| Worship at 10:30 am this morning: Simply follow this link to our YouTube channel, and click on the service “Good Friday Worship” which will appear at 10:15 with “Live Now” in red underneath. Check your emails this morning for the phone in links and children’s program links. Any time after 11:30 you will be able to find the service recording on our YouTube Channel. Check your emails once again on Easter morning. In the meantime, may today hold space for reflection, emotion, and hope. – Emily, Matt, and Natalie (Worship Planning Team) WORSHIP AT HOME These are the hymn texts and scripture readings we will use in today’s service, followed by Matt’s Music Notes. Photographer: Murray Fenner Sunset on the Irrawaddy (taken from a sandbar near Bagan, Miramar) Go to dark Gethsemane,you that feel the tempter’s power; your Redeemer’s conflict see; watch with him one bitter hour; turn not from his grief away: learn from him to watch and pray. (Go to dark Gethsemane VU133) Reading: Matthew 26:36-46, 57-59, 69-75 Prayer If you are moving through this worship at home without watching the livestream or recording, take the opportunity each time to add the prayers that arise in your own heart in response to the reading. Bitter Was the Night (VU132) Bitter was the night, thought the cock would crow forever. Bitter was the night before the break of day. Saw you passing by, told them all I didn’t know you. Bitter was the night before the break of day. Told them all a lie, and I told it three times over, Bitter was the night before the break of day. Bitter was the night, thought there’d never be a morning. Bitter was the night before the break of day. Reading: Matthew 27:1-2, 11-14, 27-36 Prayer When the Son of God was Dying (VU153) When the Son of God was dying, long ago,some played dice and some knelt crying lost and low. Cynics sneered and wagged their tongues,mockers mimicked funeral songs:this, while God’s own Son was dying, long ago. Crowds which once had cried, “Hosanna!, lost their voice:hell had grinned to hear Barrabas was their choice; Judas hung himself for blame; Peter hung his head in shame,while the crowds which cried, “Hosanna!” lost their voice. Horror, hurt and pain found home in Mary’s breastwatching torture’s toll and hearing soldiers jest: where was God to hear her cry? Why should her own Jesus die? Grief and agony found home in Mary’s breast. Reading: Psalm 22:1-2, 9-11, 14-15, 22, 24-27 Prayer O God, Why Are You Silent? (MV73) O God, why are you silent? I cannot hear your voice. The proud and strong and violent all claim you and rejoice. You promised you would hold me with tenderness and care. Draw near, O Love, enfold me, and ease this pain I bear. Now lost within my grieving, I fall and lose my way,my fragile, faint believing so swiftly swept away. O God of pain and sorrow,my compass and my guide, I cannot face the morrow without you by my side. My hope lies bruised and battered, my wounded heart is torn;my spirit spent and shattered by life’s relentless storm. Will you not bend to hear me, my cries from deep within? Have you no word to cheer me when night is closing in? Through endless nights of weeping, through weary days of grief, my heart is in your keeping, my comfort, my relief. Come, share my tears and sadness, come, suffer in my pain, O bring me home to gladness, restore my hope again. Reading: Matthew 27:45-51 Prayer Were You There? (VU144) Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when the sun refused to shine? Were you there when the sun refused to shine? Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble Were you there when the sun refused to shine? Were you there when they laid him in the tomb? Were you there when they laid him in the tomb? Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble Were you there when they laid him in the tomb? Reading: Matthew 27:55-61 Music Notes Instrumental Prelude: VU 133 Go to Dark GethsemaneThe author actually wrote two different versions of this hymn. Both used vivid language to lead us through the dark painful events of Christ’s suffering – the judgement hall, beatings, climbing Calvary’s mountain, the Crucifixion. But then we are called to hasten to the tomb on Easter to meet the risen Christ who overcame all. We too must learn how to pray, to bear the cross, to die to sin, and to rise from death in Christ. Solo VU132 Bitter Was the Night This hymn was written by Sydney Carter in 1964. Carter was a liberal Christian singer-songwriter. Some of his works were a bit too controversial for the Church of England. This song expresses the feelings of Peter after he fulfills Christ’s prophecy that Peter will deny him before the cock crows thrice. Solo VU153 When the Son of God was Dying The text of this song was written from the Iona Community, an ecumenical Christian group based on the small island of Iona off the coast of Scotland. The community began in 1938 when the rev. George MacLeaod of the Church of Scotland began a ministry among the unemployed poor who had been neglected by the church. The music is written by renowned song leader John L. Bell. Solo MV73 O God, Why Are You Silent? The author of this hymn is Marty Haugen (b.1950), who is a prolific liturgical composer with many songs included in hymnals across the liturgical spectrum of North American hymnals and beyond. The tune Herzlich tut mich verlangen, also known as the Passion Chorale by Hans Leo Hassler, harmonized by Johan Sebastian Bach. Hasler received his early education from his father in Nuremberg, then studied in Venice with Andrea Gabrielli and became friends with Giovanni Gabrielli. As a Lutheran, Hassler composed for both the Roman Catholic liturgy and for the Lutheran churches. Solo VU144 Were You There? In The Companion to the Hymnal (Methodist) (1970) Dr. Fred Gealy wrote, “The poignancy of this spiritual is most deeply felt when one remembers that the African-American, having seen lynched bodies on the ‘tree,’ easily identified himself with his crucified Lord. The spirituals generally interpret the biblical stories rather than recount them. The singer stands in the midst of the event and … finds himself at the foot of the cross.” Postlude: Innocent from Considering Matthew Shepard by Craig Hella JohnsonThis 17th movement from the major work Considering Matthew Shepard is planted right in the middle of the passion narrative. Remembering a time when life was full of promise and dreaming was an activity filled with hope, a tenor soloist sings this movement wondering where all of these promising times have gone. The phrase that is repeated in the song is “Where, O where?” but an answer doesn’t come. |
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