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 Easter is a time when we celebrate Christ's resurrection. It's a joyful time, but we can miss the joy if we don't fully appreciate how siginificant an event the resurrection was. That's why we have a Good Friday service. Jesus' resurrection only makes sense in light of what happened just days before. I'd like to share with you what our Good Friday service helps us to understand as we prepare to celebrate Easter.
On the Thursday before Jesus' death, he celebrated the Passover Meal with his disciples. "Jesus, on the very night he was betrayed, took bread and broke it, saying, 'This is my body broken for you.'" Knowing he was facing his execution, Jesus shared a meal with those he was closest to. He wanted them to understand that what he would do on Friday would be to give himself over to death to pay for their sins. This meal was so important that he commanded his followers to always share this meal to remember his sacrifice. What Jesus did at his Last Supper has become what we celebrate as the Lord's Supper, or Communion. So we begin our Good Friday service by taking communion together.
After communion, we will have a Tenebrae service. This traditional service has its origins in the fifth century. "Tenebrae" is a Latin word meaning "shadows." Throughout the service, candles are extinguished, and the darkness grows as each portion of the story of Christ's suffering and death is told. In order to help capture the realities described in the narrative, the dialogue of key people in the story will be read by distinct voices. The shouts of the crowds of Jerusalem will also be depicted realistically. It's too easy for us to gloss over the familiar events of Holy Week. We need to be reminded of what it was really like for Jesus to be betrayed, abandoned, brutally beaten, humiliated, and executed as a common criminal, because only then do we see clearly what kind of punishment our sins deserve.
Each reading will be followed by music sung either by the congregation or by a quartet. The darkness deepens until finally, when Jesus is laid in the tomb and the stone is rolled over the entrance, the church lies in total darkness, representing the apparent finality of the sealed tomb. Though we know how the story ends, for Jesus' followers it must have seemed that the Light of the World had been extinguished forever. After a period of darkness, a single candle will be lit and the quartet will sing "It Is Accomplished Now". Though his disciples might have been without hope on that day, we who know how the story ends wait in hope for Sunday morning.
The purpose of the service is to vividly portray the betrayal, abandonment, and agony of the events, and it is left unfinished, because the story is not over until Easter Day. Therefore there is no benediction, and the service ends in continued darkness. We will all leave in silence as we consider how Jesus died in our place, but we will return expectantly on Sunday morning to celebrate the glorious conclusion of the story--that through his death and resurrection, Christ triumphed over sin and death on our behalf. May our appreciation of Christ's suffering give us a greater appreciation for his victory on Easter morning.
 Bill
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