Starter: (In pairs)
What for you has been the blackest day in your life
Worship:
Placing a simple cross in the centre, play some suitable sections from Handel's Messiah as each person offers silent prayer for the mercy and love which flows from His cross
Read The Gospel Passage Aloud With Suitable Pauses.
Try to "be there" as this long passage is read.
Personal Focus
(Personal focus on the passage, commentary and questions)
Commentary:
Good Friday only makes sense if it is joined to Easter Sunday. For Jesus, this is "His hour"- the time of his passage home to his Father. In John's account of the Passion, Jesus is the king, and his kingship shines through all his humiliation and suffering. He lays his life down willingly. John mentions that the lambs are being slaughtered for the Passover. Jesus, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, becomes the lamb on the cross. Jesus is the suffering servant who stands with sinners and takes their life upon himself. He did this willingly, and God will make sure this suffering servant becomes conqueror and gives new life to all people, Jews and Gentiles alike.
Personal Focus Questions
(Initially note what strikes you most forcibly. It may help to jot don some thoughts.)
1. How do you feel when you read that Jesus, our Lord is to be captured, tortured and killed?
2. How have you seen in your life that the experience of death can be overcome by faith?
3. Of all the words, which Jesus speaks from the cross, which speaks most deeply to you?
Life Focus Questions
1. Because of fear, Pilate does not do what he knows is right.
Has fear ever kept you from speaking out on civil rights, war, capital punishment, prejudice etc?
Explain
2. Has someone you loved betrayed you?
How did you react to this betrayal?
Were you able to forgive?
If not, what stops you from forgiving?
3. Share an experience of how something good came out of a bad experience.
4. What action do we need to take?
Review Time
Take stock of where we are up to in putting faith into action.
Pray Time
With the music from the Messiah playing again, write the names of people for whom you want to pray on slips of paper and place them around the cross
