I approach Good Friday with awe and fear. The liturgy of the day and the day itself are full of raw emotion and powerful imagery. Reading the Passion according to St. John with its virulent anti-Judaism is deeply problematic and offensive. Then the solemn collects and the veneration of the cross seem to draw us into the crucifixion, bringing all of our emotional turmoil to the surface.

When crafting the liturgy for the day, I always struggle with finding the right tone: allowing us to recognize our sinfulness but also inviting us to experience the love of Christ. I sometimes think that we overdo it. As a layperson, I often experienced the emotionalism and emphasis on Jesus’ suffering as off-putting. Perhaps the epitome of that was once at All Saints’ Chapel in Sewanee, after the Stations of the Cross that took us up University Avenue. Soloists sang the Tomas Luis de Victoria setting of the Solemn Reproaches. It was beautiful but bone-chilling. The anti-semitism of the text, coupled with the historical context of its composition (16th century Spain, during the Inquisition) almost turned my stomach.

Still, there are things that must be there for me on Good Friday. Bach, for example, specifically, “O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded.” The German text, with English translation, is available here. The origin of the text is quite interesting. Paul Gerhardt, a German Lutheran pastor in the seventeenth century, adapted a Latin hymn from the fourteenth century. In some respects it is full of Medieval sensibility. The original focuses on aspects of Christ’s suffering. Gerhardt refocuses the hymn on the individual, for example, in this stanza (Alexander translation):

What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.

Whatever else Good Friday is about, the concluding prayer is a powerful message on this day:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death. Give mercy and grace to the living; pardon and rest to the dead; to your holy Church peace and concord; and to us sinners everlasting life and glory; for with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever.

Amen.