Good Friday

This evening at 7:00 Grace Church in Long Rapids will host the Lachine-Long Rapids community observance of Good Friday.  The service will be the "proper" liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer, which includes scripture lessons and sermon, a set of prayers we call the Solemn Collects, Veneration of the Cross, and communion from the sacrament consecrated last night at our Maundy Thursday service.

As noted earlier, I learned only a couple days ago that the participating churches worked out a service format last year, intended for use by all the churches — but no one told me.  I hope our Episcopal service doesn't give the neighbors spiritual heartburn.

In any case, I'm the preacher tonight.  The obvious focus is the sacrifice of the cross.  In searching for an illustration which might make this more comprehensible, I came up with the story of Irena Sendler.

Irena Sendler was a 30-year-old social worker when Germany invaded Poland and forced 400,000 Jews into the Warsaw Ghetto.  A Catholic, Sendler believed it was her duty to resist the Holocaust and help her Jewish neighbors.  To this end, over a period of less than three years, she smuggled some 2,500 children out of the Ghetto, used forged papers to provide these children new identities, and placed them in orphanages or with Christian families.  In 1943 she was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death.  However, the Polish underground bribed a prison guard and Sendler escaped.  After the war she helped reunite many of "her" children with relatives who survived the genocide.  Irena Sendler died in 2009 at the age of 98.

As an example of risk and sacrifice, hers is a compelling story.  I commend it to you.  Search on her name online. •••