Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion
of Jesus. It is the most solemn day in the Christian calendar. The dates of
Good Friday, which vary each year, occur between March 20th and
April 23rd. It falls on the last Friday before Easter. It is the pinnacle of the Holy
Week. All Christians observe this day with great humility and reverence. It is
this spirit of humility and reverence that is reflected in each of the Good
Friday PowerPoints, which can be used as a preaching aid on Good Friday.
History of Good Friday
As early as the first century, the Church set aside every Friday as a special day of prayer and fasting. It was not until the fourth century, however, that the Church began observing the Friday before Easter as the day associated with the crucifixion of Christ. First called Holy or Great Friday by the Greek Church, the name "Good Friday" was adopted by the Roman Church around the sixth or seventh century. This collection of Good Friday videos reflect the types of traditions associated with the history of Good Friday. Good Friday, also known as "Holy Friday," is the Friday immediately preceding Easter Sunday. It is celebrated traditionally as the day on which Jesus was crucified. If you are interested in a study of the issue, please see our article that discusses the various views on which day Jesus was crucified. Assuming that Jesus was crucified and died on a Friday, should Christians remember Jesus' death by celebrating Good Friday?
The Bible does not instruct Christians to remember Christ’s death by honoring a certain day. The Bible does give us freedom in these matters, however. Romans 14:5 tells us, “One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” Rather than remembering Christ's death on a certain day, once a year, the Bible instructs us to remember Christ’s death by observing the Lord’s Supper. First Corinthians 11:24-26 declares, “...do this in remembrance of me...for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.”
Why is Good Friday referred to as “good”? What the Jewish authorities and Romans did to Jesus was definitely not good (see Matthew chapters 26-27). However, the results of Christ’s death are very good! Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” First Peter 3:18 tells us, “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.”
Many Christian churches celebrate Good Friday with a subdued service, usually in the evening, in which Christ’s death is remembered with solemn hymns, prayers of thanksgiving, a message centered on Christ suffering for our sakes, and observance of the Lord's Supper. Whether or not Christians choose to “celebrate” Good Friday, the events of that day should be ever on our minds because the death of Christ on the cross is the paramount event of the Christian faith.
If you would like to learn more about why Jesus' death on the cross was so “good,” please read the following article: What does it mean to accept Jesus as your personal Savior?
Good Friday Calendar:
2014 – April 18 2015 – April 3
2016 – March 25
2017 – April 14
2018 – March 30
2019 – April 19
2020 – April 10
Good Friday Origins
There are two possible origins for the name "Good Friday". The first may have come from the Gallican Church in Gaul (modern-day France and Germany). The name "Gute Freitag" is Germanic in origin and literally means "good" or "holy" Friday. The second possibility is a variation on the name "God's Friday," where the word "good" was used to replace the word "God," which was often viewed as too holy to be spoken aloud.
Good Friday Traditions
Good Friday rituals and traditions are distinct from every other Church observances. They add to Good Friday's significance. The ceremony is somber, with priests and deacons dressing in black vestments. The pulpit and the altar are bare; no candles are lit. The purpose behind the solemn presentation is to create an awareness of grief over the sacrifice of God's only begotten Son. Today, many churches hold special services on Good Friday evening to commemorate this important day.
Good Friday Church Rituals
Starting anytime between midnight and 3 a.m., priests and other clerics begin to recite specific prayers. At the morning ceremony, the priest or church official recites lessons from the scriptures. Afterward, there is a succession of prayers asking for God's mercy and forgiveness on all mankind.
At the noon hour comes the Adoration of the Cross, where a representation of the True Cross is unveiled and the clergy and laity pay homage to the sacrifice of Christ. In the Jerusalem Church, a remnant of the True Cross itself is presented for the ceremony. Next comes the Mass of the Presanctified, in which the priest or church official takes Communion from the host that was blessed during the Maundy Thursday ceremony. The ceremony concludes around 3 p.m. with a procession, which is followed by evening prayers.
In many Protestant churches, Good Friday observances begin at noon and last until 3 p.m. This coincides with the hours that Jesus hung on the cross. These services often include sermons on the last seven phrases that Jesus spoke while being crucified. Other services include reenactments of the Passion according to the Gospel of John, processions of the Stations of the Cross, and the singing of appropriate hymns. The library of Good Friday clipart provides a collection of images to aid the in celebration of Good Friday.
To many Christians, Good Friday is a day of sorrow mingled with joy. It is a time to grieve over the sin of man and to meditate and rejoice upon God's love in giving His only Son for the redemption of sin.
One. Physical suffering is part of life.
Unlike philosophies or belief systems that suggest that suffering is more or less an illusion, Jesus says this from the cross: suffering is real. As a fully human person, Jesus suffered. On Good Friday, he was beaten, tortured and then nailed to a cross, the most agonizing way the Roman authorities had devised for capital punishment. There, according to the Gospels, he hung for three hours. Victims of crucifixion died either from loss of blood or, more commonly, asphyxiation, as the weight of their bodies pulled on their wrists, compressed their lungs and made breathing impossible. Jesus's life, like any human life, included physical suffering, and an immense amount of it on Good Friday.
