We are in the shadows tonight, oh God: suffering in the darkness of Friday, looking death squarely in the face and there, seeing only emptiness and end. And yet it is on this night we know most profoundly what kind of God you are. For you are a God who suffers with us, bearing the worst so that we can bear the bad, and a God who suffers for us, relinquishing your life in order that we might receive ours. It is for those whose Fridays are never-ending — the sick, the suffering, the unemployed and underpaid, the lonely, the hurt, the abused, the weary — that we especially lift before you this day. And yet we all are here before you, stricken by our sin.
In honesty to you, o God, we must confess what we have done and left undone. Our sin – singular and shared – wars within us, among us, around us. It deforms our souls and distorts our communities. Its force overpowers us with distraction and consumption and resentment and envy and rage and shame and pride. We do not do what we want but do the very thing we hate. All creation groans on this night.
But in faithfulness to you, o God, we must join our voices with Jesus and the ancestors of our faith in lament for the anguish that pervades this world. God, do you even hear the cries of your children denied the dignity of life abundant when the destroyers take away their life, love, basic needs, relief, refuge, safety, purpose, and care? Do you even see how distressing and disordered your world has become in the grip of tyrants’ powers? Do you even know the depth of our fear for self and loved ones, how we languish in our anxiety and spiral in our depression? The chaos drowns us in despair, in cynicism, in the hope for a different way. And there hangs Hope, dying on a Roman cross.
Yet it is tonight above all nights that we look at his face and see yours. Tonight above all nights that we know yours is the first heart to break, yours the power to break this grip of sin. You are like this, o Crucified God of Calvary. Where we turn away from suffering, you turn your full face toward it. Where we hide, you walk willingly to the end. Where we fall silent, you offer words of life even in death. There you hang, dying on a Roman cross.
In our anguish and your presence, we beg you to be near. Be near to the unjustly shut out, disappeared, dehumanized, terrorized. Be near to the women who beat their breasts and will not be consoled. Be near to those whose bodies are sick, violated, persecuted, tortured, imprisoned, bombed, legislated, regulated, shot, and killed. Be near to those whose daily crosses are too heavy a weight to bear. Be near anywhere love seems lost. In your nearness, tend us. Emancipate us. Save us. Have mercy on us.
Let the heavens crack open.
Let the earth quake.
Let the veil tear in two.
Forgive us, for we know not what we do.
We pray these things in the name of the One who taught us how to pray, saying…