Good Friday 2025

Welcoming and a few thoughts on Unity

Welcome (new space, bathrooms, etc)

We are grateful to be gathered together again for what is the third time we as City Chapel of Bremerton and Seaside (church) have remembering Good Friday together. There have been a few other times where we gathered together with other churches in our area to remember Good Friday, but this being the third time together for the two of us.

Each time we gather in an event like this I’m reminded of joy that the Lord must have when His people, who are called by His name come together, to worship Him. This is a beautiful picture of the unity that I believe Jesus prayed for in John 17. Not that we are the same or are doing the same things, for that would be uniformity, but that what brings us here together this evening (along with many other churches in our county) is the purpose to remember what Jesus did almost 2000 yrs ago… “For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, scorning its shame… that God made Him who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God; who then Jesus, went and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

It’s this time of the cross and the in between time before the resurrection that we are intentionally putting ourselves in. We want to run to Sunday morning, but it’s this practice of waiting, this discipline of sitting in the darkness before the third day where we seek to meet God. Often times there derives comfort for who you are with in these difficult times, and so for that, thank you Seaside for walking with us as we remember and reflect what took place on the day that Jesus was betrayed and crucified.

I now want to invite Pastor Jon from Seaside to share with us how we will enter in on this Good Friday service.

Silent Prayer Response to John 19

Take a moment to reflect silently on Jesus's words from the cross, "Woman, here is your son. Here is your mother."

In this sacred silence, consider the reflection from John 19.

Ask God to help you see those around you through his eyes. Who might he be calling you to embrace as family? How might you extend Christ's love to others who are suffering or alone?

Pray for healing in broken relationships, for courage to forgive as you have been forgiven, and for wisdom to live as a faithful member of God's family.

A reflection on Matthew 27 and John 19, Jesus’ last words from the cross.

When Jesus was upon the cross, two profound statements are recorded in the Gospels. One in Matthew’s gospel and one in John’s gospel.

Matthew records Jesus’ loud cry, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

These words have caused many to speculate about their meaning. Even at the foot of the cross, some misunderstood what he was saying aloud, saying, “He’s calling Elijah!”

In our post-enlightenment era, some wrongly charge God with cosmic child-abuse. Heresies surface suggesting the Triune God could somehow be separated. But there can never be a time when the Father ceases to be Father to the Son, or when the Son ceases to be Son to the Father.

The truth is deeper. It stems from our broken relationship with God and our limited understanding of His goodness and the evil that sin has caused in our world. Sin in the very beginning brought death to our relationship with God. Humanity was created to be in partnership with God, creating, cultivating, and tending God’s planet with Him. When the man and the woman took from the tree that was forbidden, sin and death entered into the world. The apostle Paul speaking to the Ephesians telling them of their former life saying, Ephesians 2:1–2 “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.”

We’re deeply affected by sin – the sin we commit, the sin committed against us, and the sin we witness and done in our presence. When it strikes against truth and justice, it weighs on our souls. When disease and chaos affect those we love, and in the rawness of pain and hurt we wonder, “How can God be good?” Looking at Jesus’ cry, we might think God has turned His back on us to in our darkest and most painful of moments. But we would be wrong.

Brothers and sisters, God has not turned His back. Rather, He has given His very back to take upon Himself His own wrath against sin and death, that these might be destroyed forever. Since sin entered the garden, God has wanted to eradicate it. But to do so before this moment of the cross would have destroyed all of humanity with it.

It was His good pleasure to come in flesh, to live declaring the good news that our relationship with God can be restored. He took upon Himself sin’s ugliness and treachery to destroy it through death and resurrection. In Him, we have hope. Here hope was difficult to gaze upon. Here, hanging on the cross, it was hard to see how God’s plans were going to be accomplished. It looked like a failure… it may have even been perceived as the one time in all the history of the cosmos, things got out of control out of hand, even for God.

John records in his gospel Jesus’ final words: “It is finished.” After which He bowed His head and gave up His spirit, His breath.

Consider Psalm 22, which begins with the very words Jesus cried from the cross: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus was drawing listeners to recall David’s lament. In this Psalm, they would see images of crucifixion written a millennium before this torture was even invented. The scene at the foot of the cross mirrors much of what was prophesied.

But it’s Jesus’ last statement and the final verses of Psalm 22 that should remain with us as we leave tonight:

Psalm 22:27-31 says, "All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations… They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!"

Standing at the cross, we inhabit the sacred space between "It is finished" and "He is risen." In this holy darkness, we feel the weight of what appears to be defeat. The world still groans. Our hearts still break. Pain still finds us. Yet even now, the words "It is finished" echo through time as God's promise, not of an ending, but of completion. What looks like failure to human eyes is victory in God's economy. Though we cannot yet see the fullness of this triumph, we trust that beyond this present darkness, a great dawn awaits. In these shadows, we hold to the truth that death does not have the final word. A day is coming when every tear will be wiped away, every wound healed, every broken thing made new.

Church, “It is finished.”

We leave in darkness and silence and return to the tomb on Sunday morning. Please respect this time and make your way to your cars in silence. You are dismissed.