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Good Friday Stations of the Cross
7:00pm Friday, April 10, 2020
The Stations of the Cross Good evening and welcome to our virtual journey through the Stations of the cross inviting us to follow Jesus on his journey to the cross. As the service progresses on your screen, we invite you to settle in to a place that will allow you to feel this journey deeply as this is not an easy path to follow. The pattern will be the same at each station- we will offer a brief meditation, a time for individual prayer followed by music for reflection. We will finish our journey with final prayers and a blessing and then head our separate ways on this holy night in silence until we meet again Easter morning. Blessings for your journey.
Prelude
Were You There? The Rev. Dr. Lisa Tucker-Gray
Welcome & Introduction to the Stations
William Eleazar Barton (1899)
The Rev. Dr. Lisa Tucker-Gray
Station I Jesus is Condemned to Die Leader: Pilate said, “I find no fault with this man,” but when the crowd grew loud, Pilate grew silent. “I wash my hands. You deal with him.” Pilate had the knowledge and the power to stand and say no to the world as it sought to crush the Lord of Life. He made the choice that day not to use either. How many times do we have the knowledge and the power to say no, and yet stay silent? How many times do we participate, by our silence, in the Passion of Jesus? Who will die or be injured, or be disrespected because we do not say no?
Prayer: Dearest Jesus, enter into the fear of my silence. Be with me when I make choices to protect myself instead of being brave enough to stand up for you and your love. By the power of your Holy Spirit, give me the courage to stand and say no with you. Help me to take up my cross and follow you. Amen.
Music for Reflection (Jobst Choral Scholars)
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Gerard Moultrie
Station II Jesus Takes up His Cross Leader: This cross has been thousands of years in the making. Its weight grows greater each time we look for someone to blame for the pain in the world. Each time we insist that sin must be punished, we add an ounce to the burden Jesus carries for us. This is the cross he carries, the cross of blame, of vengeance. When have we said, “Well, they certainly deserved that!” or “It’s only fair. Look at what they did!”? When have we failed to forgive as we have been forgiven? When have we laid more weight on your blessed shoulders?
Prayer: Dearest Jesus, each step you take today is made harder by my hardness of heart. You carry this weight so that no one else ever will, not even those of us worshipping today. By the power of your Holy Spirit, give me the desire and the strength to forgive, to lighten your cross. Amen
Music for Reflection
Dennis Jernigan (Jobst Choral Scholars and Nate Leonard)
Station III The Cross is Laid on Simon of Cyrene Leader: We need you to die, Jesus, but our rage has gone too far. You are too weak to continue on to the head of the mountain because we have beaten you so severely. When you can’t go on by yourself, we look for a solution that won’t involve us too closely. We mustn’t touch the cross ourselves, but the process must go on. Then we find our answer. A stranger, someone who obviously has no idea who you are will carry the cross. He knows nothing of your innocence. How many others have we called on to do our violence for us? How many soldiers pulled triggers because we could not? How many executioners pushed buttons for us? How often do we separate ourselves from taking responsibility of the decisions we make or do not make resulting in the deaths of others?
Prayer: Dearest Jesus, Simon stood in for us when you couldn’t go forward. He helped us carry forward your execution in ignorance. Witnessing your courage and love, he became your friend, and ours. By the power of your Holy Spirit, help me to see my reluctance for what it is, a sign that something very wrong is happening. Give me courage to step forward when you can’t go on and say, “Enough!” Amen.
Music for Reflection
Slow Me Down (Sam Melden, guitar & vocals)
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Robbie Seay Band
Station IV Jesus Meets His Mother Leader: We want to make you a clown. We want to isolate you completely, but your mother will not permit it. She withstands the blows of taunt and sorrow to be present for you along the way. She alone remains to give you courage. She reminds us that you are someone’s child, just like us. How many times have we watched another suffer, but from a safe distance? How often have we simply forgotten that each of us is a child of God; each of us yearning to belong and to be loved?
Prayer: Dearest Jesus, your mother stood with you to give you strength, and to hold up your humanity in the face of our indifference. By the power of your Holy Spirit, help me to see the humanity of those whom the world wants to erase, and give me courage to stand with them, to strengthen them, and to claim them as brother or sister. Amen.
Music for Reflection (Chelsie Cree)
Carl Haywood
Station V Jesus is Stripped before the Crowd Leader: Physical humiliation isn’t enough. Spitting isn’t enough. We need to shame you.
We need to strip away your human dignity. We are blind to the dignity that forms the fabric of your very essence. Unable to see your deeper dignity, we revel in the shame we pour out on you. How many times have we judged, condemned or humiliated someone else? How many times have we labeled our brother or sister, setting them apart, reducing them, criticizing or shaming in hopes that we will seem better, brighter, bigger? How many times have we failed to treat another the way we want to be treated ourselves?
Prayer: Dearest Jesus, as you stand there, stripped before the crowd, you are more dignified than any of us. In our blindness, we still believe that shame reduces you. By the power of your Holy Spirit, help me to see the dignity that you have; that every child of God has, a dignity that neither we nor anyone else can take away. Amen
Music for Reflection
Lead Me to Calvary
(Nate Leonard, pianist)
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William Kirkpatrick
Station VI Jesus is Nailed to the Cross Leader: Hanging for hours on a cross is not cruel enough, Jesus. Watching you suffocate will not mollify our rage. Life has been so unfair to us, we have such rage that we have to use nails, instead of the traditional ropes. Rage bleeds away as nails, meant for wood, cut easily through human flesh. How many times have we allowed our rage to drive us to cruelty? How often have we let rage drive us to acts of cruelty, large or small? When have our words hurt another deeply? How many times has another had to live with the scars of our rage?
