On this holy night in this holy week as we remember and bear witness to the final teachings and actions of Jesus’ life, and just how totally he embodied God’s Love Supreme, even when it means confrontation with the powers of this world that have fallen from the true and good purpose for which God created them, and have become tools of death.

Tonight, we are invited to bear witness: to bear witness to Jesus’ love, and to bear witness to his suffering on behalf of that love. This is not easy, but it is very important, in whatever degree is healthy for you. The sacred stories of our faith, the sacred cycles of our yearly practice are wise in how they challenge us and invite us and support us to bear witness in love to very hard realities: to the pain and atrocity and grief caused by sin, which the story of Jesus so nakedly lays bare.

This is important because it gives us a space to honor this pain and to grieve the losses we suffer and others suffer due to sin, supported by the faith that, which Christ, there is resurrection.  This is not “only” about Jesus’ suffering, but, because Christ is for all, this is also about our own suffering … and the suffering of all those we care about … and all those we don’t care about … all those who suffer due to us … the suffering of all humanity, the suffering of our whole broken and beautiful world that struggles as we do with the costs that come from how humanity can be so severely out of joint with our true nature and purpose as children of the living God. Because of the nature of how Jesus died, because of his clear identification and solidarity with “the least of these” – “that which you do to the least of these, you do to me” – the story of Jesus’ death gives us an opportunity in particular to feel the grief of all those who suffer innocently due to being scapegoated for their society’s sins.

In this ritual space, we can know that we are not alone in all this. We are here together with each other in this beloved community, we are joined by all sincerely faithful people on earth, and through the generations. And most powerfully, we are joined by Jesus and the undying power of Divine love he embodied and shares with us all through the spirit of the resurrection.

Jesus bears it all with us, Jesus bears it all for us, so that we have a companion to lead us through the valley of the shadow of death and on into resurrected life. All this reveals that nothing can separate us from the Love of God as manifested through Christ Jesus.

May the sure knowledge of this unconditional love of God and its resurrection power help us to grow in courage and compassion and commitment to what is true and good and just and right and holy.

Call to Worship

Leader:          For all the ways we yearn for God, Jesus has come

All:                 We bear witness to the love, we grieve the pain, we keep the faith

Leader:          Jesus has come to confront the forces of sin, and to stand with all who suffer as scapegoats for sin

All:                 We bear witness to the love, we grieve the pain, we keep the faith

Leader:          Jesus has come with love and mercy and liberating power

All:                 We bear witness to the love, we grieve the pain, we keep the faith

Leader:          Jesus has come to take from us the suffering of sin and lead us to life everlasting

All:                 We bear witness to the love, we grieve the pain, we keep the faith. Amen

“A symbol of death and defeat, God turned [the cross] into a sign of liberation and new life. The cross is the most empowering symbol of God’s loving solidarity with the “least of these,” the unwanted in society who suffer daily from great injustices. Christians must face the cross as the terrible tragedy it was and discover in it, through faith and repentance, the liberating joy of enteral salvation”

“But we cannot find this liberating joy in the cross by spiritualizing it, by taking away its message of justice in the midst of powerlessness, suffering, and death.”

– James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, p. 156