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Good morning. 

More than 15 years ago I was on the bus in Iceland, travelling along the coastal road to the capital, Reykjavik.  It was a cold, clear, long-sighted day. Scribbles of white steam from hot springs drifted in the blue.   Far in the distance, squatting above the skyline of Reykjavik like a big grey goose, there was the massive concrete cathedral which is dedicated to the 17th century minister and poet, Hallgrimur Petursson.

The memory comes to me now, on Good Friday, because I was there to record a programme for Lent.  Petursson is famous in Iceland for his Passion Hymns: the verses were  to be read during Lent, and they’re still sung in Iceland.   He wrote them not long after he contracted leprosy, and he poured his own agonies into the narrative of Jesus’ suffering. 

They’re poems of faith and hope, in the grip of spiritual and bodily pain.  Across the centuries to our own anxious times, I hold that image.  In the story of Good Friday, as life holds its shocked breath, we must wait, keeping heart and faith, until the stone rolls away and breath returns.

Our prayer this morning begins with lines from one of the Passion Hymns:

Lord, to thee are assigned/my body and soul and mind;
safety and shelter I find,/ to thy great mercy resigned.
Eternal, present God, may we keep vigil together today,
waiting for the promised life, in faith and hope.  Amen.