Good Friday Devotion from Walter Wangerin Jr.

This is the story I referred to earlier, with our addition of hymns and scriptures. The portions by Walter Wangerin Jr. are from his book Ragman and Other Cries of Faith.

Light the candle.

Matthew 16: 21-23 (Jesus predicts his death)

Mark 14:27-40 (Keeping watch with Jesus)

From Walter Wangerin's story: My first sermons seemed to me to be possessed of a certain nascent power. I preached, I thought, with vigor. I was particularly gratified to note that Sunday after Sunday, during my sermons, Joselyn Fields would bow her head behind the organ, nodding, nodding, rubbing her chin and meditating. This was a lady of stark determinations, strong will, and forthright honesty. What she did not like, she did not pretend to like. What she liked received her nod and her attention. And if I had captured her-the organist!-with my preaching, why then there was no one I had not captured.

Yet, curiously, she never mentioned my sermons to me when the service was done.

There came the Sunday, then, when I chose to direct my preaching altogether to her. I mean, I looked at her, nodding behind the organ. I moved toward her while I preached. And I peeped over the top of the organ. Behold! She was reading organ music-nodding, nodding, and meditating.

Preachers can feel very lonely for want of an ear.

"Mrs. Fields," I said, when the service was over. "Do you have some thoughts on the sermon today?"

"Yes!" she said straightway. I smiled. I beamed.

"Previous preachers," she said, "lifted up their voices in a joyful noise unto the Lord. Would you do the same? I can't hear you."

Hymn: Rock of Ages #254

1.Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee....

In the second year of my ministry at Grace, Joselyn Fields fell sick. In spring they diagnosed a cancer. In summer they discovered it had metastasized dramatically. By autumn she was dying. She was forty-seven years old.

Spring, summer, and autumn, I visited the woman.

For much of that time I was a fool and right fearful to sit beside her, but I visited her.

Well, I didn't know what to say, nor did I understand what I had the right to say. I wore out the Psalms; they were safe. I prayed often that the Lord's will be done, scared to tell him, or Joselyn, what his will ought to be; and scared of his will anyway.

One day when she awoke from surgery, I determined to be cheerful, to bring life unto her and surely to avoid the spectre that unsettled me-death.

I spoke brightly of the sunlight outside, vigorously of the tennis I had played that morning, sweetly of the flowers, hopefully of the day when she would sit again at the organ, reading music during the sermon. …

But Joselyn raised a black, bony finger, pointed squarely at my nose, and said, "Shut up!"


Read Job:6-4-10

I learned so slowly in The City. Yet so patiently The City-and Joselyn Fields-taught me. I, who had thought to give her the world she didn't have, was in fact taking away the only world she did have. I had been canceling her serious, noble, faithful, and dignified dance with death.

I shut up. I learned. I kept visiting her. I earned my citizenship. And then the autumn whitened into winter, and Joselyn became no more than bones, her rich skin turning ashy, her breath filling the room with a close odor that ever thereafter has meant dying to my nostrils. And the day came when I had nothing, absolutely nothing to say to my Joselyn.

John 16:5-11

John 16:12-15

Hymn: O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go

1.O Love, that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee....

John 16:16-20, 32-33

I entered her room at noon, saying nothing. I sat beside her through the darkness, saying nothing. She lay awake, her eyelids paper-thin and closed, saying nothing. The evening took us, and with the evening came the Holy Spirit. For the words I finally said were not my own.

I turned to my Joselyn. I opened my mouth and spoke as a pastor. I spoke, too, as a human.

I said, "I love you."

And Joselyn opened her eyes. She put out her arms, and she hugged me. And I hugged those dying bones. She whispered, "I love you, too."

And that was all we said. But that was the power from on high, cloaking both of us in astonished simplicity, even as Jesus had said it would! For in a word I did not know I knew, a need had found not only its expression but its solution, too! Joselyn died. And I did not grieve.

Mark 15:21-37 (The Crucifixion)

Blow out the candle.