Praying Together - A Thought for Good Friday 2026

So the commandment is a challenge. To love those who betray you. Those who jeer. Those who wield the whips embedded with flint, hammer in the nails, pierce your side.

Good Friday 2026

Matthew 27:45 – 51

From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, ‘This man is calling for Elijah.’ At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, ‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.’ Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.

When we sang ‘See amid the winter’s snow’ at Christmas time, we included the verse

Sacred Infant, all divine,
what a tender love was Thine,
thus to come from highest bliss
down to such a world as this!

‘Such a world as this’. A world full of violence, prejudice, hatred and war. A polluted environment that seeks to accelerate its own demise. A world in which 21st century technology is deployed under a moral compass little changed from that of cave-dwellers.

Seriously, if you were God, and had created this world as a haven of love and peace, surely you would simply give up, walk away and start again from scratch. (Perhaps without serpents this time).

But thanks be to God, you’re not God. (Even though some people seem to think they are). The God who created us, who loves and protects us, won’t give up trying. Every time we fall, He picks us up and gives us the opportunity to reset. We witness His sacrificial gift as He willingly climbs the Cross – as the song says, ‘hands that flung stars into space to cruel nails surrendered.’

Through our tears as we stand at the foot of the Cross and witness His Crucifixion on this Good Friday, we have the privilege of looking beyond the day unto a day of joy as we are assured of His life – then, today and tomorrow. We leave our past behind as we walk away from Golgotha, the place of the skull.

Jesus Lives; Thy terrors now
Can, O Death, no more appal us.
Allelujah!