Vicar’s Good Friday address 2025

The Book of Common Prayer funeral service includes a number of ‘sentences’ said by the priest as the bearers lead the way to the graveside and as the coffin is prepared to be lowered. (Funeral services at the time of the BCP being written rarely took place in church.) These sentences include many of those that we still use today but one sentence has not found it’s way into the modern order of service. It reads:
‘In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?’ I think these words have fallen out of favour because they are not to be found in the scriptures, rather they come from a responsory or chant that has been traced back to a 14th century origin, a prayer used at funerary rites.
It comes to mind however today as Christ is lifted up on the cross for us to see, to gaze upon. And it comes to mind because we don’t like the idea of death being a part of our lives. Gazing upon Christ’s death is not something we want to do but He told us that His death was part of his mission. He foresaw this day and said ‘And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ So here we are, at the foot of the cross, watching and waiting.

Today, Jesus asks us to consider that our death is as much a part of our humanity as our life and, in this service he forces us to look death in the face. 80+ years of the NHS has militated against our being connected with death. There was a time when most deaths took place at home. There was a time when the elderly ended their days being cared for by extended family in their homes. There was a time when infant mortality was common. There was a time when a family would gather around the coffin of their loved one in the front room of the house: keeping watch until a funeral took place. But in all my time as a vicar I have only attended one such gathering at home and that was some 25 years ago and more: an elderly lady in an open coffin, the family gathered around.

It is a commonplace to say that death is now pushed ‘out of sight and out of mind’ as much as possible. We are concerned with being eternally youthful but are anxious about the thought of living too long, being a burden. Beginning that conversation with our families about our wishes ‘at the end’ is really hard and yet at a time of bereavement it is such a gift to know what Dad or Mum would have wanted. (Have you at least written your wishes down where your family or executors might find them?) Who could deny that the arrival of pain relief in hospitals built for the care of patients was a great gift? Or that professional care of the terminally ill lifted a huge burden off the shoulders of (to be honest) the women of a family. But now death is removed from us in ways that are not always good for us.

Most deaths now take place in hospital. The numbers are changing but access to palliative care is not always available. The desire of many people to die at home cannot always be met even with palliative care support offered by District and Palliative care nurses. And so, our loved ones are removed from us at the last, taken from everything that they might hold dear in their homes and control over their last days entrusted to others.

Against this backdrop Jesus says: ‘Look. Avoid the temptation to look away or to rush on in the story to Easter. Stay with these moments as Mary and John hear His last words, as his body suffers yet more indignities. ‘This is how to die: loving to the very end’.

Our Lent series in Barnard Castle has been learning about icons. I was struck by the fact that sometimes icons are double-sided. An image of the virgin and child may well have an image of the crucifixion on its reverse. We learned that these icons were occasionally used in processions so that as they were seen a reminder was given that the incarnation of Christ and His death on the cross are to be held together: they are two sides of one coin.

We know this, but we are still tempted to separate the great doctrines of the faith rather than hold them together. But did we not hear John the Baptist at the beginning of John’s Gospel tell us ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’. Good Friday was heralded by him 18 chapters ago! Did we not hear Jesus tell his opponents in the temple that if they destroyed ‘this temple he would raise it up in three days’? Did we not take to heart Him telling us that the ‘Son of Man must be lifted up from the earth’…or that we must ‘eat his flesh and drink his blood’. His death has been foreshadowed all along. He will ‘lay his life down for his sheep’. He is anointed ‘for his burial’ at the home of his friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus. He speaks of ‘a grain of wheat falling to the earth and bearing much fruit’ and of ‘no one having greater love than He who lays down his life for His friends’.

Everything has been pointing to this moment in John’s Gospel. Jesus’ ‘hour’ comes not on Easter morning for this Gospel writer but as He reigns from the cross. Here His glory is revealed.

What does that mean? Well, here we see not just a man facing his death with dignity and courage but ‘the man’, (the perfect, sinless One) loving to the utmost. He pours out everything. He holds nothing back. All of life is embraced by Him and transformed by His embrace: even death. To use another image ‘he drains the cup of life – including life’s pain, and brokenness and disappointment’ and finds God’s faithfulness within, not only beyond it. And He gives Himself. Yes, He offers Himself to God. But, more than this, here we see God offering Himself to us.

This is what incarnation means. God with us from first to last, taking upon Himself every part of our humanity (even our death); with us always and for ever. Good news for Good Friday and for every day, even our dying day.

May we be granted grace to follow Christ in our living and dying. Let us pray

God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in my eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be at my end, and at my departing.
Amen.