Good Friday Prayer

This Good Friday prayer by David Kovarik touched many congregants that evening. Segments are fashioned from a combination of a former colleague of Pastor Dale’s, authors Phillip Yancey and Lee Strobel, and David Kovarik.

Almighty Lord, you are aware of the feelings and experiences that make up our lives, because you identified yourself with us in the person of Jesus Christ. It was a lonely and painful day for you when he died. You knew his hurt and pain, and you also know ours and we can dare to expose our pain to you.

You were able to accept the anger of the crowds that day, the anger of our representatives around the cross, even the anger of your son, and so we can offer our anger to you also and know that we are still accepted and loved.

We know, Lord that you must have felt apprehension like any father as Jesus woke his slumberous friends one last time and marched boldly through the darkness toward the ones intent on killing him. In a span of less than 24 hours your only son would face as many as six interrogations, some conducted by Jews, some by Romans, your people, God. And in the end an exasperated Governor pronounced the harshest verdict permitted under Roman law. Not a single witness rose to his defense. No leader had the nerve to speak out against the injustice. Not even your only son, Lord, tried to defend himself.

You took the insults of the crowd that day and instead of striking down the offenders, you offered them forgiveness and the opportunity toward wholeness. The way we live is often insulting to our status as human beings, and to each other. You accept the insults and offer us forgiveness.

Father you permitted your son to suffer, the sacrifice for all sin. Bound, surrounded by armed guards, the very picture of helplessness, this your son on this day so long ago. When Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”…Your son, our Messiah, hands tied behind his back, face puffy with sleeplessness, soldiers palm prints impressed on his cheeks...Your dutiful son would reply simply “Yes, it is as you say.”

Father we see Him…weak, rejected, doomed, utterly alone…. then finally thinking it is safe to reveal himself and accept the title: CHRIST.

Lord God, we still cannot fathom the indignity, the shame endured by your son on this Earth, stripped naked, flogged, spat on, His face pummeled, His body bruised and battered, garlanded with thorns.

It went like that all day long, the bullying, the professional thuggery of Herod and Pilate’s guards….the catcalls of spectators turned out to jeer the “criminals” stumbling on the road to Calvary and finally to the cross itself where from the ground below, the taunts continued.

Sometimes, God, we feel as helpless and hopeless as did the friends of Jesus on that Friday. They had not been able to hear the promises of resurrection and new life that Jesus had made to them. We can’t always hear the help and hope you offer us either. Father we are fearful and anxious too. We do not know what new pain, what new disappointment, what new shattering experience might come to us today or tomorrow or whenever. You know our grief too, Lord, and we are safe sharing with you the deepest pain in our hearts.

We marvel at the way your Son always thought about others. Jesus would wash the feet of the man He new would betray him. Even when He felt completely abandoned, He forgave the men who had done the deed. He arranged care for His Mother and He welcomed a shriven thief into Paradise.

Lord we are still amazed at the self restraint you have shown throughout history, but nothing…NOTHING compares to the self restraint you showed on that dark Friday in Jerusalem. With every lash of the whip, every fibrous crunch of the fist against flesh, legions of angels were at his command…just one word and the ordeal could have ended.

You knew grief and sadness that day too, didn’t you, God? It is hard to lose a friend or a parent, but it must be even more difficult to lose a son, a young and strong man who had so much to give and so much for which to live.

Even a gruff Roman soldier saw all too clearly the contrast between his brutish colleagues and your son, the pale figure nailed to a crossbeam, forgiving them in his dying gasps.

And you know about alienation too, Lord. You know how often we hurt each other. With misplaced anger and unfocused frustration. You saw it in the friends of Jesus when they ran away and hid from the world and each other. You have seen it in us often, as we suffer pain and hurt and respond by cutting ourselves off from those who need us the most.

But today IS about alienation and about alternative. Strange as it seems to us, the alienation and anger and envy and hostility that resulted in the death of Jesus offered to us the possibility of finding renewal and resurrection. The events of the first Good Friday offer to us a new chance to find each other and you and thus to be more fully alive. For this, even in the midst of our struggle to find community, we give thanks. You have taught us that the cross is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the Kingdom, nor is it even the way to the kingdom; it IS the Kingdom come.

FATHER, INTO YOUR HANDS WE COMMEND OURSELVES.

AMEN.