This is the guts of my Good Friday Service for tonight...
Pardon the length... After each reflection, a liturgical exchange happens and a candle is snuffed out. After each candle is snuffed out, a verse of Ah, Holy Jesus...Were You There...or When I Survey the Wondrous Cross is sung.


Good evening. Tonight we commemorate and mark in a time of prayer and reflection the crucifixion of our Lord. But more than anything, we remember. Over the years a tradition has developed in the church that we mark tonight by reading and reflecting upon what have come to be called the Seven Last Words. Notice I didn’t say the Seven Last Words of Christ….just the seven last words. For the texts we will read tonight are a collection of memories. None of the gospel writers records that all 7 of the statements we will reflect on tonight were spoken. And who can really be surprised by that. Memory is a mysterious thing. No two of us will remember tonight the same way….and that is particularly true of life-changing and traumatic events. It is only natural then that the different strands of memory that became our 4 gospels would perhaps see the events of this life changing, world changing night differently. So tonight, we remember with these four traditions …seeking to find not one version of events, but through these four human recollections, to hear God’s truth about the terrible…wonderful…night that changed the world and changed us, forever. In keeping with the mystery of these various voices, tonight the reflections will each be products of the imagination as well…imagined reminiscences of seven witnesses to what is described in the gospels…

First Word Luke 23: 33-34

It was not a particularly special day…except of course that it was a religious holiday…but then those of us in service to the Roman guard don’t get holidays…But back to my point…it was not a particularly special day…don’t let what some people are saying now fool you…As far as we workers were concerned, these were just another three criminals being executed…three men who got caught doing something the people in charge didn’t like. Three wasn’t really all that many…Most days there were somewhere between 4 and 10…I even remember some days when the hill would look like a growth of crosses had sprung up like Spring flowers.

I’d heard of him, of course, that one in the middle…They say there was a bit of a ruckus about him all week…I’ve been working, no time for politics—whether it comes from Rome or from the temple. I saw the little sign…somebody was mocking him….but then, I’d seen mocking before…I think it’s the way the soldiers make the condemned less than human so it’s easier to bring them up here and do what they…what we…do.

No it wasn’t particularly remarkable…until…until he spoke. “Forgive them” he said… In all the years I’ve been out here, digging these holes, running these pulleys, being my own little part of the Roman death machine…noone ever prayed a prayer for my forgiveness…I’ve heard plenty of them pray for it for themselves…to God, to the Roman Guard, even to us—fellow slaves of the empire…but never did someone speak words of forgiveness to me…noone’s ever prayed for me out there on that hill…I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been cursed…by people my family knows…by a couple of friends even…But no one’s ever blessed me before…especially not out there…I’ll never forget it…I’ll never forget him…

(candle extinguished after liturgical response)

Second Word Luke 23: 39-43

Our family has endured so much shame…my well meaning, pig headed revolutionary of a kid brother…a thief some called him…And I guess that’s true…He thought we didn’t know…but we did…he’d been working in the resistance for a long time…Intercepting this shipment of cloth, interrupting that convoy of tradespeople…Anything to get the attention of the people…and to annoy Pilate—that snake—and all his Roman buddies…

I was there for the family…they would let me claim the body after a while…but I was also there for him. We’d drifted apart when he became an outlaw, but I wanted him to know that his older brother would be there for him…even if I was angry at him for bringing all this on himself….for making it so his name would not continue…so that he would not be remembered in the way our ancestors are…

When the three of them started talking, I was afraid his last words were going to be one more source of embarrassment…showing his stubborn stupidity to the end…but then when I heard them…All three of them talking…and there he was…taking responsibility for his actions…showing deference and respect to the one in the middle…The one his womenfolk called Joshua… another rebel, I assume…I think I remember hearing about him from someone in the neighborhood…I’ll admit it…I don’t go to temple as often as I should…so I’d never met him…and ever since our brother became an outlaw…we steer clear of all those street demonstrations…no sense getting arrested ourselves…

Standing there…I suddenly discovered how proud I was of my little brother…proud of the man he had become…of this reverence that I’d never seen in him before…And then, those last words they exchanged…I couldn’t hear them really…their voices were getting so weak…but I can tell you this…whatever that Joshua said…my brother…the criminal…the disappointment…the man…died with a look of peace and contentment I can see everytime I close my eyes… It’s not a vision that haunts me…it brings me peace.

Third Word John 19: 25-27

I’ve heard all the stories…the ones that say he abandoned his family when we began working together three years ago…People take some parable or some philosophical lesson he was trying to teach us about the commitment necessary for the work he gave us to do…and suddenly he’s a mother hater… But I know it’s not true. I was there…I saw how he unsuccessfully encouraged his younger brother James to look after the family. I saw how he comforted me when my own parents died. I was among the youngest of the 12 and sometimes I missed my family so much…I think that’s why he kept me so close to him…maybe he was taking over the job of looking after me from my family…he certainly made all of us, the twelve and so many others who traveled with us a true family…of love.

