Holy Friday/Good Friday — Planning Notes

Reading Notes

Calendar Notes

No color. No banners. No candles.

We face together the horror of the execution of Jesus, and enter the silence of his tomb.

For Your Planning Team: Holy Week — Through Death to Life

Holy Friday/Good Thursday

In This Series
This is the third major service in Holy Week.

This is the most intense week in the Christian year. It confronts us with the violence we inflict upon one another and our faithlessness toward God, juxtaposed dramatically against the love of God and the hope God’s kingdom offers our world.

Additional resources from our colleagues Scott Hughes and Melanie Gordon support the journey of this week day by day with whomever you gather, whether family at home, friends at school or work, or just you before God with the Scriptures for each day. Your Lenten formational groups may wish to use these resources as part of a daily gathering, whether in person or online if in-person meetings are not possible for you.


Today
The service we have designed begins with the opening of a reading from the Easter Vigil (Ezekiel 37), ending with the image of a valley of dry bones (verse 2). The Reproaches (found in the Book of Worship, 363-365) may be used in their entirety or selected and ordered to align with the order of the prayer for healing that follows. We do not commend sung responses for the Reproaches in this service. Though we do not explicitly read “by his stripes we are healed” from Isaiah 53 in this service, the act of healing that follows the Reproaches is intended to embody it.

The greater amount of time in this service is spent listening and responding in silence and occasionally song to the story of the arrest, trial, execution, and burial of Jesus from John’s Gospel. John’s Gospel has been associated with the Good Friday liturgy in the West since at least the fourth century. The version we commend is that in the Book of Worship’s Tenebrae service, a translation made especially for our Book of Worship by J. H. Charlesworth. His translation, while staying within the classic linguistic tradition of the Revised Standard Version, carefully and appropriately avoids the anti-Jewish readings of the Gospel of John present in the RSV and perpetuated in the NRSV. We strongly encourage you to use this version.

Because there is so much reading in this service, it is essential you have skilled readers. Take whatever time you need to train and rehearse the readers in their readings. Poor reading takes focus away from what is being read to the inadequacies of the reader. Strong reading enables the reader to vanish and the Word to shine through the words read.

Holy Communion is not observed on Good Friday. Holy Communion is celebrated in light of the resurrection of the Crucified One. On this day, and on Holy Saturday, we place ourselves before Christ crucified. That is why Christian liturgies, East and West, including our own Book of Worship, have provided no Great Thanksgiving for Good Friday.

If you choose to include a sermon in this service, we commend you place it after the act of healing and before the reading of the passion, as indicated. This is a day when the ritual and the passion narrative can generally speak more than adequately without further interpretation.


Logistics: Reading and Leading
The structure of this service is primarily that of a vigil, a service of readings and silence or prayers/hymns. If your congregation, clergy, lay readers, or other worship leaders are unaccustomed to such services as The Easter Vigil or the Advent or Christmas Service of Lessons and Carols, they may also be unaccustomed to the manner of reading that makes such services work well. If so, encourage them to watch a well-run service of lessons and carols, such as this one, from Myers Park UMC. Pay particular attention to the readings. Note the readings are offered at a deliberate pace, with careful articulation of syllables, and with an expressive but not “dramatic” voicing. Again, as noted above, the intention is not to draw attention to the reader, as inarticulate or overly dramatic reading will do, but to the readings themselves. Finally, arrange for all readers to practice their reading in the space and with the sound system as it will be in the service before the service takes place.

Leading a service such as this also takes careful attention. While Holy Friday/Good Friday includes substantial reading, the ground of this service is silence. One might call it a service of silence occasionally punctuated by Scripture, prayer, and song. But the ground is silence, not speaking. That’s why it starts with a silent procession.

Silence in an assembly begins not at the mouth, but in the body, in a stillness of body and breath. Many who attend these services in our churches may not have this as a discipline. But those who lead worship can embody and model it. Your grounded, non-anxious, and non-verbal leadership of stillness, deliberate (never-rushed) movement, and settled, slow breathing will catch on with those who observe your leadership without you needing to call attention to it or explain it. If such leadership is unfamiliar to you and other worship leaders, be sure to practice in the worship space beforehand, and to take time to still your body, your mind, and your breathing before you begin to lead.

Additional Resources

2014 Planning Helps for Holy/Good Friday

Ecumenical Prayer Cycle: East Timor, Indonesia, Philippines