Good Friday always seems to me to be an odd day where church services are concerned. We all know that it is the most solemn day of the Christian year, but nobody seems quite sure what we ought to do about it.
I say "we all know", but actually it seems that very few people take serious note. Joe and I went to Caistor for today's service and there were just six people there - three of us from Swallow, and there were not all that many at last night's Maundy Thursday Communion. However, I am not writing this to complain about the small numbers in church: I know that a lot of people are away for Easter and that a great many will go to church on Easter Day either at home or with their hosts for the holiday.
Getting back to the oddness of Good Friday services: that Maundy Thursday, the day of the original Last Supper, should be marked with an evening Eucharist is obvious, and tradition dictates that Easter Day should be celebrated with the most joyous, most choral Eucharist the congregation can manage. In between is Good Friday. At one time we always had a renewal of our baptismal vows; my childhood memories seem to be a mixture of Morning Prayer and Walks of Witness; in recent years there seem to have been more Communion services than anything else.
Today it was Stations of the Cross. It was a very plain service with meditations at each station, followed by prayers. It was also very different from the last (and only previous) Stations of the Cross service I attended sometime in my late teens/early twenties which was highly choral, and accompanied by clouds of incense. This not only makes me feel physically ill, but brings out the stern, unbending protestant in me. I dislike intolerance in any form, and I particularly dislike it on the odd occasions when I find it in myself. I'm not talking about academic argument about differing doctrines, but the unreasoning prejudice against such unprotestant practices in an Anglican church that incense brings out in me. Maybe that's why it is called incense: it certainly incenses me!
Anyway today's Stations of the Cross was a complete revelation to me in its simplicity, and felt absolutely the right way to mark Good Friday.
revruth
I told my little flock that they cannot come to enjoy Easter Day unless they have been through some of the misery of Holy Week. And then I have offered a host of services which I hoped would suit different people. We watched a film on Monday (The Mysteries); we had candlelit compline with meditations on Tue and Wed; we had footwashing, agape meal, stripping of altars and watch on Maundy Thursday; a Walk of Witness with the other churches, Stations of the Cross (no incense here!) followed by 2 hours of meditations on the sounds of the Passion, then in the evening a SErvice of Nails on Good Friday. Today we will have prayers at the cross in our garden before we get the church ready and the Bishop is coming tonight for the Vigil and a baptism and 8 confirmations (and we will all renew our baptismal vows). Then tomorrow we meet at the beach at 7am with our neighbour church and light the fire before bacon butties and then 2 services to celebrate the fact that He is Risen indeed!
Certainly there have not been crowds at these services but I'm happy that about 60% of my little flock have come to something so far and I have great hopes for the Vigil tonight. So all in all I am a happy Easter bunny.