![\"the](\"https:\/\/www.heuristika.co.uk\/lfgdiscussion\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/04\/cross.png\")
<\/p>\nfrom<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cHe opened wide his arms\u2019 – the welcome of God\u201d<\/p>\n
My song is love unknown,
\nMy Saviour’s love to me;
\nLove to the loveless shown,
\nThat they might lovely be.
\nO who am I,
\nThat for my sake My Lord should take
\nFrail flesh, and die?<\/p>\n
\u2018Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say – \u201cFather, save me from this hour\u201d? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.\u2019 Then a voice came from heaven, \u2018I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.\u2019 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, \u2018An angel has spoken to him.\u2019 Jesus answered,<\/p>\n
\u2018This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.\u2019 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.<\/p>\n
Over the years the words we use in public worship have been revised. One of the newer sentences in the communion service has proved more popular than most. Perhaps it is yours too? It is the line, \u2018He opened wide his arms on the cross.\u2019<\/p>\n
When someone opens their arms to you \u2013 what do you see?<\/p>\n
What is being expressed?<\/p>\n
What are you about to receive?<\/p>\n
And how do you respond? – joy, love, delight, welcome – with open arms in return.<\/p>\n
To be unable, or forbidden, to freely offer this in any time or place runs counter to our deepest instincts and feelings. But such is our context this Easter.<\/p>\n
In this vigil at the foot of the cross we begin by imagining Jesus on the cross. His arms are opened wide towards us and our world.
\nHere is love that refuses to keep distance from us.<\/p>\n
To imagine love in this place of such dreadful suffering is not easy. The focus is more often placed on judgement, guilt, punishment, debt and sacrifice. And they are all part of this story. But that focus too easily makes the cross a kind of extreme, divine problem solving \u2013 one which requires unspeakable suffering and death to deal with our sin.<\/p>\n
Well the cross is a place of painful truths but that is not where the story starts. What is original to this world is not our sin or evil. It is divine love. When we begin with the negatives, focused on the problem, we never get out of the cycles of judgment and condemnation. No repentance is ever enough. No effort with make us acceptable.<\/p>\n
It is true that human sin has made God\u2019s embrace of us a work of tragic redemption \u2026 but it is love that holds him there. Love is reaching out to us at whatever cost. There is no distancing.<\/p>\n
Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity \u2013 \u201cnow you can love them after all\u201d. Jesus came to change our mind about God.
\nGod does not love us because we are good; God loves us because God is good.<\/p>\n
This is welcome beyond any language of deserving – good or bad \u2026.
\nThe cross tells us that nothing we humans can do will ever decrease or increase God’s eternal eagerness to love us. Divine love is made visible here – forever.<\/p>\n
So let us draw near to this love.<\/p>\n
There is somewhere is this separated world where we have no need to keep our distance.<\/p>\n
There is offered here an embrace unlike anything we have ever known.
\nIt is beyond all imagining or any notions of deserving.<\/p>\n
He opened wide his arms on the cross.<\/p>\n
Where do you connect with these thoughts?<\/p>\n
You might pause and keep silence for a few moments.<\/p>\n
O God, revealed upon the cross
\nthrough the open arms of your Son,
\nYour love is endless \u2013
\nYour reach is boundless \u2013
\nYour embrace knows no separation.
\nIn wonder and gratitude, we turn to you \u2013
\nand open our arms to receive your love \u2013
\nA space to add your own prayers.