I guess that’s why it seemed so natural that day…We were all standing there, crying, but trying to put the brave face on—partially for him, and partially not to give those arrogant jerks from the temple and the Governor’s household the satisfaction. I was standing with his mother…I guess because it was comforting for me to be there with her. And he looked at me…those piercing eyes…and spoke words of love and family to me…Me..the orphan, he gave me a home…someone to look after certainly…but also someone to fill the place in my heart that was breaking…He gave me a family…a home…a piece of the life he was giving away…

Fourth Word Mark 15: 33-34

For a mother…for any parent…is there anything more difficult…anything more terrible than to hear your child without hope…In these times, losing a child certainly isn’t rare anymore…and at some level, I think he was preparing me for years for this day…He knew the people he was challenging were powerful…he knew this gospel whispered to me by a messenger of God just 34 years ago and fulfilled in his life’s work, was one that shook the halls of power and challenged the status quo…

No, if I’m honest, I can’t say I was really all that surprised when he was arrested…Though I hoped so desperately for some other sentence…I knew the lay of the land…and what was likely…and so did he. But to hear him utter these words…words to his divine parent…words not of love but abandonment…I couldn’t help but think…what a terrible waste…and wonder…what was this all for? And then I remembered…

He wasn’t speaking words that were new to him…they were words of a song from the Temple…a song that speaks deeply of pain, that seeks release…A song to God that begins in sorrow and moves toward peace and rest and reconciliation or at least the hope of it…and suddenly I realized…as deep as was his pain…as real as his abandonment was…Even as desperate as he seemed….he wasn’t completely without hope…he had enough to remember that our God delivered the people who first sang those words…and somehow…someway…perhaps repeating those words reminded him…that his heavenly father would not abandon him forever… It didn’t take away my pain…but it made it almost bearable…

Fifth Word John 19: 28

I’ve got to tell you…I hate serving in Jerusalem…Caesarea…now that’s a great posting….This is mostly family disputes, some thievery…and a whole lot of political dissidents—little more than two bit terrorists. On that Friday, some said this man was a king—so the commander came up with some games to really mess him up…not something I’m proud of…but I’ll give him this…He never fell apart…and in the midst of all that king talk…somebody said something about him being God or the Son of God…

Well, let me tell you something else…I can prove to you that he wasn’t any kind of God….not any kind of God I’ve ever heard of anyway…Back in my last posting in Athens they taught me…Gods aren’t limited by physical needs…because they are all spirit…not limited by the body that decays…or suffers…

I mean, what kind of God would become a human being? Getting sore backs and the mumps and capable of being executed like this guy? That’s ridiculous…Gods are supposed to be strong and powerful and stand with the Emperor…this guy was about as powerful as my little boy back in Rome…and the only people that were there for him? A couple of raggedy looking women and street trash---and most of them were watching from the next hill—too chicken to be seen with him, I guess.
Him a king? Not hardly…Him a God? Who thirsts? I don’t think so…

Sixth Word John 19: 29-30

It wasn’t supposed to be this way…”It is finished?” What is he saying? All we’ve done…all we worked for? Ever since this campaign started we’ve been building to this moment….When he would at last show his power…when he would finally stand up to this evil empire with a show of force that would bring the heavens crashing down on our opressors…

I know he had the power…I saw him use it…bringing Lazarus back from the dead…healing thousands…one at a time…calming the forces of nature out on the Dead Sea, defying every natural principle I can imagine…And with all that power…he says…”It is finished?”

What is he thinking? This isn’t how I planned it would be. Once I saw what he was capable of…once I knew that no power on earth could defeat him…it all made sense to me…He just needed the best opportunity to show his power…the biggest audience…the best crowd…

I waited to see if he would show it that night in the garden---how he would over power the guards with a touch or a word….and then later with Caiphas…and Herod…and then again with Pilot…and everytime he refused to play by the script…what’s a guy supposed to do?

I mean that’s really why I went to them…I would make them think they had the upper hand…and heck, if I got a little money out of the deal too…mores’ the better right? And he didn’t need to know about it…It would be more spontaneous that way…more real…So I create the perfect situation for our victory…and he snatches defeat instead…I give them just a little bit of information….and they use it to nail him….to a tree… It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, Lord…what are you doing? It is finished?!
It is finished!?!

Seventh Word Luke 23: 46

We clung to one another…by that time there were only a few of us left…as his life drained away it seemed the strength, the hope, the conviction of his people, faded away too. It was all too much…the hours of terror creeping by…and as his body began to sag, we knew that there was not much time left….His breaths came only in slow whines now…the pressure of being in that position for so long…
I don’t think his mother looked away from his face for a moment…so I think it was she who was startled first…suddenly a burst of strength…a final prayer…a declaration of victory…and then it was all over. That’s what I called it anyway, that declaration of victory…and a couple of folks told me I should keep my mouth shut…Of course they didn’t want me around in the first place…A lot of them haven’t wanted me around from the beginning…I’m not married, I don’t serve in my father’s house…I’m trash…go ahead, think your worst…I know what you’re assuming…

But he never did that…he never assumed the worst….there was some spirit of love and acceptance there where he could see the real me…

His spirit….that’s what I want to talk about …Father, into your hands I commend my spirit…

The spirit this group sought to break with their power and intimidation and death-dealing…the spirit that group sought to bind up in a temple shaped box of shoulds and should nots bound tight by ropes of “the way we’ve always done it”…the spirit he shared so freely for these past years that I felt sure that long before now he would just be empty…That spirit wasn’t taken from him…it wasn’t broken…it wasn’t used up…it wasn’t bound….It was his to give…and he gave it…gave it back to the one who had given it to him in the first place…

He never assumed the worst…I’m trying desperately not to right now…He said this would happen…if we were really paying attention…and he promised something else…but even I don’t dare say it out loud right now…
Because right now…what is real…is that he is gone…And right now, the what if’s aren’t helping me…right now I just need to go…