Yesterday, my wife and I went to two very different Good Friday services. Everything about them, from the choice of hymns, to the readings chosen, to the general themes covered, represented two strongly contrasting approaches to Good Friday and its place in the calendar. I’m not going to talk about the services themselves in detail, but I do want to reflect a bit on the two approaches. Both have their strengths and drawbacks and it might be that each has its place in an appropriate context.

In the first service we went to, Good Friday was definitely thought of as a celebration of the cross. In terms of its place in the calendar, this service treated Good Friday as the start of the Easter festivities. Indeed, there were frequent references to the resurrection. Emotionally, the tone was one of joy and thanksgiving. The music was loud and exuberant, with a strong emphasis on how Jesus has defeated death, sin and judgement. There was a party atmosphere as we revelled in Jesus’ love together.

My guess is that this is by far the more familiar approach for Evangelicals. Certainly, it’s the one that was predominant in all the churches I’ve been a part of since I became an Evangelical. And it’s a perfectly understandable approach for Evangelicals to take. It fits very well with our theological emphasis on the power of the cross to bring atonement, forgiveness and a clean conscience. The cross should be a cause for delighted celebrations and if you’re going to have just one day of the year on the cross, surely this is what you’d choose to say about it. In terms of modern Evangelical spirituality, in contexts where Lent is not such a big thing, it’s much less of a gear shift, and gives you a coherent festive weekend. I would think it’s a much easier evangelistic invite, and the calendar’s evangelistic potential is probably the main reason why many evangelicals buy into parts of it in the first place – especially in traditions which have historically eschewed the calendar.

But there are some potential drawbacks. I say potential here because I don’t want to judge anyone’s heart and I do think this is a perfectly valid way of doing Good Friday. The last thing I want to do is judge somebody else’s heartfelt rejoicing in the Gospel.

But there are potential drawbacks. There’s a risk that this approach descends into a kind of triumphalism. Skipping straight to celebrating forgiveness can leave space for only passing references to sin. Which in turn runs the risk of offering cheap grace – a grace which falls short of calling us to repentance and so, ironically, offers us less of God’s grace out of a desire to offer more. It’s also potentially a missed opportunity. Fred Sanders has pointed out the way that Evangelicalism’s strength, its ability to emphasise the right things, can lead to the weakness of reductionism, where we only speak of the things we emphasise.* Given that we don’t limit our talking about the cross to one day of the year (we certainly shouldn’t!), does this approach do justice to the richer web of themes around the cross, or does it reduce it down to playing the same note continually? Even the continuity with Easter runs the risk of prematurely resolving the tension of the story of salvation – running Good Friday into Easter or vice versa.

The other service was much more subdued in tone. In this case, Good Friday was being treated as the climax of Lent. The emphasis was on repentance at least as much as celebration. There was a sombre tone as we read the seven words from the cross, read a collect and paused for reflection. It’s impossible to know precisely what people were thinking about in the silence, but I think most of us were asking for forgiveness more than we were celebrating it. We thought about our sins and failures and left them at the foot of the cross.

After the service, we observed a family tradition and listened to Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion. I’m ridiculously under qualified to provide any kind of technical analysis, but even a casual listener (if it’s possible to casually listen to something in German for almost two and three quarter hours) can’t fail to notice the emphasis on the enormity of the event, the dire lengths Jesus went to to secure redemption, and the pathos of the believer reflecting on the fact that we are the cause of Jesus’ suffering.

My guess is this is a less familier approach in most Evangelical settings. And it too has some admitted drawbacks. Any genuinely Christian reflection on the cross must be done in the context of faith in its saving benefits. It is neither necessary nor useful to try to relive the experience of Holy Week as though the end has not yet happened. In a similar vein, while I think there is something to be said for maintaining the tension in the story, overdoing that can run the risk of us asking forgiveness as though we are unsure of receiving it. At its guilt inducing worst, this approach can lead to the unbiblical idea that we need to make some kind of reparation to Jesus for what he suffered on our behalf.

Because this approach doesn’t tell you how the story ends, it only really avoids these pitfalls if you do actually understand how the story ends. As such, it’s much less suitable for inviting non-Christians to. While it maintains the tension between Good Friday and Easter, that does mean that it really only works if you come back on Sunday!

There are, however, some real benefits. This approach is far less of a gear shift if you’ve been observing Lent. If, for six weeks, you’ve been looking to ‘worthily lament our sins and acknowledge our wretchedness’, it can be rather jarring to immediately switch into party mode. This approach makes Good Friday the crowning moment in Lent – the moment when sin is revealed for all its terrible sinfulness – and yet also the resolution to it, as our Lenten sorrow for sin is brought to the cross. It provides a transitional space, therefore, for repentance to give way to relief. But it does this in a way which doesn’t undercut a continued desire for change. On the contrary, Jesus’ sacrifice should heighten our felt need for repentance. This approach also has the ability to address a wider range of aspects of the cross and the crucifixion narratives. In the different words from the Cross, Jesus says things which express the human need for forgiveness, the sense of divine abandonment, the need for loving service as well as the confidence that it is finished. Even the fact that it only makes sense if you come back on Sunday is testament to a more textured account of salvation – one where both Cross and Resurrection are necessary and worthy of focus.

And while it might be a slightly less familiar approach today, this way of thinking about the cross is perfectly Evangelical. Think, for example, of Isaac Watts’ Alas and did my Saviour Bleed?

Alas! and did my Savior bleed,
and did my Sovereign die!
Would he devote that sacred head
for sinners such as I?

Was it for crimes that I have done,
he groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity! Grace unknown!
And love beyond degree!

Well might the sun in darkness hide,
and shut its glories in,
when God, the mighty maker, died
for his own creature’s sin.

Thus might I hide my blushing face
while his dear cross appears;
dissolve my heart in thankfulness,
and melt mine eyes to tears.

But drops of tears can ne’er repay
the debt of love I owe.
Here, Lord, I give myself away;
’tis all that I can do.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

As ever, I’m not going to say there’s a ‘right’ way to do the calendar. That’s not really how I see it working. Both of these approaches are potentially valid. But there’s a lot to be said for the wisdom of the traditional approach and I recommend it.

*He does this in the introduction to his book The Deep Things of God which I think is marketed in the UK under the title Embracing the Trinity. It’s a good book and I recommend it, but probably more as an intermediate than an introductory read.