Tonight’s worship is one filled with silence. We begin by entering this sacred moment without speaking. The service then starts abruptly, without the prelude of music we’re used to. The opening of tonight’s worship isn’t designed to break the silence. Instead, we’re invited to live into it. Every word we speak, song we sing, and prayer we offer is a moment filled by a heavy silence. It’s a silence that reminds us of who we are, who Jesus is, and why we share our life with a crucified savior.
I invite you, over the next 36 hours, to hold this silence. Before too long, the silence will end with the rolling away of the stone on a beautiful Easter morning. Easter has already come. We know that the silence will be broken. But we shouldn’t rush to Easter too quickly. The silence that marked Jesus’ final moments on the cross and his time in the tomb is a silence God chose to live through. There are moments of our lives that we cannot rush through. Instead, we need to live through them. Jesus chose to live the moments we cannot rush through. Because when God chose to live a human life, God lived through every part of it.
Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for Good Friday, 3/30/2018.