O Sacred Head, Embodied Sacrifice – Good Friday

O sacred head, sore wounded,
defiled and put to scorn;
O kingly head surrounded
with mocking crown of thorn:
What sorrow mars thy grandeur?
Can death thy bloom deflower?
O countenance whose splendor
the hosts of heaven adore!

The Anglican Church of North America and orthodox Global Anglicans profess the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as “a true and authoritative standard of worship and prayer” in the Jerusalem Declaration (Point 6) and “as a standard for Anglican doctrine and discipline” in the ACNA Fundamental Declarations (Point 6). (See also, Global South Fellowship of Anglicans, Our Covenantal Structure, Section 1.1(a)). Lip service is often paid to the standard, however, we Anglicans should take heed and revisit what the ancient prayer book is teaching us, especially on this most holy day of the year.

Therefore, let us be formed in the four Solemn Collects prescribed for this blessed day. The first solemn collect asks our Father to look upon us as His family, even though it is we who betrayed His Son, our Lord. The collect reminds us that we can only call the Creator our Father because we betrayed Jesus, “and given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death upon the cross.” (Good Friday, First Collect). Our forgiveness stems only through merit and the willing death of the Son of God. The second collect reminds us of reconciliation with the Father means the Holy Spirit enlivens “the whole body of the Church,” and it is through Him that the body “is governed and sanctified.” (Good Friday, Second Collect). Therefore, we ask the Father to hear and “receive our supplications and prayers” not merely for ourselves, but “which we offer before thee for all estates of men in thy holy Church.” This collect reminds the Church that our mission includes vigorous and continual prayer, because the Church is holy only because it is the body of the blessed Son, our Savior, who prayed unto sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. Regardless of our position and daily labor in this life, every Christian “in his vocation and ministry” is for one purpose, to “truly and godly serve thee; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Amen. May we labor in love for our Lord, who labored in His Passion to reclaim us from death and hell’s dominion.

Our prayers shift in the third collect. Unfortunately, at this point in the Solemn Collects, namely the third collect, regrettably, contemporary Anglicans have walked away from.  The third collect is stunningly beautiful as it reminds us who God is, by beginning the petition with “O merciful God.” (Good Friday, Third Collect). God is the God of mercy – why He is the author of mercy and the enactor of our own mercy! Without Jesus – God dying in the flesh – there is no mercy. Indeed, we are immediately reminded in the collect that God “hatest nothing that thou hast made, nor wouldest the death of any sinner, but rather that he be converted and live.” Verily, this statement is so true, that we will echo it in the fourth Solemn Collect, which is the Collect from Ash Wednesday. These are comfortable words, why then has this solemn prayer, since the 1928 American prayer book, altered the text?

Because we fear man more than God. We are uncomfortable with the truth of the original solemn collect. What, pray tell, are we “moderns” afraid of? Namely, that the collect expressly names those who do not know Christ or deny Christ need our prayers for conversion (remember the theme of the second Solemn Collect is the Church’s mission to pray). Therefore in the third collect the Church exercises her vocation, her ministry, and her calling by praying for the merciful God to “Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Hereticks, and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word” because this is our great mission for which we were saved and commissioned by the risen Lord to do: to make disciples of all nations and baptize them in the Name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. These are the very people who need prayer, need salvation, need redemption. Let us pray expressly and more often for the Jews to recognize their Jewish Messiah, the Muslims to confess the resurrection of the God-man, the heretics to repent and worship God as He revealed Himself, and the atheists and pagans who do not know their Maker. On this Good Friday, by being forced to pray expressly for our fellow man, it convicts me that I need to personally pray by name for others who belong to each of those classes of people. And it reminds me, I too was once outside orthodoxy in thinking and needed those prayers, correction, and repentance. Only through the prayers of saints known and unknown have I come to know Christ my Lord.

It is a shame that the Church has shied away from her mission, going so far as to omit naming these classes of people who need to know Jesus. It is not out of hate that we pray for them, on the contrary! It is out of love and prayerful desire for fellow sinners to be reconciled to the merciful Lord. We pray for them expressly for the life-giving Spirit of God to “so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one fold under one shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.” Amen.

I can think of no better prayer that is full of Gospel, for once we too were outsiders, but now our ignorance is illuminated, our hard hearts melt like wax, and our contempt for the Word turns to blissful love of the life-giving Word. May we again boldly pray this Solemn Collect with vigor and fulfill the mission we are called to as the Church. May the Anglican Church echo St. Paul’s exchange with King Agrippa, “Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. And Paul said, I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds.” (Acts 26:28, KJV). Let us go forth and “fetch them home” as the solemn collect puts it.

