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Good Friday—The Way of Forgiveness
Welcome: Welcome everyone! Today we mark Good Friday and the death of Jesus at the hands of the Roman authorities. Good Friday has traditionally been about atonement, however if we delve deeper Jesus wasn’t merely a sacrificial lamb. Jesus was someone who actualized the fulfillment of his human potential, someone who chose to love radically in the face of very challenging political and personal circumstances, rooted in the Divine within him. What about us? We have leaders who bombard us with messages of fear, exclusion, and the misuse of power. What about the challenging times we live in?
Opening Prayer Holy One, be with us as we sit with the emptiness of our loss, our fear of what may come next. Help us to see what we are called to die to, be it our egos, our need for control at all cost, or our fear of losing our independence. And especially help us know what we would we be willing to die for, as Jesus did. AMEN
Opening Song In the Name of Love by The Outer Banks Music
https://youtu.be/QXN6jr8FRm4
First Reading:
A reading adapted from the Diocese of Coventry, England (https://www.coventry.anglican.org/the-story-of-the-cross-of-nails.php)
Coventry is famous worldwide for being the city of peace and reconciliation. Here is the story of the destruction of Coventry Cathedral, built in 1450, and the creation of the Cross of Nails.
On the night of the 14th November 1940, 515 German bombers carried out an attack on Coventry that was codenamed Moonlight Sonata. The attack was intended to destroy Coventry’s industrial infrastructure including munition and aviation factories crucial to the war effort. At 7.20pm the first bombs fell, not long after the air raid siren was sounded. The bombs destroyed water supplies, telephone lines, gas and electricity. Fire fighters struggled to get through the streets due craters in the roads. At 8pm Coventry Cathedral was hit and flames soon engulfed the building. Bombs continued to fall, with the attack reaching its climax at midnight. Over the course of the night the Luftwaffe dropped 500 tons of high explosives, 30,000 incendiaries and 50 landmines. The all clear was not given until 6am in the morning.
In the morning the extent of the damage could be assessed. More than 43,000 homes, just over half the city’s housing stock was damaged or destroyed. The official death toll was 554 but the real figure could be higher as many people were unaccounted for (and the exact figure has never been precisely confirmed). A further 863 were severely injured. The extent of the damage was so great that Nazi propaganda coined a new word, ‘coventrieren’, meaning to annihilate a city.
Coventry Cathedral was in ruins. Yet, hope emerged from the ashes. The cathedral stonemason, Jock Forbes, noticed that two of the cathedral’s charred roof timbers had fallen in the shape of a cross. He bound them together and placed them on an altar of rubble in the cathedral. The vicar of nearby church, St Mark’s, the Revd. Arthur Wales, fashioned together three of the medieval nails that had fallen from the roof. This became the first Cross of Nails. Reminded of another day of darkness, when Jesus was nailed to the cross, Provost Richard Howard took some chalk and wrote ‘Father Forgive’ on the charred walls of the cathedral. It is significant he wrote only two words; he did not write ‘Father Forgive Them.’ He wanted everyone to recognise their own part in the destructive patterns of behaviours which can lead to disaster. Provost Howard also wanted to make a commitment not to seek revenge but to strive for reconciliation with the enemy – a view very different to the media and government messages at the time.
On Christmas Day 1940, the BBC broadcast their Christmas service from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral. Provost Howard further highlighted the need for reconciliation. He stated that after the war we should work with our enemies to “to build a kinder, more Christ-like world.”
The Cross of Nails quickly became a sign of hope, friendship and reconciliation. In September 1947, only just over two years after the end of the war, a Cross of Nails was presented to St Nikolai Church, Kiel, Germany. Over subsequent years hundreds of crosses of nails have been gifted to churches, charities and organisations committed to peace and reconciliation. In 1976 recipients of the Cross of Nails formed an ecumenical ‘Community of the Cross of Nails’ (CCN).
The Community of the Cross of Nails has three residing principles; healing the wounds of history, learning to live with difference and celebrate diversity, and building a culture of peace. Members of the CCN regularly pray the Coventry Litany of Reconciliation (written by Canon Joseph Poole in 1958), which is prayed in Coventry Cathedral every weekday at noon
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class,
Please forgive.
