Opening Prayer
O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP 220)
TEXT
Mark 15:29-30 (NIV)
Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!”
Lamentations 2:15-16 (NIV)
All who pass your way
clap their hands at you;
hey scoff and shake their heads
at the Daughter of Jerusalem:
“Is this the city that was called
the perfection of beauty,
the joy of the whole earth?”
All your enemies open their mouths
wide against you;
they scoff and gnash their teeth
and say, “We have swallowed her up.
This is the day we have waited for;
we have lived to see it.”
READ
Expiring in the sinner’s place,
Crushed with the universal load
He hangs!—adown His mournful face
See trickling fast the tears and blood!
The blood that purges all our stains,
It starts in rivers from his veins.
A fountain gushes from His side,
Open’d that all may enter in,
That all may feel the death applied,
The death of God, the death of sin,
The death by which our foes are killed,
The death by which our souls are healed.
—Charles and John Wesley, Hymns on the Lord’s Supper #24