaphas, then to Pilate then to be flogged, then led out carrying his cross to be crucified at Golgotha. So let’s just watch a short video clip now of that solemn procession.
[video clip – 35 seconds]
And once we have all received communion that is more or less the end of the Good Friday liturgy. There is a brief prayer after communion and a blessing but not proper dismissal. Rather we all slip out in silence and we return for the last part of the Triduum liturgy of Easter Eve.
So that is Good Friday Liturgy. And I want to end by summarising a few of the key points:
• The Good Friday liturgy is the middle part of the Triduum. It depends on Maundy Thursday which comes before it and on Easter Eve, which comes after.
• The Good Friday liturgy is a stark and shocking liturgy. It brings us face to face with the sacrifice of Christ; the consequences of our sin. The prostration of the priests is a symbol of this.
• We read the story of the passion from John’s Gospel
• We venerate the cross, honouring Christ in the moment of his great sacrifice for us
• We receive Holy Communion, once again drawing us close to Christ in his sacrifice.
And we do all this to walk with Christ through his passion and death, knowing that this leads us on to his resurrection and renewal. And we seek to make this pattern of death and resurrection the pattern for our lives, so that everything can speak of resurrection and renewal. Amen.