Worship on Good Friday
10:00 am March 29, 2024
Minister: The Rev. Brad Childs Music Director: Binu Kapadia
Vocalist: Linda Farrah-Basford
*indicates that those who are able may stand
Music Prelude
We gather to worship God
Greeting
L: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you
P: and also with you
Lighting of the Christ candle
Silent preparation for worship
Call to worship:
L: Jesus took the towel, poured water into a basin and washed the feet of his disciples. Then Jesus said to them, “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”
P: Thank you, Lord Jesus, for showing us how to love and serve one another.
L: “But God proves his love for us that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”
P: Thank you, Lord Jesus, for suffering and dying on the cross for us and our salvation.
We listen for the voice of God
*Song: When I survey the wondrous cross (231)
Scripture readings: Psalm 22 ; John 18:28-19, 37
Musical offering: Linda and Binu
Message: “Bricks!”
Charlie and Matt lived in a nice neighborhood where the people were friendly except for one man who lived at the end of the block in a house with a giant swimming pool. His pool had the highest diving board the kids had ever seen. It was so high they could see it over the big fence that surrounded the property.
Practically every day, Charlie and Matt walked past the man’s house: wishing, imagining, and dreaming that they might someday dive off that diving board. But the mean old man didn’t allow anyone onto his property, especially kids. The “No Trespassing” signs on every post of the fence made it exceptionally clear.
But at least one of these two must have been the youngest child because the prohibition against entering just made the boys want it all the more desperately.
Matt and Charlie made a pact that the next time they saw that old killjoy-neighbour headed out of town, the two would sneak over the fence, climb that ladder, and dive off that skyscraper of diving board they had dreamed of.
As luck, kismet, providence, or happenstance may have had it… just two weeks later, little Charles and little Matthew noticed the man next door packing a suitcase into his car. They felt the rush of passion. The moment they dreamt of was upon them.
That evening, at nearly 11:00 pm, dressed in their swimming trunks, ready to rock, the two kids snuck out of their bedrooms to meet at the neighbors’ place.
It was a moonless night, perfect for getting away with a little mischief.
When I was in High School my friends and I would occasionally Fork a Yard. That being: we would take a 1000 piece package of plastic forks, and jam them into the victim’s yard, break them off, jam the rest in and then show up the next day to watch our poor teachers attempt to pull plastic bits out of their yards with pliers only to discover 50% of them were buried and likely to become permanent fixtures.
Every kid does stupid stuff… At least that is what I tell myself!
Climbing over the fence Matt and Charlie landed on the soft grass and then felt their way across the hard cement walkway, to the pool. Without a moon, the youth felt more clever than usual.
Just then Charlie thought he heard a sound. Maybe someone was still home? They stood still. Frozen for but a moment. But it was very still. All was still. No, it was nothing. No one was home. They wouldn’t get caught.
Charlie felt his way over to the edge of the pool and Matt climbed the ladder. “Last one in is a rotten egg” shouted Matt. A second later the spring of the board was like music to Charlie’s ears as he dipped his toes into the crisp cool water.
But the next two things took place simultaneously: Matt screamed out in pain, and Charlie felt not a drop of water, crisp, cool or otherwise, upon his feet.
The pool had been drained.
Matt jumped off that 12-foot high dive and next, he hit the bottom of the pool 12 more feet below ground level. Matt hit his feet first and suffered two broken legs, two broken ankles, a broken spine, and some other important and serious injuries. Matt spent the rest of his life paralyzed from the waist down. Charlie spent his taking care of Matt and was riddled with guilt.
Sometimes we think and do wrong things.
Sometimes these are “little sins” as we like to think of them, sometimes they are “Big”. But the truth is – they all have consequences. Even if like Charlie you “get away with it” with nothing but a little guilt… there is still a price.
There is always a reckoning.
Paul in his book to the Hebrews remarks “Everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin.”
The price is very high.
A just God demands that a high price be paid for every wrongdoing. Every sin demands blood. And every sin (“big” or “small” must be paid for).
The good news for us is that God paid the high price himself. In the book of Timothy, it says, “He gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone else.”
But freedom from what exactly?
“For the wages of sin is death,” the scripture says.
So, freedom from death for one thing. That is – eternal life is made available. But I think there is also more to it. I think it’s also about the Guilt of the sinner and general lawlessness.
At the beginning of the book of Judges, the author writes, “In those days no one followed the law, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.”
In a way, we live in the world of judges. We live in a time when no one ever wants to admit they were wrong. We live as a people subject to nothing and no one, because we make our own rules. And we live lives where we rarely if ever find reason to confess the few mistakes we’re willing to admit we do make.
We can “get away” with almost anything. The wages of sin are not often clear to us on this side of life. But the sad fact is this… even when we do “get away with it”, the result is still guilt. We know we aren’t quite right. In our heart of hearts, we know we can’t be right about everything and we can’t be the gods of our own lives. As the great prophet, Bob Dylan wrote… “You gotta serve somebody.”
A few years ago, a man who owned a small business in Germantown, Maryland, started what he called “a community art project.” His name was Frank Warren, and he began handing out postcards to strangers and leaving them in public places. The postcards asked people to write down a secret. The secret had to be true, and it had to be something they had never told anyone. Then people were supposed to mail their postcards to Frank Warren, anonymously.