We conclude the comfortable words of the Solemn Collects with an old familiar favorite: the Collect for Ash Wednesday. Every day in Lent, the ancient prayer book commands us to add this treasured collect to the collect of the day. Today is the last day we pray it until we begin our Lenten journey anew next year. The collect echoes the opening line of the third Solemn Collect, almost as though the Holy Spirit, through the Church’s prayers, is reminding us and hammering home the unfathomable love God has for humanity. We prayed to the “merciful God” in the third collect, and in the fourth collect, we pray to the “Almighty and everlasting God,” who, despite His incomprehensible magnitude and greatness, dares to love and not hate us, but “dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent.” It is a call, a plea, and an invitation for us sinners to hear and, Lord-willingly, to listen to our God’s promise to forgive all who simply repent. Turn towards the Cross, and you shall receive the merit of Christ’s shed blood and broken body of the Cross for you. The collect then cries out to our Lord to take our sinful hearts and replace them with a new creation: “Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Amen.

Thy beauty, long-desired,
hath vanished from our sight;
thy power is all expired,
and quenched the light of light.
Ah me! for whom thou diest,
hide not so far thy grace:
show me, O Love most highest,
the brightness of thy face.

How else can one respond except in faith and repentance? In acknowledgment of our wretchedness, Good Friday is one of only two days the prayer book requires fasting and total abstinence. The prayer book tradition forces us to deny ourselves for one meager day and to look not inward at our bellies and fallen hearts, but upward to the Bread hanging upon the Tree of Life. If we are nourished this day, may it only be by the body and blood of the Lamb when we celebrate Holy Communion. We feast on this holy Friday, because Christ died to break our fast. We break our fast only upon eating and drinking the Life of the World, whose blood smears our lips, as St. John Chrysostom notes, like the blood smeared upon the Israelites’ door, ready to begin their sojourning towards the Promised Land.

We feast on Christ’s broken body that was sacrificed upon the holy Cross, the same body that “when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body thou hast prepared me.” (Epistle lesson, Hebrews 10:5, KJV). Christ took on a body and became the living temple. Christ put on flesh, and broke His flesh as the true sacrifice, “for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” (Hebrews 10:4, KJV). Look up, O Church, and see your groom, “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10:10, KJV).

Yet Christ’s death is not His doom, but instead is death’s destruction. Unlike the sacrifices under the old covenant, which required being “offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect,” Jesus, “by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” (Hebrews 10:1, 14, KJV). Rest upon this assurance, believer, those whom trust that the Son of God died for their sins on that Good Friday in the first century, are made holy. This is a truth and a fact to rest upon. Faith in Jesus’ cleansing death defeats the sin that condemns you. Faith in Him sets you apart right here and right now, according to the good news of the Epistle of the Hebrews. Rest in the promises of God’s inspired holy Scripture.

Blessedly, we are not left with only God’s written word, but are also promised another witness: “Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” (Hebrews 10:15-17, KJV). The Holy Spirit, who is joined to you in faith at your baptism, is your witness that the devil’s claims on you are meritless, for you were redeemed by the Son of God. The Spirit who puts His living heart into your dead body enlivens you to die no more.

On this holy day, the embodied temple is home to the sacrifices of His body. God’s Son broke His body as the offering within the body of His temple so that we may taste of the Tree of Life. It is not the old way of continual sacrifices of bulls and goats, but “by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh” (Hebrews 10:20, KJV). This Jesus paves the way for us to enter into the heavenly temple that resides not in Jerusalem but in God’s heavenly presence. For upon Jesus’s death and resurrection, He presented His broken body as the embodied sacrifice before the heavenly temple, and therefore, brethren, we are invited with “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.” (Hebrews 10:19, KJV).

In thy most bitter passion
my heart to share doth cry,
with thee for my salvation
upon the cross to die.
Ah, keep my heart thus moved
to stand thy cross beneath,
to mourn thee, well-beloved,
yet thank thee for thy death.

Let us not respond in fear, instead “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Hebrews 10:22, KJV). Let us see Christ on the Cross and flee, but “let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised.” (Hebrews 10:23, KJV). Let us not lazily indulge ourselves and inward flesh, but “let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24-25, KJV).

On this holy day, let us visit the embodied temple of our salvation at the foot of the Cross. Let us eat and be satisfied by this holy food of His precious blood and body. Let us arise from the Cross and go forth to fetch home all those who need to come and be refreshed from the well of life.

My days are few, O fail not,
with thine immortal power,
to hold me that I quail not
in death’s most fearful hour;
that I may fight befriended,
and see in my last strife
to me thine arms extended
upon the cross of life.