GOOD FRIDAY

Peninsula MCC
College Heights UCC

Corpus Hypercubus ou Crucifixion, Salvador Dali !1904"1989, Spain#

Music for Gathering S
$ ad Birds by Maurice Ravel !1875"1937, France#

Reading $ Anon. 14th century

At the cry of the first bird

They began to crucify Thee, O Swan!
Never shall lament cease because of that.
It was like the parting of day from night.
Ah! though sore the su%ering borne
By the body of Mary's son,
Sorer still to him was the grief,
Which for his sake, came upon his mother.

Hymn #226 $ O Sacred Head Now Wounded

$
Readings $ from A Woman Wrapped in Silenc!
by John W. Lynch !1904"1990, United States#

Music $ My Path by Arvo Pärt !b. 1935, Estonia#

Solo $ Cross from Seven Songs of Mary by John L. Bell !b. 1949, Scotland#

Silence
As you are able and as you are so moved, leave your stone on the burial shroud.
Please keep this bu"etin with you as we form a circle, standing around the table.

Litany $ Mary Speaks by Madeleine L’Engle !1918"2007, United States#

O you who bear the pain of the whole earth, I bore you.
O you whose tears gave human tears their worth, I laughed with you.
You, who when your hem is touched, give power, I nourished you.
Who turn the day to night in this dark hour, light comes from you.
O you who hold the world in your embrace, I carried you.
Whose arms encircled the world with your grace, I once held you.
O you who laughed and ate and walked the shore, I played with you.
And I, who with all others, you died for, now I hold you.

May I be faithful to this final test,

In this last hour I hold my child, my son;
His body close enfolded to my breast:
The holder held, the bearer borne.
Mourning to joy, darkness to morn.
Open, my arms; your work is done.

Music for Lingering $ Für Lennart in memoria# by Arvo Pärt

From a Woman Wrapped in Silence:

Part 1 Good Friday Readings: The birth- & early motherhood

Rev Terri reads as Rev Kimberly interprets with dance:

She… wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.

Only that. The brief, sweet offices

Of motherhood: the gentleness that cared
Thus for a Child’s small need: the simple, calm,
Unhastened task, that in the very words
The telling takes, is strong with humanness,
And sure with peace, and must forever keep
Him ours, and say forever she is ours.
Only that. No word of great travail,
No word of pain, or fright, or ecstasy,
No strangeness. Only that. the quiet hands

Wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.

Her first gift then to Him, and His first witness

To the ways of earth, the first of tribute,
And the gesture that began the long
Fullfillment was a simple care she brought
To Him, not as a creature comes to stoop,
But as a mother bends to love. We know
No more than this, and what exchange beyond
Lies gathered to the spaces of her heart
To turn forever there, inviolate.
O did she fold the veil down with her hands,
And raise them over Him, like frail, white wings
Of prayer? And brush His brow in lightest touch?
And look beneath His eyes that opened then,
And for the first time see, and know that she
Was seen? O this is why His birthplace holds
No more than emptiness, stripped bare and clean
Of all the proud pretensions we might hang
For feeble fringes, fraudulent with stale
Dishonors. We can grant no purer gift
Than she, and we are helpless to provide
Him wither tribute than is held in these
Pale hands that hovered over Him, and that
Which rose to meet Him from her eyes.

And then
She knelt and held Him close against her heart,
And in the midnight, adoration fused
With human love, and was not separate. [ Musical Interlude here Mein Weg – Arvo Pärt]

Part 2: The crucifixion: Good Friday Readings p224

Rev. Kimberly reads:
This was the death that Romans gave
To slaves. This was a death that held contempt
And pain and shame, all fastened into one
Great spreading gesture, set and bleeding there.
And this was His death, done to Him upon
A hill, and they could not be quick in looking…
Even on a sign.

But she was near,

She saw Him. She could see his cross in making.
Full. And plain. So near, her eyes could find
No shield, nor lesser sight, nor any refuge
From the full perceiving, had her love
Been frailer to have searched for it. She saw Him.
Staring. Near enough to fill all need.
She had that could be filled, and near enough
to fix in her a locked intensity
Of rigid pain that raised forever lost
And lonely ultimates that only He
Knew, and her sharing heart.
…
Rev Terri reads:

He was not still. They held Him, held Him there,

Until the long first spasms died, and they
Could tighten cords again and stretch His arm
Down to the hand that was not nailed, and pry
The fingers open. She could see. And then
The sound again! The iron beating iron…

Rev Kimberly reads (and continues onto next page):

There was no need for John to hold
Her then. He sensed a calmness come to her,
Like life beginning that had ended once,
But grown again until it was so sure
And strong, it seemed a Will had summoned her,
And she was finding now an hour drawn
Beyond apportioned days and given her
To live because it was her own, and she
Had only lived before in wait for it.
He looked to find her standing, taller, moveless,
Firm. No cried now, and no tears. No lifted
Arms to fend her way to Him. A woman.
Pale. So stilled. How utterly so stilled!
…

Violent and inward she was screaming,

Shouting claims against the swirl, and turning
In its force unyielding huge commands
Against impermanence. And slowly then,
She knew her lips were forming careful words,
But of her lips no speech, and she was conscious
She had not been audible. A prayer
Had stood in her for strength and that was strong.
She had not moved. Her hands still clenched together
… She was there. And if her breathing
Faltered, and the hard endurance now
Had worn away from her poor fall of tears,
Had beaten in to strip all recognized
And human ease, if she were lost, and emptied,
Spent, dissolved, with fragments of her heart
Left bleeding far behind her in a courtyard,
…Not a woman, but a grief; then this remained …

It was a strong consent that she had made,

And watched, and learned, and fortified, and held.
It was a young word uttered long ago
That was old silence now before His cross.
She had no more. No speech. No strength. No life.
She stood there emptied. And she was consent.

Rev. Terri reads as Rev Kimberly interprets with dance:

… She did not turn
Away. The one thing that we know of her
Is this, she did not turn away, nor fail
Before Him for an instant.
…
She stood, and spoke no word. And He could find
Her there, unflinching, statured by the long
Preparing, grown to this, and strong enough
To meet His last need and to wear her last
Tremendous majesty. She was His mother.
…
She was still His. To bear Him unto death.
This was not time as she had waited Him,
And felt Him move within her as a burden
Quickening to nearer infancy.
To lift her soul to awe and make of time
But sheltered song and quiet virgin prayer.
She was not trembling now in fragile gladness,
Waiting life and dreaming to a day
When she might hold Him breathing at her breast.
He hung there, over her, outstretched, and stiffened
Streaked in running red, and terrible
For wounds. …
Helplessly. And she was waiting Him.
… She was a woman, cryless, wrapped in time
That in this dark expectancy would give
Him to His death.