Good Friday 2026

 I have tried for several years to read an entire gospel or sometimes an epistle on Good Friday. One year I forgot and then did it on Easter Monday.  Another year I listened to one of Bach’s Passions.  Last year was a memorable year for this discipline but I couldn’t remember which gospel I read.  I think it was Matthew and I read it on my iPhone while going through the very stressful process of the nuclear stress test for my heart as a part of the preparation for hip surgery.  There was nothing wrong with my heart but the process was frightening as my heart was stimulated through a drug.  I guess because I was reading on my phone I did not record which gospel I read in our Bible.  However, I see that I had not read Luke since 2016 so that seemed a good book to read today—thankfully and mercifully just sitting in my “headquarters” as Jim calls it.

I have read the first ten chapters and am taking a break to shower and maybe do the livestream church service at noon.  I am reading on my iPad and using The Message, Eugene Peterson’s translation.  It is startling in its language of today.  As I often do, I thought can these words really be in Scripture?  I refer to the NRSV and sure enough, there they are in more traditional language.  So it is a good exercise to be reading a fresh translation and one that does not let me just slide over the words out of habit.

—————It’s now 1:45 and I have read the entire gospel and feel as if I have commemorated Good Friday and am leading up to Easter.  The church service at noon was all readings and music and was very solemn and ended up with the story of the tomb.  Now we wait for the celebration of Easter.  I hope we can worship in the sanctuary with trumpets and triumphal hymns and even the traditional Hallelujah Chorus.  

I was especially moved by the anthem “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say:”

1. I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“Come unto Me and rest;
Lay down, O weary one, lay down
Thy head upon My breast.”
I came to Jesus as I was,
Weary, and worn, and sad;
I found in him a resting-place,
And he has made me glad.

It has been a year of feeling “weary and worn” more than once and I have come to Jesus “as I was.”  Now the year is over.  We don’t know what the next year may bring but I try to trust that God will go with us and we will have “a resting-place” again.