But even before Good Friday, Jesus suffered physically, because he had a human body like yours and mine. Growing up in the tiny town of Nazareth, and later as an adult traveling throughout Galilee and Judea, Jesus likely had headaches, got the flu, sprained an ankle or two, and perhaps even broke a bone--in an era of lousy sanitation and only the most primitive of "medical" knowledge. As a fully human person with a fully human body, he suffered physical aches and pains. Good Friday was not the only day he suffered physically.
Two. Emotional suffering is part of life.
When Christians speak of Jesus's suffering on Good Friday, they tend to focus on his physical trials. Many Early Renaissance artists, for example, depicted that agony in gruesome detail, as a way of reminding Christians of what their Savior underwent. But Jesus's "Agony on the Cross" included emotional sufferings as well. In these emotions we can see further intersections with our lives.
To begin with, Jesus of Nazareth felt a deep sense of abandonment. How could he not? All of his disciples had abandoned him before the crucifixion, save for a few faithful women and the Apostle John. Peter, his closest friend, denied even knowing him. Moreover, Jesus felt the suffering of betrayal: another close friend, Judas, betrayed him outright. How that must have weighed on his heart as he hung on the cross.
Finally, Jesus likely knew the crushing disappointment of seeing his great work seemingly come to an end. That is, he may have felt like a failure. While it's almost impossible to know what was going on in Jesus's mind on Good Friday (save for the few words he utters before Pontius Pilate and while on the cross) it's not unreasonable to think that he lamented the end of his public ministry.
Now, here we enter some complicated theological terrain. On the one hand, since Jesus had a human consciousness, he would not have known what was going to happen. On the other hand, since he had a fully divine consciousness he would have.
So, on the one hand, it is possible that Jesus knew that the Resurrection was coming. (By the way, for anyone who thinks that this "lessens" his suffering, think of being in a dentist's chair: knowing it will be over soon does not remove the pain.) In fact, Jesus predicts the Resurrection at various points in the Gospel. But it is also possible that Jesus the fully human one may have been surprised on Easter Sunday, when he was raised from the dead.
Thus, as he hung on the cross, Jesus might have mourned the end of his great project--into which he had poured his heart and soul--the end to his hopes for all his followers, the end to all that he tried to do for humanity. And so he says, "It is finished."
Three. Suffering is not the result of sin.
Sometimes it is. If we do something sinful or make immoral decisions that lead to our suffering, we could say that this suffering comes as the result of sin. But most of the time, particularly when it comes to illness and other tragedies, it is assuredly not. If you still harbor any doubts about that, think about this: Jesus, the sinless one, suffered a great deal. He was not being "punished for his sins."
This idea was more or less common in Jesus's time. In the Gospel of John, when Jesus meets a man who was born blind, his disciples ask, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered bluntly. "Neither this man nor his parents sinned."
Sadly, this attitude is still common today. Recently, friend living with an operable cancer received a visit from friends she knew from her church. They callously told her that they felt her illness was the work of "Satan." In other words, sin had entered her life and she was being punished. When she told me this, I reminded her not only of the Gospel of John, but Jesus's own suffering.
Four. Jesus is fully human.
Christians believe that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine. Now this is, as theologians like to say, a mystery, something that we will never be able to fully comprehend. But belief in this is essential for Christian belief. Besides, attempts to paint Jesus as either only human or only divine simply don't square with the Jesus we encounter in the Gospels. We read of him both weeping at the death of his friend Lazarus (hardly something that the classic Aristotelian or Platonic God would do), and we also see him heal the sick, still storms, and raise people from the dead (hardly something that people expected of religious figures in first-century Galilee and Judea, or modern-day anywhere today).
In the events of his Passion, we see Jesus's humanity on display. On Holy Thursday, in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus says, "Remove this cup." In other words, I don't want to die. Only when he realizes that it is his Father's will that he undergo death, does he assent. But initially the human one expresses, in the bluntest language possible, that he does not wish to die. Later, also revealing his humanity, he utters a great cry from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" I don't think Jesus ever despaired--to my mind, someone in union with the Father would not be able to do that--but he clearly struggled and, at that moment, felt a profound sense of God's absence. Here is his humanity on full display.
This is often a consolation to people who pray to Jesus, the risen one in heaven. Why? Because he understands their humanity. He gets it. Christians do not have a God who cannot understand them, because God endured all the things that we do.
Five. Suffering is not the last word.
The message of Good Friday is incomplete without Easter. The story of the passion is not simply of a man being brutally tortured, nailed to a cross and executed by the Romans. It is the story of a man who turns himself fully over to the Father's will, trusts that something new will come out of this offering, and receives the astonishing gift of new life. The message of Easter is not only the Christ is risen, not only the suffering is not the last word, not only the God gives new life, but this: Nothing is impossible with God.
So may you have a prayerful Good Friday, but, more important, may you have a happy Easter.
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