Items to gather in preparation for Good Friday Observance, April 10
- Gather candles. During worship, the pastoral team will spend some time talking about 8 of the 14 stations of the cross. Tonight's worship is prerecorded, so you are encouraged to pause the video after each station, light a candle, and pray. If you only have one candle, after lighting it, pause and pray after each station for whatever the Holy Spirit moves you to think about.
- Cross. You are invited to hold a cross in your hand throughout the stations or simply have one displayed close to your worship station.
- Listen to the story of Good Friday and/or Read the Scriptures for the day: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; John 18:1-19:42
- Read Professor Rolf Jacobson's (Luther Seminary) devotion for the day printed below.
For the direct link to the livestream Good Friday Observance, click here.
Devotion
What is the very worst thing that we could imagine as God's people? That answer seems pretty simple: the death of God. And that happened on a Friday. And we call it good! Why? How? When the stock market crashed on a Thursday in 1929, the people called it "Black Thursday." When soldiers shot dozens of unarmed people in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in 1972 on a Sunday, it was called "Bloody Sunday." Why would we call the day on which we mark the death of God "Good Friday"? Linger with that question for a while. Like, all day. Don't race to the Sunday school answer, or the catechism answer, or even the seminary answer. Just stay with the question. Even knowing the resurrection is coming, why would we call the day of the suffering and death of God "good"? Strip away the roses and gold from your image of the cross, and just linger on the question.
Prayer Near the cross! O Lamb of God, bring its scenes before me; help me walk from day to day with its shadow o'er me. Amen.
Rolf Jacobson '91 M.Div.
Professor of Old Testament and Rogness Chair of Scripture, Theology, and Ministry, Luther Seminary
