Dear friends,
As I write on this Good Friday, this note also comes with every prayer, blessing, and thanksgiving for the Easter season. As it is Good Friday, I will therefore refrain from using the “A word” … until the Easter Vigil! However, I wanted to write to you all before the weekend, so that you can see our parish announcements ahead of Sunday and have a final reminder of our upcoming Easter worship.
While today is the most solemn day in the church’s year, it is also a day of hope and expectation. Good Friday is definitive. But it is also an opening to something greater. Indeed, Good Friday is not simply about acknowledging the reality of death—though this is clearly unavoidable—or focusing ahead solely on the resurrection beyond it, but, and to experience this new life, remembering God’s promise in this.
There is death. There is resurrection. But to experience the latter beyond the former means accepting a promise. If we accept God’s promise, then death will never be the end. And, as any Christian knows, the way to accept a promise is to have an open heart. And the only way to have a heart open enough for such a promise, is to confess that we need one another and God, and now more than ever.
Good Friday grants us this revelation and this reality. And so, as we gather at the foot of the cross, and Jesus makes possible God’s ultimate promise with us, may we remember that this is not the end, but only the beginning, if we let it be. And we can let it be if our last words at the foot of the cross are, finally, something more like, “thank you.”
With every prayer and blessing for a holy and joyful Easter,
Ed.
The Rev. Edward Thornley
Rector of The Episcopal Parish of St. John the Evangelist