(Submitted by BG Ministerial Association)
The Bowling Green Good Friday Service will feature a procession and service in three parts this year. It will take place between the hours of noon and 3 p.m. to remember, in prayer, worship and movement, the hours Jesus was on the cross. This time has been set aside throughout Christian history to observe sorrow, penance and forgiveness in the company of other Christians in worship. It was the custom in Bowling Green from the early 1900s until 2011 when the first evening community service was held. Many churches hold Good Friday evening services, often using the medieval liturgy called the Tennebrae – a service of darkness where candles are extinguished, representing the darkness that covered the earth at Jesus’ death.
The Bowling Green Community Service is sponsored by the Bowling Green Ministerial Association and the BG churches. It will begin at Trinity United Methodist Church, 200 N. Summit St at noon. This portion of worship will center on confession of human brokenness and distance from God. At 12:45 p.m., participants will follow a cross to First Presbyterian Church, 128 S. Church St., where the service will form around God’s grace and forgiveness found in the crucifixion. The congregation will then process to St. Aloysius RC Church, 150 S. Enterprise St., at 1:45 p.m., for the Stations of the Cross, a remembrance of 14 events which happened on the original Good Friday. Participants are welcome to join and leave at any point, especially if they need transportation between churches. Christians throughout the world will be spiritually joined in processions, the most famous of which is the Via Dolorosa where pilgrims in Jerusalem follow the footsteps of Jesus to his crucifixion.
For Christians, Good Friday commemorates not just a historical event but the ever-present sacrificial death of Christ, which along with the Easter resurrection, comprises the heart of the Christian faith. Christians worldwide will remember that Jesus was and is sentenced to death and crucified at Calvary by political, economic, and religious powers. With open arms, he embraces everything broken in humanity, all evil, all sins, all egoism, and all selfishness and overcomes them with forgiveness. ‘Father, forgive them, they do not know what they do’, is Jesus’ prayer as he hangs on the cross
Christians believe that on the darkest day, Jesus showed that God would rather experience death, than leave humanity hopeless. Jesus, hanging on a cross with His arms wide open, is a demonstration that he will embrace everything that goes wrong in human lives and the whole creation – everything dark, everything secret, everything evil. On Easter, God shows that all the forces of evil and alienation are overcome by love, in the Resurrection.
