Good Friday: Jesus Remember Me

We’ve had a really special time of worship here today. I’m really grateful to Canon Sarah who has led us this week. It’s rare to receive Holy Week in my profession.

We were in church for three hours of devotion which included two hours of interactive prayer round the stations of the cross. As in every service this week I waited for some words from the story to hit me. 

The criminal who hung by Jesus’ side at the crucifixion saw something in him others did not see. Not a heretic but the herald of a new era. Not a criminal but a king. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom” he cried. 

Surely that’s our prayer and our hope on Good Friday. 

Jesus remember me...

Remember my pain...

Remember my worth...

Remember your promise...

Remember my name...

Remember me today... in what I face.

Jesus remember me...

Let me leave my life and what I can’t sort myself at your cross...

As I stand by it help me to remember you are with me always in the darkness as well as the light that will come.

Jesus remember me...

When others don’t remember me...

When I feel like I’m on my own...

When the world feels too much to bear...

Remember me and all those who feel lost. 

Jesus remember me when you come into your Kingdom.

On this Good Friday we worship and we watch and we weep and we wait...

Jesus remember me and give me your promise of paradise. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury puts it better than I can writing about the point of today: 

Today is the most confrontational and difficult day in the Christian story. 

The Crucified God tells us that the human problem of sin is too serious to be dealt with by us alone. It needed God himself to carry the pain and cost of sin. 

To understand what Good Friday means for us all – for the whole world – we have to do the hard work of reflecting on the pain and despair that Jesus felt on the cross and on our contribution to his crucifixion. 

We have to be willing to hear his cry: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

That cry was his in order that it need not be ours.

 

That cry echoes through the centuries. That cry tells us what it means for God to love us so much that he become one of us. More than that it tells us of the cost of sin, of the darkness that our choices bring over the earth, and which is absorbed into his light. 

Another cry from the cross comes at the end: “It is finished." 

Jesus means, it is completed. The work of the cross has been entire, and he has done all his work. In John’s gospel the cross is seen as a moment of triumph, for through it life is offered to every human being. 

 

On the cross, Jesus knew all our pains and guilt – so that we would never again be alone in facing them. So the message of today is this: we are offered hope. Wherever each one of us is: in light or darkness, in joy or pain, God is with us. 

As we move through the final days of the Easter story, I pray that you know the comfort of God’s presence, his hope and his forgiveness – today and always.

Jesus, remember me...

At one of the prayer stations was this poem. I stood and read it over and over. Think deeply on it. It’s great! We all matter..

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark.

After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else

something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation
look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person

add up to something.