At tonight’s Good Friday service at church, the chairs in the sanctuary were arranged in a circle around a large cross. The sanctuary was mostly dark except for lights that illuminated the cross. A sign outside the sanctuary said “Please enter the sanctuary in reverent and worshipful silence.” It felt a bit like entering a funeral home for a viewing — but a Christian funeral in which the grief is limned with hope. It was a beautiful scene. During the service the each person congregation had the opportunity to approach the center of the sanctuary and drive a nail into the cross, as a symbol of our sins being nailed to the cross of Christ. We then took communion and filed out quietly, with the nail-studded cross sending us on our way.
There are so many wonderful layers to this, but one that struck me is how I would like people to see things at my own funeral some day. I hope they enter the sanctuary in reverent silence and see the cross at the center of the room. I hope they will see that a lifetime of sins have been absorbed by that rough wood. I hope they will see a way of life in sacrificial love, the way of Jesus. I hope what remains when I’ve left the room for good is not my words or work, but rather the overwhelming presence of the God who became like me to set me, and the whole creation, free.