\nWe adore you O Christ and we bless you
\nFor by your Holy Cross
\nYou have redeemed the world.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2018The place called the skull\u2018 \u2013 the crucified God<\/p>\n
O sacred Head, now wounded,
\nWith grief and shame weighed down,
\nNow scornfully surrounded
\nWith thorns, Thine only crown;
\nO sacred Head, what glory
\nWhat bliss til now was
\nThine Yet though despised and gory
\nI joy to call Thee mine.<\/p>\n
\u2018As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots; then they sat down there and kept watch over him. Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, \u201cThis is Jesus, the King of the Jews.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n
Executions always took place outside the city, in places of maximum publicity, by the main routes into the city \u2013 as a warning and deterrent. That the sign above the cross of Jesus was in three languages (as we learn elsewhere) makes this clear.<\/p>\n
This is a message and a signal.<\/p>\n
Around the edge of any growing ancient city would have been quarries, close to the main roads, managing the endless demand for building material.<\/p>\n
Occasionally the quarriers would come to a rock that was flawed or cracked \u2013 perhaps from earthquakes. They would chisel round and continue cutting back so that, over time, the quarry floor would have lumps and outcrops of damaged rock sticking out, standing alone, rejected by the builders.<\/p>\n
One of these had attracted the name \u2018skull\u2019 \u2013 because that is what it looked like.<\/p>\n
It was a place used for executions. It was by this rock, or upon it, that Jesus was crucified.<\/p>\n
We know that for the first years after the death of Jesus, the Jerusalem Christians gathered by this stone on Easter day. That makes sense of the words of Peter,<\/p>\n
\u2018Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God\u2019s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood. \u201cThe stone that the builders rejected\u201d has become the very head of the corner\u2019.<\/p>\n
The first Christians were often from among the poor, the marginalised, the socially \u2018worthless\u2019. To such people comes this unexpected invitation. Come to Jesus. You too are like stones in the quarry, left behind like so much debris, odd shapes and flawed pieces no one found any use for; discarded after the powers have chosen the best by their measures of value and importance.<\/p>\n
But you are, in fact, of great value.<\/p>\n
Here at the place of the skull – we too come flawed, unpromising and far behind when judged by the preoccupations and obsessions of this present age.<\/p>\n
But listen. All the usual measures of what makes us acceptable, impressive or even useful have been suspended \u2013 or rather reversed.<\/p>\n
\u2018Come to him\u2019, says Peter. Really?<\/p>\n
This takes some trusting. We should expect anything built on such a foundation to look foolish, sound irrelevant, and be easy to mock and despise by any normal measure.<\/p>\n
We will not be found on \u2018Grand Designs\u2019.<\/p>\n
We will never be impressive building materials. But nor was Jesus.<\/p>\n
He was a stone the builders rejected. If Jesus, the rejected one, is the foundation stone of life, we are being shown a completely different way of knowing ourselves and of seeing and knowing God. All that has been rejected and left behind as worthless must be seen in a new light.
\nJesus, the stone the builders rejected, has become the foundation stone for the only building that really matters \u2013 the new humanity built upon his love.<\/p>\n
Where do you connect with these thoughts?<\/p>\n
You might pause and keep silence for a few moments.<\/p>\n
Christ our victim, rejected and cast aside as of no worth.
\nMay we not turn away from you,
\nbut find here, with all this world rejects,
\na sure foundation for new life and hope.
\nThrough Jesus Christ our Lord.<\/p>\n
We adore you O Christ and we bless you
\nFor by your Holy Cross
\nYou have redeemed the world.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom,
\nLead thou me on;<\/p>\n
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
\nThe night is gone,
\nAnd with the morn those angel faces smile,
\nWhich I have loved long since, and lost a while.<\/p>\n
From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’lclock Jesus cried with a loud voice, \u2018Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?\u2019 that is, \u2018My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?\u2019 When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, \u2018This man is calling for Elijah.\u2019 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, \u2018Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.\u2019 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. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, \u2018Truly this man was God\u2019s Son!\u2019<\/p>\n
Many women were also there, looking on from a distance; they had followed Jesus from Galilee and had provided for him. Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.<\/p>\n
I have sat with others as their earthly life has drawn to a close. No two stories are alike. But I have come to believe what others have long said \u2013 that in a mostly hidden but significant way the last journey of a person\u2019s spirit into death begins long before physical death.<\/p>\n
We have some glimpses of what Jesus was going through on the cross \u2013 though even those near him struggled to make out his words and meaning.<\/p>\n
The creeds say \u2018he descended to the dead\u2019. And that, in Christian tradition, was a descent to hell itself.<\/p>\n
A television documentary captures the moment when an explorer penetrates remote, deep jungle and comes upon ancient ruins. The breathless voiceover says \u2013 \u2018who knows when human voices were last heard here?\u2019<\/p>\n
Jesus descended to the dead. There must always be mystery in the language and imagination here. But Christian faith has understood this to mean that in his incarnation, suffering and death Jesus willingly and fully entered the farthest, deepest, waste places of human spirit and destiny. All that is most lost.<\/p>\n
Now, from the cross, an anguished cry rends the lifeless silence.
