Here is the Lord’s Word for all who have gathered at the foot of the Cross today [Good Friday]. If you know what it is like to feel abandoned by God, if you have wondered if Christian faith isn’t in fact a hoax and a sham, if you feel that pain and loneliness are a cruel joke on people who are fool enough to trust a God who doesn’t appear to be around when you need him, Good Friday is for you. In this inconceivable action of submission to the very worst that “the world, the flesh and the Devil” can do [the Crucifixion], the Father and the Son together, in the power of the Holy Spirit, have completed the work of salvation. “It is finished” (John 19:30). Blessed are those who have eyes to see and ears to hear that Christ’s completed work is accomplished precisely in the moment of seeming defeat. The weapon is his own body. The signs of victory are his wounds. AMEN.

—The Rev’d Fleming Rutledge, The Undoing of Death: From Good Friday Sermons, 173