Ruth Greenaway-Robbins

Luke 2:33–35; 2 Corinthians 1:3–7

Desolation – that is what I have always felt at the foot of the cross.
Utter and complete desolation … and yet, somehow, deep gratitude.

As a young person the feeling was almost overwhelming. Good Friday breaks me. It always has.

Over the years I have tried to understand why. Why does this day feel so physically and emotionally draining? I think part of it for me is that as my relationship with Christ has deepened, as he became not only my Saviour and Lord, but also my companion and friend, I feel the grief of the cross more intensely as the intimacy of my own relationship deepens.

And then life adds other layers.

When I became a mother in my early twenties, the story of Good Friday changed again for me. I began to see the cross through the eyes of Mary, the mother who stands watching her son die. The grief of that moment became almost unbearable to imagine.

I wonder how and what you feel on Good Friday?

So, when I was recently re-reading the account of the fourth-century pilgrim Egeria, whose writings we have been exploring in this series as we prepare for Holy week, something she wrote stopped me in my tracks. She describes the crowds gathered to hear the Passion story in Jerusalem, and she says this:

“It is impressive to see the way all the people are moved by these readings, and how they mourn. You could hardly believe how every single one of them weeps during those three hours, old and young alike, because of what the Lord suffered.”

Sixteen centuries ago, Christians were doing exactly what we still do today: standing before the cross and allowing their hearts to break open.

Because Good Friday brings us face to face with two realities at the same time:

the cruelty of Christ’s death,
and the astonishing love of God revealed within it.

Today on our journey of Keeping Holy Time as we prepare for Holy Week, the life of the Church brings us to a very particular place.

Not a place of triumph.
Not a place of celebration.

But to the foot of the cross.

Good Friday now just a few weeks away invites us to stand there.

To stand with the disciples who cannot quite understand what is happening.
To stand with the crowds watching in grief and confusion.
And to stand with Mary, the mother of Jesus, as Simeon’s prophecy is fulfilled:

A sword will pierce your own soul too.

On this fourth Sunday in Lent, also Mothering Sunday, we glimpse something of that sorrow, a mother standing beneath the suffering of the child she once held in her arms.

And as we stand there, we continue asking the question we have been exploring throughout Lent:

Why do we do what we do?

Why does the Church keep this day the way that it does?

Across the world the shape of Good Friday worship can look quite different.

Here at St Andrew’s, we keep the day with what the Church calls The Liturgy of the Day.

It is a simple but powerful service centred on three things:

the telling of the Passion story,
the prayers of the Church for the world,
and the veneration of the cross.

During this part of the service, the cross is brought before us, and people are invited (if they wish) to come forward and honour it.

Some bow.
Some kneel.
Some touch or kiss the cross.

We do not worship the wood itself.

Rather, we honour what it represents: the place where Christ’s self-giving love for the world was revealed.

For some people that gesture feels natural.
For others it can feel unfamiliar.

Why would we do such a thing?

To understand that, it helps to look back to the earliest descriptions we have of Good Friday worship.

We know from Egeria in the fourth century that on Good Friday the whole city seemed to move through the story of the Passion together.

Through the night people walked from place to place:

from the Mount of Olives,
to Gethsemane,
through the city gates,
and finally to Golgotha.

Egeria writes of pilgrims exhausted from fasting and keeping vigil.
Crowds so moved by the story of Jesus’ suffering that their weeping filled the city.

Later that morning something remarkable happened.

A table was set before the bishop, and brought forward was a reliquary believed to contain the wood of the cross.

Then, one by one, the people came forward.

They bowed.
They touched.
They kissed the wood.

Not as an object of worship.

But as a sign.

A sign that this is where salvation happened.

So, when we venerate the cross on Good Friday, we are joining a practice that stretches back at least sixteen centuries.

But even more than that, we are doing something deeply human.

Because Good Friday is not simply something we think about.

It is something we enter with our whole selves.

Christian faith has always insisted that our bodies matter.

God did not redeem us from a distance.
God came among us in flesh.

And the story of Good Friday is not abstract theology.

It is painfully physical.

Hands nailed.
Feet pierced.
Breath failing.
Blood poured out.

Because Good Friday brings us face-to-face with grief.

Most of us know something of that grief.

The grief of bereavement.
The grief of broken relationships.
The grief of the world as it is.

Sometimes we even carry grief for the places within ourselves where we fall short.

Good Friday does not ask us to hide any of that.

Instead, it invites us to bring it all to the cross, and lay it down.

To stand there honestly.

To allow the suffering of Christ to meet the suffering of the world.

Even now, if I am honest, Good Friday still undoes me.

The tears still come.

A strange mixture of grief and gratitude.

Grief at the suffering of Christ.

Gratitude that somehow, mysteriously, this act of love is for us.

Perhaps that is why the Church does not try to explain the cross away.

Good Friday is not a puzzle to be solved.

It is a mystery to be entered.

In St Mark’s Gospel, as Jesus breathes his last upon the cross, a Roman centurion stands watching.

A soldier of the empire.

And seeing how Jesus died, he says:

“Truly this man was God’s Son.”

Not a disciple.
Not a priest.

But a soldier.

Standing at the foot of the cross.

Looking.

And finally seeing.

That is what Good Friday asks of us too.

Simply to stand there.

To look.

And to allow the mystery of that love to break open our hearts.

Because on Good Friday we live in a strange in-between space.

We know Easter morning is coming.

But we do not rush ahead.

We stay with the cross.

We allow the weight of it to rest upon us.

And perhaps, like those early Christians Egeria described, we simply allow ourselves to be moved.

To weep.
To pray.
To wait.

So, when the moment comes and you are invited to come forward to venerate the cross on Good Friday, do not worry about doing it the “right” way.

Some will kneel.
Some will bow.
Some may simply stand quietly.

All of it is prayer.

All of it is a way of saying:

Here is the love of God.
Here is the cost of that love.
Here is the place where our salvation is found.

So as we prepare to keep holy time.

we stand.
we behold.
we wait.

Amen.