\n\u2018My God, my God why have you abandoned me!\u2019<\/p>\n
And when was a voice last heard from that abyss?<\/p>\n
It is the only time in his earthly life Jesus does not call God \u2018Father\u2019.<\/p>\n
He is there for us \u2026 It is our cry.<\/p>\n
It is the cry of the world.<\/p>\n
It still is.<\/p>\n
In that cry is found our hope and salvation – and nowhere else.
\nIn more recent literature and films about the cross the suffering and pain have been presented in overwhelmingly graphic detail. But we will not understand his gift by trying to measure his pain. It is not the quantity of suffering that saves.<\/p>\n
It is who is suffering and why that saves.<\/p>\n
Nor is salvation achieved by some kind of transfer of punishment from sinners to an innocent victim. The cry of Jesus is not the agony of pain divinely inflicted, punishment pitilessly exacted, payment claimed in blood.<\/p>\n
Rather, God takes it upon himself – and it tears him apart.<\/p>\n
That cry is the harrowed anguish of divine love.<\/p>\n
How are we to express this?<\/p>\n
\u2019I want to say it like this\u2019, writes the theologian Jane Williams, \u2018so that we can hear it and feel it. God is torn apart from God. Particularly about the cross, that is the only kind of language that I can find to say what I am trying to say. On the cross, God endures the separation from God that is the world’s.<\/p>\n
As Jesus cries, \u2018My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?\u2019, he is the life of God, streaming into our separation. Because Jesus and his Father are ripped apart, nothing can now separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. God is in our dislocation from God, as in our connectedness.\u2019<\/p>\n
Where do you connect with these thoughts?<\/p>\n
You might pause and keep silence for a few moments.<\/p>\n
Christ our victim
\nWhose beauty was disfigured
\nwhose body torn upon the cross
\nwho willed to enter our abandonment and loss
\nOpen wide your arms
\nTo embrace our tortured world
\nThat we may not turn away our eyes
\nBut abandon ourselves to your mercy.<\/p>\n
We adore you O Christ and we bless you
\nFor by your Holy Cross
\nYou have redeemed the world.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When I survey the wondrous cross
\nOn which the Prince of Glory died
\nMy richest gain I count but loss
\nAnd pour contempt on all my pride<\/p>\n
Then Jesus told his disciples, \u2018If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?<\/p>\n
Jesus never hid from his followers what his ministry was leading towards.
