Prayer for Good Friday

Friday April 14 2017

You said at your arrest this was his hour – the hour of the dark one. And now he has his way.

You keep saying forgive – but this? Do not say it of this. The horror of what men do merits no sparing of condemnation. Why do you offer this concern?

Because it is our hour too - though we cannot bear to own it. For every hour of cruelty becomes ours when we see, but then, unseeing, turn away and forget the evil before us: the torturing, the bombing, the displacing and rejecting.

You say we know not what we do and at times it is so. But there is a darkness within us that pushes to be free and, when we see you on this day, we remember the ease with which it daily wins the field through our conniving. Yet still you insist there must be no reply to such as we but forgiveness.

So now we have no excuse to slide away. If we were condemned, we would have no place in your presence. But since in the shadow of your cross there is the summons of acceptance, our place is here. But who can bear the pity of it – the cheapness of the monstrous cruelty, the tawdry pleasure of the mocking, the vulgarity of official indifference to insupportable misery. All is dark indeed.

But yet the King is here.

Evil only sees itself. It does not know truth and never shall.

But faith does. And when the darkness has been washed away, another throne shall emerge, and by its cruciate form shall blessing be found, and in the liquid light of its shadow we all shall splash and dance.

Amen

The Rev Laurence Whitley