To his surprise, thousands of people sent in cards. People had copied the address onto new postcards they had bought themselves and sent postcards. He got more cards than he handed out.
In his book Warren later said that it was like people were so weighted down by guilt for the things they had done (or not done) that they felt like they were carrying bricks around all day. He says people are killing themselves because they have so much guilt and nothing to do with it.
Kafka wrote, “We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we live is the state of sin and guilt.” But we don’t have to.
Some of those cards (those bricks of guilt people pile upon themselves and carry):
- “I started shooting heroin again. I still go to meetings and my sponsor doesn’t know.”
- “When my friends go on diets, I discourage them because I secretly can’t handle it if they are thinner than me.”
- “I’m jealous of my brother’s baby.”
- “Sometimes I wish that I was blind, just so I wouldn’t have to look at myself every day in the mirror.”
- “I don’t spend enough time with my kids. But I also don’t want to.”
- “People think I’ve stopped lying—but I’ve just gotten better at it.”
- “My mom thinks I’ve never done drugs”
- “I go to parties, wait for everyone to get drunk, and steal all their stuff.”
- “I accidentally ran over someone’s cat, and I just kept driving.”
- “I stole money from my mother after she died.”
- “I don’t like my mother anymore, she’s getting mean, so I don’t visit her”
- “I waste office supplies because I hate my boss.”
- “I hide money from my husband.”
- “I’m on anti-depressants. I put them in vitamin bottles so people at work won’t know my smiles are faked.”
- “I refuse to forgive my sister for something she did long ago but I can’t remember what it was”
- “I have terminal cancer and I told my family I am in remission because I don’t want to talk about it.”
- “I cheated on my wife during the war.”
- “I don’t give to charities, I only claim to.”
- “I hate my wife.”
- “I talk behind people’s ”
- “I charge lunches to work when I take friends out to eat.”
Card after card… Brick after brink… people pile guilt upon themselves until the weight of it all is too much to bear.
And you know what maybe that’s what we deserve. The weight of sin is death.
What do your postcards say?
We live in a society where people think they have nowhere to put their bricks and no one to turn to.
While the resurrection promises us a new and perfect life in the future, I want to tell you that God also loves us too much to leave us alone to contend with the sin and guilt we find in our present life.
No one is free from sin. And the wages of sin is death. We chose our own way and rejected God’s and so we told him we know better than He does; that we are the gods of ourselves.
But we were wrong, and we know it and we feel guilt for our sins.
We don’t always get caught, but our conscience will sooner or later get the best of us weighing us down like a load of bricks.
But then comes Good Friday (God’s Friday) … and the good news… God already paid the wage of sin for us and God takes all the guilt you can’t handle upon Himself.
Isaiah 53:6: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, we have turned, everyone, to his own way, and the LORD has laid on Jesus, the sin and guilt of all of us.” And he took it voluntarily because we couldn’t.
You don’t need to suffer for your sins. He already did. Take your postcards and burn them. And dump your bricks where they don’t belong but are taken anyway – dump them at the foot of the cross. Amen.
*Song: What wondrous love is this (242)
We respond to serve God
Prayer of gratitude, and for others and ourselves
Let us pray for this world which is groaning for redemption, and its creatures struggle for survival.
We pray for all those who are victims of war and racial conflict, for those overwhelmed by natural disaster, and for all who meet with any kind of accident, and those who are in any kind of danger…………..
For them, let us sing from our hearts: Lord Jesus Christ, lover of all
Let us pray for those who are deprived and live in poverty, for those who are despairing and feel themselves beyond help, and for those who are in suffering physically, mentally, spiritually, or socially and as yet see no hope.
And let us pray for those who face death alone, especially those who do not know the hope of life beyond death……….
For them, let us sing from our hearts: Lord Jesus Christ, lover of all
Let us pray for all those in great difficulty: for those who have lost their faith in God, in goodness and in the meaning of every life; for those who seek truth but cannot find it; for those who are lonely and find no friends; for those who are disheartened, whatever their circumstance; and for those who feel betrayed…………
For them, let us sing from our hearts: Lord Jesus Christ, lover of all
Lord God, You have given us a place to live in, In Greenfield, in our neighbourhoods, in Edmonton with space to build a life together, with people who become neighbours and friends.
Open our eyes to each other.
Make us humble enough to help others and comfort them, so that a little of your love may be seen in this place and in our lives.
Make each one of us a source of your enduring presence for the sake of Christ who died that we might live. Amen
*Song: Were you there vss 1-5 (233)
Extinguish the Christ candle
Recess in silence
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Numbers in brackets after a song/hymn indicate that it is from the 1997 Book of Praise of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Those and other songs are being used in accordance with the specifications of Dayspring’s licensing with One Licence (3095377) and CLC (A735555).
The Rev. Brad Childs retains the copyright (© 2024) on all original material in this service. As far as Brad Childs is aware, all of the material that has not been attributed to others is his own creation or is in the public domain. Unacknowledged use of copyrighted material is unintentional and will be corrected immediately upon notification being received.