\nHe regularly spoke of his coming suffering and cross. For their part his disciples never stopped struggling to accept and make sense of what he was saying.<\/p>\n
On one occasion as he told them yet again Peter felt he had heard enough. Suffering, rejection, defeat and being killed are not what should happen to real Messiahs is it? Nothing in the faith they had grown up with prepared them for this either.<\/p>\n
He takes Jesus to one side and bluntly rebukes him and tells him he is wrong.<\/p>\n
This is startling language.<\/p>\n
It is elsewhere a word used of Jesus casting out evil.<\/p>\n
But Peter\u2019s response to Jesus may owe more to fear than presumption. For if what Jesus is saying is true then they, his disciples, could be in danger too.<\/p>\n
Peter expresses what they are all thinking.<\/p>\n
Jesus is looking at them all as he interrupts Peter and sharply rebukes him back. \u201cFor you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.\u2019<\/p>\n
Not only is there no other way for Jesus. The way of the cross is the way of his followers too.<\/p>\n
Carrying your cross is the action of someone on the way from their cell to the place of execution. In American prisons, inmates on death row chant \u2018dead man walking\u2019 when one of their number makes that last journey.<\/p>\n
What life plans, hopes and ambitions make any sense at all in that moment?<\/p>\n
This is such a tough uncompromising image of faith.<\/p>\n
Yet this is the call of Jesus. \u2018Take up your cross and follow me\u2019, says Jesus.<\/p>\n
To take up our cross is to surrender all our own attempts to use life, religion and God for our own ends, needs and purposes.<\/p>\n
To take up our cross is to turn from our own attempts to manage and control and secure our own lives. The instinct to do this runs very deep. We are engaging in activity that is powerless to save. We cannot save ourselves.<\/p>\n
To take up our cross is to turn to Christ and to surrender to the only gift of life that we can utterly trust and depend in \u2013 the life Jesus gives.<\/p>\n
The story is told of a man seen late one night searching for something under a streetlight. A passerby stops. \u2018Did you lose something here? \u2018No, I lost it over other there\u2019, replies the man, pointing into the darkness some distance away, \u2018but the light is much better here.\u2019 His folly is plain. He has lost something important and knows it. He is looking hard for it. But he is searching on his own terms and while he does so he has no hope of finding was is lost.<\/p>\n
To take up our cross is to set our mind on \u2018divine things\u2019, says Jesus.<\/p>\n
So this all hinges on God and what he about.<\/p>\n
All our hope is found here.<\/p>\n
The cross is forever the sign of a God who loves, saves, delivers and raise life out of the darkness of what is dead and lost.<\/p>\n
Those who are willing to lose their life here, will find it.<\/p>\n
Where do you connect with these thoughts?<\/p>\n
You might pause and keep silence for a few moments.<\/p>\n
Lord upon the cross
\nGive us the grace and courage to take up our cross and follow you.
\nThat in losing our lives for your sake
\nWe may be brought to new life and
\nMay become signs of your love and
\nyour salvation in the world.
\nA space to add your own prayers
\nWe adore you O Christ and we bless you
\nFor by your Holy Cross
\nYou have redeemed the world.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Amazing love, O what sacrifice
\nThe Son of God, giv\u2019n for me
\nMy debt he pays, and my death he dies,
\nthat I might live,
\nthat time I live.
\n(chorus from \u2018My Lord, what love is this?)<\/p>\n
Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, \u2018Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.\u2019 And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, \u2018He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!\u2019 The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, \u2018If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!\u2019 There was also an inscription over him, \u2018This is the King of the Jews.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Forgive\u2018 \u2026 we somehow expect that word to appear here. Even if this reveals we know this story too well and it has lost its capacity to shock.<\/p>\n
But it is the second part of the sentence that sticks – \u2018they do not know what they are doing\u2019 \u2026<\/p>\n
It is one thing to be forgiven for what you know you have done wrong \u2013 even if there is pride to swallow and shame to endure. But to be told we did not even know what we were doing \u2026! Hang on a minute!<\/p>\n
A feature of our culture is its need to blame \u2013 someone must be responsible. It must be someone\u2019s fault. When shocking stories emerge of the abuse of children, tax avoidance, air disaster or a global pandemic \u2026 we need to know whose fault it is. It must be someone\u2019s. We need someone to blame.<\/p>\n
It is the deadliest diagnosis from the cross \u2013 \u2018they do not know what they are doing.\u2018<\/p>\n
Who don’t exactly?<\/p>\n
Crowds? \u2013 mocking. Carnival. Media driven.<\/p>\n
Soldiers? \u2013 only following orders<\/p>\n
Pilate? \u2013 political expediency. Ineffectual – did not know what to do.<\/p>\n
Religious leaders? \u2013 they thought they knew exactly what they were doing.<\/p>\n
Judas?<\/p>\n
And you and I? What don\u2019t we know?<\/p>\n
Jesus\u2019s favourite metaphor for the human condition is blindness.
