Tonight my chuch holds its annual Good Friday service. It will be big and beautiful, with a trumpet player from the New York Philharmonic, singers from the Metropolitan Opera, choirs, and strings. I don’t feel like going. I feel spiritually tired and beat up, like I did this morning before we got to the lake, shuffling up from the river with worm guts on my hands and no fish to show for the effort.
Not to criticize our Good Friday service or the similar events occuring at other churches around the world today, but what I want to do tonight is to visit Gethsemane for a while, and then to curl up at the base of the cross and wait. I don’t want to shower, put on my pressed khakis and crisp blue shirt, and play the good American Evangelical. I want to feel the dirt, smell the blood, hear the cries, know in my bones the depths of “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” feel in my guts that truly “it is finished.” It is finished.
2 replies on “Good Friday Services”
I just finished catching up on your posts.
This one really resonated with me. This was one of those years for me as well – after being in the grime of life, the last thing I wanted was to “get all nice and polished up” for our Good Friday service.
Unfortunately, the choir played a large part in the service and I’m the pianist. I had no choice but to pull myself together and “play the part”. I don’t want to admit it, but that’s what it was. Playing a part. My heart didn’t want to be there. It wanted to be home, in privacy, struggling with the magnitude of what Christ accomplished for us.
There is no other way to say this: God showed up at church. He met many in the pews and He met me behind the piano. We, as a choir, have rehearsed all of the pieces to the point that it was almost rote – nothing particularly exciting, just another service with more music.
By the time the service was over, there were many tear-filled eyes – not only in the choir, but also in the congregation as well. It seemed as if God saw fit to share with us a bit of the pain, agony and loss. I could not see the last 2 pages of the final choir piece because of tears in my eyes – only God could have gotten me through to the end.
He moved and we felt it.
Thanks Sonia! It is amazing sometimes how God works in unexpected ways.