Good Friday Services
By Charlie Hall
Worship & Liturgy Pastor
We could gaze at the faceted edges of the liturgical diamond and never get to the end of its power and glory. In Advent, we long for a savior and everything to be made new. The pinnacle of Advent is the Incarnation, calling us to celebrate the “God with us,” who is making all things new. In Lent, we remember our lives are a breath; we follow Jesus' temptations in the wilderness and his suffering on the cross. Then, the pivotal place to stop before celebrating the resurrection is at the horrors of the cross on Good Friday. If you’ve been at Frontline Church for a long time, you have likely attended a Good Friday service where we painfully paused at the moment that split history and gave us access to God.
This is a day we see Jesus suspended between heaven and earth, rejected by his Father and the ones he came for because he loved them so much. Why is this horror called “good”? Because it proclaims that Christ sealed the redemption of fallen humanity through his death.
This service is a mainstay on Frontline's calendar, but it wasn’t always this way. The installation of the Good Friday service began a decade ago when a few like-minded and deep-hearted churches in OKC found refreshment and beauty in the meditation of the cross and its life-giving power. This meditation of the cross is guided by a liturgy that catches our gaze and holds our breath, all while our bodies fight to look away. A darkened room symbolizes the weight of sin we carry. Although followers of Jesus live in the power of Jesus rising, the Good Friday liturgy temporarily deletes resurrection language and hopes to evoke a depth of grief over the crucifixion of Christ. This service eliminates entertainment so the horror is apparent to our hearts. Unique from all other liturgical seasons, this day distinguishes a different heart posture as we reflect on the physical, relational, emotional, and spiritual sufferings of Jesus. We need scriptural reflections of the harsh and varied sufferings of Jesus, musical moments to help us own our sin, and art to visualize the work of the cross.
Our Good Friday service offers the grievousness of the cross and the beauty of its benefits with clarity. In this sense, it is a simple call to remember. It also manages to be evangelistic as it peels back cultural Christianity and allows the cross to shine like a beacon, calling out from the heart of God for sinners to be reconciled to him through Jesus. The beacon declares that God the Father loves the world so much he sent Jesus to us to bear and absorb the weight of all humanity's sin, sorrow, shame, and rebellion for all time — past, present, and future. The guilt of what we've done is nailed to the cross, and the shame of lost identity is cured. We see it was for our sake Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin so we would become the righteousness of God. We see he was pierced for our sins and crushed for our iniquities. On the cross, Jesus joyfully laid down his life, accomplishing what we could not buy, earn, or demand.
All creation mourned as its Creator was suspended between heaven and earth, but the heart of the cross of Christ is found in this: in God’s holy, perfect love, he substituted himself for sinners. This is GOOD! Jesus took our darkest thoughts, most heinous crimes, hidden abuses, and strangest addictions and placed our sins on his shoulders. The Good Friday service helps us pause in his work as we silently leave the space, metaphorically beating our chest. The darkness experienced in this service allows us to burst all the more into the glorious life-giving power and celebration on Resurrection Sunday.
