Before all the processionals, and recessionals. Before all the robes, vestments, and liturgies. Before all the music, art, and architecture. Before all the ceremony, the pomp and circumstance. Before all the religions (splintering of religions), theologies, and ideologies in His name. Before all of this and more, there was the cross.

Jesus famously said, “Don’t call me good. There is nothing good but God alone” and yet today we call this Friday of all Fridays – Good. Why? Because it is God alone who centers himself into the very navel of the universe where life and death are joined. It is God alone who did a good thing even though the people who loved him the most abandoned him in the end. Nobody but God himself could have gone to the cross, and that is why nothing is purely good but God alone. The Psalmist once quipped, “For God alone my soul in silence waits” and yet today, tonight, and tomorrow, we wait no more because all was finished, all was accomplished, all was poured out on the cross.

Tonight there are no robes. The vestments and decorations have been put away. Tonight there is no Holy Eucharist. Like sheep, we are scattered. Tonight we don’t get to think of ourselves as taking up our own crosses because tonight we remember only the cross of Christ – Christ crucified. Christ dead. Christ buried.

**This reflection was preached at St. Julian’s Episcopal Church on Good Friday – 2018.**