\nWe just don\u2019t see.<\/p>\n
(There are sensitivities to this metaphorical language of course. And in the recorded encounters with Jesus the physically blind often \u2018saw\u2019 him the most clearly)<\/p>\n
On one occasion his religious hearers challenged him<\/p>\n
\u2018Are you saying we are blind?\u2019<\/p>\n
Jesus replied \u2013 \u2018you are not guilty because you are blind If we are blind in this sense, then even are best intentions can be dangerous.<\/p>\n We cannot see our consequences; our effect.<\/p>\n If we come to cross in this place of not knowing, of unseeing, we should not expect the cross to make sense.<\/p>\n The cross is there precisely for all that is senseless, unaware, our unseeing and our wild, deadly assumptions about what we think we know. You might pause and keep silence for a few moments.<\/p>\n Father of Jesus, Were you there when they crucified my Lord? \u2018\u2026 standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother\u2019s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, \u2018Woman, here is your son.\u2019 Then he said to the disciple, \u2018Here is your mother.\u2019 And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.<\/p>\n After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfil the scripture), \u2018I am thirsty.\u2019 A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, \u2018It is finished.\u2019 Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Jn 19.25b-30<\/strong><\/p>\n And what is finished? The phrase comes twice.<\/p>\n Sin? Evil? Death? Pain? Suffering?<\/p>\n Plainly not \u2026.<\/p>\n Whatever is finished this world is not yet problem or pain free. Far from it.<\/p>\n \u2018It is finished\u2019 completes the earlier cry \u2013 \u2018why have you abandoned me?\u2019<\/p>\n The gospel accounts express this in different ways.<\/p>\n Matthew tells that, at the moment of his death, the curtain of the Temple was torn \u2018from top to bottom.\u2019 Top down. This is God’s doing. That huge heavy curtain hung before the holiest place separating off God’s presence. God now rips it apart.<\/p>\n Something is open that was closed.<\/p>\n Something is united that was divided.<\/p>\n Nothing is outside the love of God.<\/p>\n No one and nowhere is beyond reach his crucified embrace.<\/p>\n There is now no division, no separation. It is finished.<\/p>\n The church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is built over the site of the crucifixion and tomb of Jesus. Climb the stairs and there is a crowded chapel where you can reach in and touch the top of the Calvary stone.<\/p>\n But underneath is an unmarked chapel. It is usually empty.<\/p>\n Behind the altar, behind a glass window is the bottom of same fractured rock.<\/p>\n It is called \u2018Adam\u2019s Chapel.\u2019 The message is clear \u2013 the cross penetrates down to the very beginning. Nowhere and no one is beyond its reach.<\/p>\n The embrace of divine love on the cross reaches it all.<\/p>\n It is finished.<\/p>\n The story can begin again.<\/p>\n In John’s account, when all is finished, Jesus simply bowed his head and \u2018gave up his spirit.\u2019 For a few deadly hours Jesus had been willingly surrendered to earthly powers \u2013 passive in the hands and will of others. Now, at the last, Jesus again takes the initiative. He completes his earthly ministry \u2013 his total self-offering \u2013 in a final act of trusting surrender to the Father\u2019s will. \u2018Bowing his head\u2019 is the language with which you might describe someone quietly going to sleep \u2013 though here the pain and thirst are acute.<\/p>\n One thing remains \u2010 to give up his spirit.<\/p>\n In John’s gospel what is offered \u2018up\u2019 is found in the perfect will and purpose of the Father.<\/p>\n The earliest teachers of the faith would teach that if Jesus had not hand over his spirit to the Father at this moment of death the world itself would have ended.<\/p>\n Bowing, laying down, offering up, handing over \u2026.<\/p>\n The final complete, trusting, self-offering of himself.