Good Friday Liturgy
Good Friday Liturgy
A Sermon preached by the Precentor, Canon Anna Macham
Friday 3 April 2026
Isaiah 52: 13- end 53; Hebrews 10: 16-25; John 19:1-37
And he bowed the head and gave up the ghost.
In the moment of death, John in his passion narrative tells us that Jesus gives up his spirit. On one level, this is a statement of literal fact. In the same way that Jesus’s last words, “It is finished” could have been said by any dying person, so his last action, “he gave up his spirit” is also the last action of every dying person: Jesus stopped breathing and died.
This literal sense is perhaps the sense in which we most deeply experience it in this moment, as we come face to face with the cross. To face the cross is to confront the death of Jesus, and it’s also to confront our own fear of death, and the fact of death and tragedy in the world.
But as we might expect in John’s Gospel, the literal sense is not the only meaning of these words. When Jesus gives up his spirit, he’s talking about the Holy Spirit. “Handing over” his spirit, he breathes his last over the beloved disciple, Mary and the others at the foot of the cross and pours his parting gift of his Spirit upon them, even as he entrusts himself to God.
Mary and the Beloved Disciple have followed Jesus all the way to the cross. Others had run away and left him quite alone. But these two follow to the end and watch as the worst thing happens. They had believed in him, their son and friend, and now as they look up at him on the cross, in this moment when it’s all over and all is lost, Jesus looks at them and says “Behold. Behold one another. Look”.
In this midst of his agony, he looks on those he loves, asking them to look no longer upon him but upon each other: Woman, behold your son. Behold your mother. He asks them to turn to each other and look, to see the other as they are, to behold one another and look with compassion. We don’t know how hard it was for either Mary or the beloved disciple to do this, to take their gaze off him, the beloved, and place it on to each other. But out of the agonising and isolating moment of death and grief, Jesus creates solidarity in suffering, and a new community.
Mary symbolises many things, in this interaction just before Jesus dies. Much scholarly ink has been spilled debating whether- as she’s handed over to the disciple- she symbolises the old Israel or is the symbolic mother of the Church. But the image of Mary looking up at the cross and its literal meaning, her grief for her son, has captured the imaginations of many over the centuries. The powerful image of the mater dolorosa in her grief unites people, and brings comfort to those in pain, or grieving the loss of a child, the worst of human experiences.
During the veneration of the cross shortly, we will hear a setting of the Stabat Mater by a seventeenth century Italian nun, Sister Sulpitia Cesis. It’s not known who wrote the words of this thirteenth century hymn; Pope Innocent III, St Bonaventure and Jacopone da Todi have all been suggested. It gradually came into liturgical use in the later Middle Ages, though it was later suppressed by the Council of Trent, part of the Catholic Counter Reformation, because its polyphonic music and non-biblical text were deemed too secular. Eventually it was reinstated into the liturgy, and its popularity is reflected in the variety of musical settings that exist, including this one.
Convents were rich centres of musical activity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Musical skills helped girls to gain entry into prestigious convents, where the daily liturgy was celebrated with polyphonic music. While the music of the great ducal and Papal chapels took place behind closed doors, anyone could listen to the music of nuns, by listening through the grilles and windows that broke the separation between the inner and outer portions of Italian cities’ many convent churches. Their music was a source of great civic pride, and the comparison of nuns’ voices with angels was obvious to the many visitors who flocked to the convents as tourists and as ordinary citizens, the invisibility of the singers performing from inside adding to their mysterious aura.
Some thought nuns singing polyphony were doing God’s work, and called their choirs “celestial sirens”, as the beautiful sound of their voices drew more people to worship. But at other times, the Church authorities were deeply suspicious of convent polyphony, saying that it was morally dangerous for nuns because it led to vanity, and for congregations because it was so seductive. At the time of the Council of Trent, polyphony in convents was often banned outright, the argument being that nuns should use the “mental attention used to understand notation and the rules of music” to concentrate on the liturgy instead.
From time to time, Church authorities tried to stop the organ, or musical instruments, being played in convents, arguing that it was improper for male organists to go into convents to teach nuns, arguing that they should teach each other. But still such practices went on just as the Stabat Mater continued to be cherished by churches and monasteries and its music incorporated into processions. Sulpitia Cesis’ Stabat Mater is from a published collection of her motets, which could either be sung by the women alone, or by the women with the lower parts played on instruments. Through its slow, sustained movement of all the voices intertwining and coming together, we get a sense of the varying moods of grief pictured in different moments of the hymn – from quiet, plaintive crying to loud agonised grief. The end is an impassioned cry, which is bleak yet also hopeful, appealing to the God in paradise above to stoop down and elevate the speaker’s soul to heaven, hoping for resolution and peace.
As we gather here, bound together as a community of Christians, whether we know each other or not, there’s something powerful and visceral about grieving the death of Jesus together. It’s emotional and dramatic. While we see death all around us in the news and experience it closer to home in our friends and families too, it’s rare, in our individualistic society, to experience grief together. In a busy world, where the language of lament is often forgotten or suppressed, beautiful, deeply skilled music makes us stop and face our fear of death, and the forces of death that threaten to destroy our fellow human beings across the world. To experience together the liturgy and music of grief and lamentation gives us hope, that our lament – and that of others – will be heard by God.
Today, then, is perhaps not a day to move on too quickly to the symbolic meanings of the crucifixion, to try to understand it theologically in all its ramifications, but a day to let ourselves experience its raw, literal meaning, as we grieve the death of Jesus together and care for each other. When we confront the cross, we are confronting our most fundamental fear- the fear of death. And yet God intends that through this encounter we should experience healing and recover the greatest gift of all – that of life in him.