Good Friday

"Watching With Jesus"

The Rev. Stephen Elkins-Williams

In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ wrestling in the garden of Gethsemane with his impending suffering and death, Jesus says to Peter and James and John, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” Those words are also directed to us each Good Friday: “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” Despite our inclination to avoid the horror and the pain and the guilt of keeping watch with the crucified Jesus, he invites us to be present, to be attentive, to keep vigil.

Christians have been doing this for centuries – for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Moved by the desire to honor the one who suffered and died on their behalf (largely at the time abandoned), Christians have gathered together on Good Friday each year to “remain here and watch with” Jesus.

Turn with me, if you will, to the inside cover of your bulletins where we have reprinted the earliest surviving account of Christians in Jerusalem observing Good Friday in the late 300’s. Reading this detailed description fills us with a sense of the dedication and passion of our predecessors in uniting themselves with Jesus in the last few hours of his earthly life, and it helps us grasp the wider dimensions of our observance today.

Egeria, a Spanish nun, wrote in her journal:

On Good Friday following the dismissal from the Cross, which occurs before sunrise, everyone now stirred up goes immediately to Sion to pray at the pillar where the Lord was whipped. Returning from there then, all rest for a short time in their own houses, and soon all are ready. A throne is set up for the bishop on Golgotha behind the Cross, which now stands there. The bishop sits on the throne, a table covered with a linen cloth is set before the bishop, and the deacons stand around the table. The gilded silver casket containing the sacred wood of the cross is brought in and opened. Both the wood of the cross and the inscription are taken out and placed on the table. As soon as they have been placed on the table, the bishop, remaining seated, grips the ends of the sacred wood, while the deacons, who are standing about, keep watch over it. There is a reason why it is guarded in this manner. It is the practice here for all the people to come forth one by one, the faithful as well as the catechumens, to bow down before the table, kiss the holy wood, and then move on. It is said that someone (I do not know when) took a bite and stole a piece of the holy cross. [It has always been difficult for human beings simply to be present and not to possess…] Therefore, it is now guarded by the deacons standing around, lest there be anyone who would dare come and do that again.

All the people pass through one by one; all of them bow down, touching the cross and the inscription, first with their foreheads, then with their eyes; and, after kissing the cross, they move on. No one, however, puts out a hand to touch the cross. As soon as they have kissed the cross and passed on through, a deacon, who is standing, holds out the ring of Solomon and the phial with which the kings were anointed. They kiss the phial and venerate the ring from more or less the second hour; and thus until the sixth hour all the people pass through, entering through one door, exiting through another. All this occurs in the place where the day before, on Thursday, the sacrifice was offered.

When the sixth hour is at hand, everyone goes before the Cross, regardless of whether it is raining or whether it is hot. This place has no roof, for it is a sort of very large and beautiful courtyard lying between the Cross and the Anastasis. The people are so clustered together there that it is impossible for anything to be opened. A chair is placed for the bishop before the Cross, and from the sixth to the ninth hours nothing else is done except the reading of passages from Scripture.

First, whichever Psalms speak of the Passion are read. Next, there are readings from the apostles, either from the Epistles of the apostles or the Acts, wherever they speak of the Passion of the Lord. Next, the texts of the Passion from the Gospels are read. Then there are readings from the prophets, where they said that the Lord would suffer; and then they read from the Gospels, where He foretells the Passion. And so, from the sixth to the ninth hour, passages from Scripture are continuously read and hymns are sung, to show the people that whatever the prophets had said would come to pass concerning the Passion of the Lord can be shown, both through the Gospels and the writings of the apostles, to have taken place. And so, during those three hours, all the people are taught that nothing happened which was not first prophesied, and that nothing was prophesied which was not completely fulfilled. Prayers are continually interspersed, and the prayers themselves are proper to the day. At each reading and at every prayer, it is astonishing how much emotion and groaning there is from all the people. There is no one, young or old, who on this day does not sob more than can be imagined for the whole three hours, because the Lord suffered all this for us. After this, when the ninth hour is at hand, the passage is read from the Gospel according to Saint John where Christ gave up His spirit. After this reading, a prayer is said and the dismissal is given.

As soon as the dismissal has been given from before the Cross, everyone gathers together in the major church, the Martyrium, and there everything which they have been doing regularly throughout this week from the ninth hour when they came together at the Martyrium, until evening, is then done. After the dismissal from the Martyrium, everyone comes to the Anastasis, and, after they have arrived there, the passage from the Gospel is read where Joseph seeks from Pilate the body of the Lord and places it in a new tomb. After this reading a prayer is said, the catechumens are blessed, and the faithful as well; then the dismissal is given.

On this day no one raises a voice to say the vigil will be continued at the Anastasis, because it is known that the people are tired. However, it is the custom that the vigil be held there. And so, those among the people who wish, or rather those who are able, to keep the vigil, do so until dawn; whereas those who are not able to do so, do not keep watch there. But those of the clergy who are either strong enough or young enough, keep watch there, and hymns and antiphons are sung there all through the night until morning. The greater part of the people keep watch, some from evening on, others from midnight, all doing what they can. (From Readings for the Daily Office from the Early Church by J. Robert Wright.)

As our predecessors in the faith gathered in those sacred places, hallowed by the blood and sweat of Jesus, to “remain here and to watch,” so too do we in our consecrated place of worship. As the scripture readings and the psalms and the prayers and hymns gave reality and meaning to the core of their faith, so too do our proclamation and recitation and praying and singing. As the presence of the remnants of the true cross connected them with the reality of the first Good Friday, so too will our processing of a wooden cross into our midst in the third hour of our vigil.

“My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” We do not come here as isolated individuals, as ones who struggle alone with the changes and chances of this life, as ones who strive by ourselves to connect to the deep spiritual reality that too often lies below the obvious surface that consumes our attention. Rather we gather on this Good Friday in the liturgical footsteps of those trying to take up their cross and follow Jesus before us – some many, many generations ago and some still fresh in our hearts and memories. We gather is this common sacred space with other fellow believers, those whom God has given us to strengthen one another on our common and intertwined spiritual journeys. And most significant of all, we come here on this Good Friday, summoned by and united with Jesus, the one who in love and obedience poured himself out for us in Gethsemane and on Golgotha. He “who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself” for us invites us together: “Remain here, and watch with me.”