<\/p>\n The sacrifice complete.<\/p>\n It is finished<\/p>\n The Father and the Son are one.<\/p>\n This image of the cross was designed by Scilla Verney, an artist, who was herself dying of cancer at the time. The world is portrayed as split apart \u2013 painfully, sharply separated. That split can express anything that is fractured, separated and lost. Christ, in his own body, fills that contorted gap. His arms are thrust into the midst of it all. In his own being he holds it all together. This is our faith. This is where the world is now held In Christ. Nothing is outside of it. That is where all broken and separated things are found \u2013 in Christ. Nothing separates us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.<\/p>\n Where do you connect with these thoughts?<\/p>\n You might pause and keep silence for a few moments.<\/p>\n Look, Father, look on His anointed face, A space to add your own prayers<\/p>\n We adore you O Christ and we bless you O dearly, dearly has he loved After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfil the scripture), \u2018I am thirsty.\u2019 A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, \u2018It is finished.\u2019 Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.<\/p>\n As this vigil at the cross comes its close, take a moment to gather thoughts and insights that have particularly touched your heart and mind.<\/p>\n Pause and keep silence for a few moments.<\/p>\n Our Father in heaven, Lord upon the cross Six Good Friday Reflections from David Runcorn Reflection 1 (12.00) \u201cHe opened wide his arms\u2019 – the welcome of God\u201d Hymn \u2013 to sing or read My song is love unknown, My Saviour’s love to me; Love to the loveless shown, That they might lovely be. O who am I, That for my sake My … <\/p>\n
\nYou are guilty because you say you can see.\u2019 Jn 9.41<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nWhere do you connect with these thoughts?<\/p>\nPrayer<\/h3>\n
\nFor the judgments we make that are simply prejudices.
\nFor the times we think we are right but we are actually wrong.
\nFor the times we claim to see clearly but are blind.
\nFather forgive,
\nwe do not know what we are doing.
\nA space to add your own prayers
\nWe adore you O Christ and we bless you
\nFor by your Holy Cross
\nYou have redeemed the world.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nReflection 6<\/h2>\n
(2.30)<\/h4>\n
\u2018It is finished\u2018<\/h3>\n
\u2013 the victory of God<\/h4>\n
Hymn \u2013 to sing or read<\/h3>\n
\nWere you there when they crucified my Lord? Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
\nWere you there when they crucified my Lord?<\/p>\nReading<\/h3>\n
Reflection<\/h3>\n
Prayer<\/h3>\n
\nAnd only look on us as found in Him;
\nLook not on our misusings of Thy grace,
\nOur prayer so languid, and our faith so dim;
\nFor lo! between our sins and their reward,
\nWe set the passion of Thy Son our Lord.<\/p>\n(William Bright)<\/h4>\n
\nFor by your Holy Cross
\nYou have redeemed the world.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n3.00 – Closing<\/h2>\n
worship, reading and prayers<\/h4>\n
Hymn \u2013 to sing or read<\/h4>\n
\nAnd we must love him too
\nAnd trust in his unfailing love
\nAnd try his works to do.<\/p>\n<\/h4>\n
Reading<\/h3>\n
Prayer<\/h3>\n
\nhallowed be your name,
\nyour kingdom come,
\nyour will be done,
\non earth as in heaven.
\nGive us today our daily bread.
\nForgive us our sins
\nas we forgive those who sin against us.
\nLead us not into temptation
\nbut deliver us from evil.
\nFor the kingdom, the power,
\nand the glory are yours
\nnow and for ever.
\nAmen.<\/p>\n
\nOur life giver, pain bearer, love maker
\nOpen wide your arms
\nto embrace our tortured world
\nthat we may not turn away our eyes
\nbut abandon ourselves to your mercy
\nand so become life giving, pain bearing
\nand love making signs of your kingdom,
\nFor your name and glory\u2019s sake.
\nWe adore you O Christ and we bless you
\nFor by your Holy Cross
\nYou have redeemed the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"