All We Can Do Is Pray
GOOD FRIDAY
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 • Hebrews 10:16-25 • John 18:1-19:42
In John’s gospel account, after telling his disciples that one of them would betray him and announcing that he would be taken from them, Jesus prays. In a red-letter edition of the Bible, except for words that introduce his prayer, all of John 17 is red. In that high-priestly prayer, Jesus prays for his disciples—that they would be protected and that they would be one. He prays for those throughout the world who will come to know God’s love because of the work that those disciples will carry out. And he prays that the glory of God will be revealed in what awaits him and that eternal life will be given to all who see and believe.
After that, John tells us, Jesus and his disciples set off across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden—a place that they knew well. John doesn’t tell us why the disciples met there frequently, but the synoptic tradition, which is reflected in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, helps us know that the garden was for them a place of prayer. In those accounts, instead of praying in the upper room before setting out, Jesus and the disciples go to the garden to pray. You might remember that, according to that tradition, each time Jesus comes and finds the disciples sleeping, he exhorts them to stay awake and pray so that they will have the strength to meet the days ahead of them. In the end, though, the outcome is the same, and we inevitably come to the arrest, torture, and death of our Lord supported only by prayer.
It turns out that the only thing we can do in the shadow of the cross is pray. Over the centuries, the church has struggled to figure out what sort of liturgical response is appropriate for Good Friday. In part, that struggle has arisen from a clear conviction in the western church that the Eucharist should not be celebrated on this day. Although the Divine Office of the eastern church has always been a part of their Good Friday observances, in the west, we have traditionally looked for other ways to remember Jesus’ death on the day when Jesus died on the cross.
In Jerusalem, as early as the fourth century, the faithful processed from the Garden of Gethsemane, where they had prayed through the night, into the city just as dawn was breaking. They read the story of Jesus’ trial at the governor’s headquarters. They stopped to pray at the column where Jesus had been scourged. After a break to return to their homes and rest for a while, they came to the church that had been built at Golgotha. There the relic of the true cross was laid upon the altar, and the people walked past it, kissing it or touching it with their hands or their foreheads. From noon until three o’clock in the afternoon, they stood in the courtyard outside the church and listened as all of the Old Testament prophecies and New Testament passages that alluded to Christ’s passion were read, stopping to pray in between each reading. Then, at three o’clock, the passion according to John was proclaimed, and shortly thereafter the service ended.
Christians in communities and churches away from the holy city, unable to walk the Via Dolorosa themselves, developed their own ways of commemorating Jesus’ death. Over the centuries, as fragments of the true cross were distributed throughout the world, similar acts of devotion—kissing and touching and reverencing those fragments—became common. Eventually, even in places where no relic of the cross was kept, the faithful drew near to a substitute cross, offering their silent prayers of adoration to the instrument upon which salvation was wrought. But, long before the creeping to the cross became common practice, the act of hearing the story of Jesus’ death and responding in prayer was central to the church’s Good Friday worship.
In our service today, our focus remains on hearing the passion and responding in prayer. In our Good Friday liturgy, the Solemn Collects are the defining element of our worship. Once we have beheld the death of Jesus, we kneel together to pray for ourselves and for the whole world. Scholars believe that this particular form of prayer may have been composed as early as the second century, and they note that the biddings or calls to prayer, which the deacon will read, likely were written before the collects themselves. That suggests that, even before the church had decided what words to say in prayer, God’s people felt a clear and undeniable urge to pray after they had seen the cross of Christ.
Today, the only thing we know how to do is to pray. In the silence that follows each bidding, we will pray first for the church, then for the nations of the world, then for all who suffer, then for those who do not yet know the love of God, and finally for ourselves. The collects that follow each silence are designed to bring together our unspoken prayers and longings in a unified expression. In each case, because we have seen what is offered and accomplished on the cross, we bring to God in prayer the brokenness of the world and of our lives, asking God to draw into the divine life all that is in need of redemption and restoration. In the cross, we have seen God’s love poured out for the sake of the world. In faith we recognize that all our hopes must find their fulfillment there.
On this day, there is nothing for us to produce or accomplish. All we can do is watch and pray. To see Christ die upon the cross—to hear him say, “It is finished,” and to watch him breathe his last—is to encounter more than a miscarriage of justice. Good Friday is not an inspirational moment, born of a tragedy, that demands from us a bold and decisive response. It is, in and of itself, the perfect and complete satisfaction of all that is amiss in the world. It is the means by which God reconciles and restores us to union with God and each other. The only possible response to what God has done is for us to enter into it through prayer.
Today, I urge you to bring the deepest needs of your life and of the world into the cross through prayer. Let your prayers be the channel through which everything around you that is broken comes into contact with God’s perfect love. Bring your doubts. Bring your sorrows. Bring your hardships into the cross in prayer. Bring your family. Bring this community. Bring this broken world into the cross in prayer. Bring everything that is affected by greed and violence and hatred and sin into the cross in prayer. See again what God has done, and use your prayers to enfold into Christ’s outstretched arms all that is in need of repair. Start with yourself. Feel that embrace. Allow your prayers to carry with you the burdens of your heart. Believe again that God’s love has no limits, and let that love draw you into the cross of Christ through prayer.
© 2023 The Rev. Evan D. Garner
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas