laudable Practice

At Ante-Communion on Good Friday, 3.4.26 Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-10 [1] “Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.” [2] It was a day of sharp contrasts in Jerusalem on that first Good Friday. In the heart of the city was the ancient Temple. It had stood for half a millennium, a sacred place of prayer and sacrifice unto the God of Israel. Because of its holiness, Gentiles were not permitted to enter the Temple. Outside the city walls, however, at the Place of the Skull [3], there was nothing sacred. This was the place of bloody execution. Here the Gentiles reigned; here the pagan empire of Rome imposed its will by brute force. In the Temple, prayers were reverently uttered to Adonai, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  At the Place of the Skull, it was the voice of mockery which was heard from bystanders. And when the Crucified One speaks, it is to say ‘I am thirsty’ - an echo of the desper...

At Ante-Communion on Good Friday 18.4.25 John 19:36-37 “These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, ‘None of his bones shall be broken.’ And again another passage of scripture says, ‘They will look on the one whom they have pierced.’” [1] Of all that is said by the writer of the Gospel of John regarding Good Friday, this is amongst the most surprising and the most revealing. As we gaze upon the Crucified on this day, the Lord nailed to the Cross, John’s Gospel proclaims, “ These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled”.  According to John the saving purposes of God, revealed over centuries in the Scriptures of Israel, what Christians call the Old Testament, reach their fulfillment here , on this day, at the Cross, in the Crucified Lord. The scriptures of the Old Testament tell of God’s saving purposes - in a world broken and shadowed by sin and death - revealed first to Abraham; the saving purposes of God which moved the Psalmist to sing God’s ...

Went to Parson Gapper's this afternoon at East Charlton, about one mile from Babcary, to desire him to administer the Sacrament for me next Friday being Good Friday, which he promised me he would. The words of Parson Woodforde from 1764 introduce us to a practice now unfortunately lost to most Anglicans: the administration of the Lord's Supper on Good Friday. This Woodforde reference is significant, not least because the good Parson was not the type to be - how shall we put this? - a liturgical innovator. While I have yet to see any research on the matter (if readers are aware of any such research, please do let me know), there seems to be enough evidence to suggest that administering the Lord's Supper on Good Friday was a common practice throughout the 'long 18th century'.  For example, John Shepherd, in his 1801 A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II , makes a point of addressing the absence of a proper preface for Good Frida...

The doctrine of the cross is therefore a saving doctrine, a vital doctrine, a fundamental doctrine of Christianity; and we hold it to be no less indispensable now, than it was in St. Paul's time, that every minister of the Gospel should be able to say with truth, We preach Christ crucified.  The words are those of Charles James Blomfield in a Good Friday sermon during the 1820s, when he was vicar of St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, London and (from 1824-28) Bishop of Chichester. Blomfield had associations with the Hackney Phalanx. The preacher at his episcopal consecration in 1824 had been John Lonsdale, who had links to the Hackney Phalanx. The Old High Howley of London, translated to Canterbury in 1828, cultivated Blomfield as his successor. This, in other words, was most definitively an Old High sermon - an Old High sermon proclaiming Christ Crucified as "a saving doctrine, a vital doctrine, a fundamental doctrine of Christianity", contrary to the oft repeated misrepre...

Jesus was led out of the gates of Jerusalem, that he might become the sacrifice for persons without the pale, even for all the world. And the daughters of Jerusalem followed him with pious tears till they came to Calvary; a place difficult in the ascent, eminent and apt for the publication of shame, a bill of death and dead bones, polluted and impure; and there beheld him stripped naked who clothes the fields with flowers, and all the world with robes, and the whole globe with the canopy of heaven; and so dressed, that now every circumstance was a triumph. By his disgrace he trampled upon our pride; by his poverty and nakedness he triumphed over our covetousness and love of riches; and by his pains chastised the delicacies of our flesh, and broke in pieces the fetters of concupiscence. For as soon as Adam was clothed, he quitted Paradise; and Jesus was made naked, that he might bring us in again ... And now behold the priest and the sacrifice of all the world laid upon the altar of the...

Cranmer's translation of the pre-Reformation Good Friday collect - derived from the Gregorian Sacramentary - allows us to pray this ancient Christian prayer of the Lord's Passion in noble vernacular.  Indeed, Cranmer enhances the ancient prayer, its opening words Respice domine quaesumus super hanc familiam tuam becoming the more memorable, poetic, and evocative 'Almighty God, we beseech graciously to behold'. The 'graciously' also tenderly reminds us that it is grace which is supremely manifested in the Cross; it is grace alone which gathers us before the Cross. Similarly, at the collect's conclusion,  et crucis subire tormentum ('the torture of the cross') becomes the more wholesome 'and to suffer death upon the cross', restoring a Scriptural and patristic sense of the Cross in place of a reference which could have been understood as expressing an unhealthy late medieval Latin cult of the agonies of the Crucified. This short meditation on...

Amongst the general principles highlighted by the 2019 report by the Faith and Order Commission of the Church of England, God's Unfailing Word: Theological and Practical Perspectives on Christian-Jewish Relations , is a recognition of the "gift" of the relationship between Christianity and Judaism: The Christian–Jewish relationship is a gift of God to the Church, which is to be received with care, respect and gratitude, so that we may learn more fully about God’s purposes for us and all the world. This gift has, however, often shamefully been obscured or denied in the Church's life and witness, as recognised by a further general principle: Christians have been guilty of promoting and fostering negative stereotypes of Jewish people that have contributed to grave suffering and injustice. They therefore have a duty to be alert to the continuation of such stereotyping and to resist it. In light of these principles,  God's Unfailing Word rightly questions the status o...

Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany - John 12:1. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the son of David - Matthew 21:9. After two days was the feast of the passover, and of the unleavened bread - Mark 14:1. And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, This Is The King Of The Jews - Luke 23:38. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments, and rested the sabbath day according to the commandmen t - Luke 23:56. There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews' preparation day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand - John 19:42. In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre - Matthew 28:1. ... that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me - Luke 24:44. The Church's proclamation of the...

From a 1670  Good Friday sermon  by Matthew Hole, at the cathedral church of Saint Peter, Exeter.  Hole provides an example of the piety which could surround Good Friday in Restoration Anglicanism: He wore a Crown of Thorns, only that we might wear a Crown of Gold; and those drops of blood which his enemies drew from him, are turn'd into so many pearls to bestud and adorn ours; that scarlet Robe which the Jews put on him, dy'd as it were in his own blood, serves to hide our shame, and to cover for us a multitude of sins; that bitter Cup, which he drunk off to the very dregs, is our Nectar, and a glorious Potion of immortality; the Vinegar and Gall, which made him to faint, is become our most reviving Cordial; his Cross, the cursed instrument of his death, is to us a Tree of life, which bears no other fruit than that of knowledge and eternal happiness; his agonies are our triumphs, and his bloody sweat the most Sovereign Balsam to cure our wounds; the Spear that pierc'd ou...