Is It Nothing to You? The Solemn Beauty of Good Friday

The Anglican Good Friday liturgy includes one of the most ancient and haunting elements of Christian worship: the Reproaches. Christ speaks from the cross to His people: "O my people, what have I done to you? How have I wearied you? Answer me. I brought you out of the land of Egypt — and you have prepared a cross for your Savior." The Reproaches are not anger. They are grief. They are the lament of a God who gave everything and received betrayal. Each reproach follows the same pattern: "I did this for you — and you did that to me." I led you through the wilderness — you led me to Golgotha. I fed you with manna — you fed me with gall. I opened the Red Sea before you — you opened my side with a spear. The via media holds this tension with characteristic Anglican balance: we are simultaneously the beloved and the betrayers. We are the recipients of every grace and the perpetrators of the crucifixion. The Reproaches do not let us stand at a comfortable distance. They place us at the foot of the cross and say: you did this. Your sin. Your indifference. Your turning away. And then — after every accusation — the refrain: "Holy God, holy and mighty, holy immortal One, have mercy upon us." The accusation and the plea. The guilt and the grace. That is Good Friday.

"He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities." Isaiah's language is violent. The cross is violent. And yet the Anglican tradition wraps this violence in some of the most beautiful language in the English language. Cranmer's collect for Good Friday: "Almighty God, we beseech thee graciously to behold this thy family, for which our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed, and given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death upon the cross." The word "contented" is extraordinary. Christ was contented — willing, at peace with the cost — to be betrayed and killed. The violence was not forced upon an unwilling victim. It was accepted by a willing Savior. The hymns of Good Friday carry the same solemn beauty: "When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died, my richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride." Isaac Watts wrote those words, and they have been sung at Good Friday services for three centuries because they do what the best Anglican worship does: they make beauty out of suffering without minimizing either one. Good Friday in the Anglican tradition is not morbid. It is reverent. It holds the horror of the cross and the beauty of God's love in the same breath — because that is what the cross itself does. The most terrible thing that ever happened is the most beautiful thing that ever happened. The via media refuses to choose between terror and beauty. It insists on both.

John records: "When he had received the drink, Jesus said, 'It is finished.' With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit." Gave up — not had taken. Even at the moment of death, Christ is acting, not acted upon. He gives His spirit. The death is voluntary. The sacrifice is chosen. "By his wounds we are healed." The healing does not come from the resurrection alone — it begins at the cross. The wounds are not incidental to the salvation. They are the salvation. The piercing. The crushing. The punishment. The stripes. Each one a transaction in the economy of grace. Tonight, we hear these words and we wait. Good Friday does not resolve. It does not give us the triumph of Easter. It gives us the silence of Saturday. The altar is stripped. The candles are extinguished. The church is bare. And we walk out into the evening carrying the weight of what we have witnessed — the death of the Son of God, undertaken willingly, for the healing of the world. The Anglican tradition trusts the silence. It does not fill every moment with explanation. Some truths can only be absorbed in silence. The cross is one of them. So tonight, do not rush to meaning. Do not hurry toward Easter. Sit with the cross. Let its weight settle. And trust that the God who was content to be betrayed is also content to wait with you in the silence. Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like his sorrow.