Blog posts will be released each day until Easter Sunday 4 April

Contributed by Christian members of the Faith and Spirituality Team.

Friday

Jesus was held in the high priest’s house overnight and the interrogating was brutal. In the morning he was taken to the Roman Governor, Pilate, who also interrogated him. He did not find Jesus guilty of much except perhaps self-delusion; but the crowd had been whipped up to demand the death penalty. Pilate conceded and sent Jesus to be crucified. As Jesus was now a capitol prisoner, the soldiers treated him with the utmost severity and mocking him as a self-styled King, they made a crown out of thorns and squeezed it onto his head. He was then made to carry the cross from the prison to a hill outside the city, called Golgotha. He was nailed to it and it was erected, Mark tells us at 9am. Two others were crucified at the same time. Jesus died at 3pm. While on the cross he was goaded by the crowd; but his response was to ask God to forgive them, for they did not know what they were doing. After he died, his body was taken down and put into a newly made tomb and the tomb was sealed. The whole story can be found in Mark, chapter 15.

Good Friday is the most solemn day in the Christian calendar; it is only “good” because Easter Sunday will follow. It is observed by Christians in many ways. The most common is to gather at mid-day for an afternoon of prayer, music, reflection, concluding at 3.00pm when people leave in silence. From the Iona Community’s Stages on the Way:

It was on the Friday
that they ended it all.

Of course,
they didn’t do it one by one.
They weren’t brave enough.

They did it in crowds…
in crowds where you can feel safe
and lose yourself,
and shout things
you would never shout on your own,
and do things
you would never do
if you felt the camera was watching you.

It was a crowd in the church that did it,
and a crowd in the civil service that did it,
and a crowd in the street that did it,
and a crowd on the hill that did it.

And he said nothing.

He took the insults,
the bruises,
the spit on the face,
the whips on the back,
the curses in the ears.
He took the sight of his friends turning away,
running away.

And he said nothing.

He let them do their worst
until their worst was done,
as on Friday they ended it all.
And they would have finished themselves
had he not cried,
“Father, forgive them.”

And begin the revolution.

Women at the foot of the cross. Painting by Shirley J. Veater

The material from Iona comes from Stages on the Way, 1998. Copyright(c) WGRG, Iona community, Glasgow Scotland. wilgooselscotland. Reproduced with permission.

Artworks by Shirley Veater used with grateful thanks. www.shirleyveaterdesigns.co.uk