Prayer: Dearest Jesus, I cannot free myself of this frustration, this fury, by means of my own strength. This is a moment when I must ask for your grace and compassion. By the power of your Holy Spirit, free me. Take from me this rage, lest someone else suffer to ease my pain. Amen.
Music for Reflection (Jobst Choral Scholars)
John Stainer
Station VII Jesus Dies on the Cross Leader: We stand in stunned silence as we survey the result of our sin. The Lord of Life hangs dead from the tree. The peace we pursued as we chased you up the hill refuses to come. As we gaze upon you, Jesus, our victim, the realization dawns. Violence will never again bring peace, and we are terrified. Mute with horror, we stumble to our homes, as though the earth were moving under our feet. The ground itself seems unsteady as we contemplate a world without violence. On what will we stand?
Prayer: Dearest Jesus, keep my eyes fastened on you, hanging lifeless on the Cross. Not only today, but every day, remind me of the cost, the bankruptcy of my old ways, drive me into this silence so that you might speak a new world into being through my life. Amen
Music for Reflection
Pie Jesu
(Nate Leonard and Grace Hirt)
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Gabriel Faure
Station VIII Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross Leader: We have all departed by the time the guards permit those who love you to bring you down from the Cross. Once the spectacle ended, we are compelled to leave. There is something horrible and fascinating about you as you hang there, and it frightens us. We leave the task of dealing with your body to those who are already unclean. How often have we fled our own horror, left the care of the dead and the dying to others? How many times have we let our fear of the power of death drive us into hiding?
Prayer: Dearest Jesus, as your mother and your friends cared for your dead body, I am nowhere to be found. I refuse to become uncomfortable with what I fear and do not understand or cannot accept. Infuse in me a willingness to see what is difficult; help me learn how to grow in love and truth as I face into the darkness and lay my burdens down. Amen.
Music for Reflection
(Jobst Choral Scholars)
Wolfgang A. Mozart
Station iX Jesus is Laid in the Tomb Leader: In a tomb that you could never have afforded, those who did not abandon you, those who refused to join the mob, lay your body to rest with great tenderness. There is nothing divine in the torn flesh, nothing holy in the bloodied brow. There is only sorrow, deeper than the greatest trenches in the ocean. Sorrow. You will breathe life once again into our deadened spirits, Jesus, but not on this day. Today we walk as those robbed of hope, shuffling from one place to another as though we belonged in the tomb with you. Perhaps, without the breath of your new life, that is precisely where we belong.
Prayer: Dearest Jesus, I have seen myself in those who insisted on your torture and death. I am no different than the ones who demanded your death. I can be full of vengeance, greed, violence and selfishness. I wait now, for your redemption. I am hungry now for a life that doesn’t need the blood of victims to sustain itself. My hunger threatens to consume me. By the power of your Holy Spirit, keep this hunger alive. Help me never again to be satisfied with the bread of this world alone. Amen.
Music for Reflection
Go to Dark Gethsemane (Jobst Choral Scholars)
Stephen Sharp
Go to dark Gethsemane, ye that feel the tempter’s power; your Redeemer’s conflict see, watch with him one bitter hour; turn not from his griefs away, learn of Jesus Christ to pray.
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CLOSING Collect Celebrant: People:
The Lord be with you. And also with you.
Celebrant: Let us Pray. Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of the world, by the cross you have paved a road of redemption for all of creation. We give thanks to you this hour for delivering us from the domination of evil and alienation. Through the power of your Holy Spirit you have brought us into the Kingdom of your Son. We pray that through his death, he has recalled us to life, so by His love He may raise us to eternal joys; who lives and reigns with You, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer A version of the Lord’s Prayer created by Parker Palmer, and Led by the Gill-Snow Family Celebrant: And now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to say: People:
Heavenly Father, heavenly Mother, Holy and blessed is your true name. We pray for your reign of peace to come, We pray that your good will be done, Let heaven and earth become one. Give us this day the bread we need, Give it to those who have none. Let forgiveness flow like a river between us, From each one to each one. Lead us to holy innocence Beyond the evil of our days Come swiftly Mother, Father, come. For yours is the power and the glory and the mercy: Forever your name is All in One. Amen.
FINAL BLESSING Celebrant: To Christ who came to love and heal the world, but whom we mocked and scorned and put to death; to him be glory and honor in this hour of darkness. To Christ who loves us as we stand quietly at his tomb and wait for the promise of new life; to him be glory and honor in this hour of darkness. Amen.
May the rain fall off your shoulders, when you’re caught in a storm. When the frost comes a callin’ may it find you safe and warm. May your place be set, and may your promises be kept. And may you never forget that you are loved. 7
Trinity Episcopal Church PROGRESSIVE
INCLUSIVE CREATIVE DOWNTOWN
Vestry Leadership Donna Steppe, Sr. Warden, Roberta Durham, Jr. Warden Leah Reed, Clerk, Jane Bueche, Treasurer, Jeffrey Albright, Dennis Degnan, Fritz Hany, Bob Meeker & Jamie Paul
Parish Staff The Rev. Dr. Lisa Tucker-Gray, Rector Nate Leonard, Director of Music & the Arts Heather Meyer, Director of Operations and Community Development Lynzi Miller, Next to New Manager & Communications Coordinator Nick Zurawski, Sexton
Copyright Info: Bulletin Image: Ted DeGrazia's "The Way of the Cross"
TRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH
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