The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own,
Please forgive.
The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth,
Please forgive.
Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others,
Please forgive.
Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugee,
Please forgive.
The lust which dishonours the bodies of men, women and children,
Please forgive.
The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and not in God,
Please forgive.
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
AMEN
Communal silence We will now observe two minutes of silence and ponder who or what we need to forgive in our lives.
I Forgive You by Gungor
https://youtu.be/_GpyVkQ15VY
Second Reading: A Reading from Mirabai Starr, Daily Meditations, Center for Action and Contemplation
A prophet cannot know that all will be well, that those in power will wake up and mend the damage they have caused, and that peace will prevail. The mystic can never be certain that union with God will be the outcome of longing for God. They must rest in unknowing. Unknowing is not always comfortable. In fact, it can feel a lot like grief.
And yet that emptiness, that waiting, that liminal space is sacred. It’s what distinguishes a prophet-mystic from a self-righteous activist or a spiritual narcissist. It is in the interior desert, where the landscape appears barren, that patience reveals the miracle of life teeming just below the surface. The more we mindfully observe what is, the more beauty comes into focus. There is nothing broken here, nothing to fix. Rather, the prophet-mystic practices sitting with reality as it is. From that space of quiet listening, we may perceive what is ours to do and tap into the vitality we need to do it. We take up our birthright of belonging and, in the spirit of the mystical Jewish teaching of tikkun olam, we mend the broken world and restore wholeness to the web of interbeing.
These are the inspired words of Mirabai Starr and the community affirms them by saying AMEN.
Closing Prayer
May God bless you with discomfort...
at easy answers, hard hearts,
half-truths, and superficial relationships.
May God bless you so that you may live
from deep within your heart
where God's Spirit dwells.
May God bless you with anger...
at injustice, oppression,
and exploitation of people.
May God bless you so that you may
work for justice, freedom, and peace.
May God bless you with tears...
to shed for those who suffer from pain,
rejection, starvation and war.
May God bless you so that you
may reach out your hand
to comfort them and turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless you with
enough foolishness
to believe that you can make a difference
in this world, in your neighborhood,
so that you will courageously try
what you don't think you can do, but,
in Jesus Christ you'll have all the strength necessary.
Final Blessing Let us raise our hands in blessing and pray together:
May we forgive each other and ourselves every day. And may we, the prophet-mystics, keep putting one foot in front of the other as we carry the love of Jesus to the world. AMEN
Closing Song: Keep Marching
https://youtu.be/MB4xI3UzLe0?si=aSTpykiZF8aPNKjs
Lyrics
I won't live to see the future that I fight for
Maybe no one gets to reach that perfect day
If the work is never over
Then how do you keep marching anyway?
Do you carry your banner as far as you can?
Rewriting the world with your imperfect pen?
'Til the next stubborn girl picks it up in a picket line over and over again?
And you join in the chorus of centuries chanting to her
The path will be twisted and risky and slow
But keep marching, keep marching
Will you fail or prevail? Well, you may never know
But keep marching, keep marching
'Cause your ancestors are all the proof you need
That progress is possible, not guaranteed
It will only be made if we keep marching, keep marching on
Keep marching on
Keep marching on
And remember every mother that you came from
Learned as much from our success as our mistakes
Don't forget you're merely one of many others
On the journey every generation makes
We did not end injustice and neither will you
But still, we made strides, so we know you can too
Make peace with our incomplete power and use it for good
'Cause there's so much to do
The gains will feel small and the losses too large
Keep marching, keep marching
You'll rarely agree with whoever's in charge
Keep marching, keep marching
'Cause your ancestors are all the proof you need
That progress is possible, not guaranteed
It will only be made if we keep marching, keep marching on
Keep marching on
Yes, the world can be changed, 'cause we've done it before
So keep marching, keep marching
We're always behind you, so bang down the door
And keep marching, keep marching
And let history sound the alarm of how
The future demands that we fight for it now
It will only be ours if we keep marching, keep marching on
We must keep marching, marching, marching
We must keep marching, marching, marching
We must keep marching, marching, marching
We must keep marching, marching, marching
Come on, keep marching, marching, marching
Keep marching on
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Shaina Taub
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