We stand beneath the shadow of the cross

The Reverend Canon Stephen Linkous / April 3, 2026

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The Collect for Good Friday

Almighty God, we beseech you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

On this day we stand beneath the shadow of the cross, not as curious onlookers but as a gathered family whose life is held and named by God. Good Friday invites us to look at two truths at once—our culpability and God’s unfailing love—and to let them shape how we live together as the church.

The collect we pray frames that posture with a humble petition: Almighty God, behold this your family. That verb behold is not a distant glance but an attentive, compassionate gaze. To be seen by God is to be recognized in our weakness, our fear, our betrayals, and our grief. The prayer’s address to God as Almighty balances tenderness with sovereignty: the One who sees is also the One who holds power to redeem. This is not sentimentalism but the assurance that our vulnerability stands within God’s sovereign care.

Calling the church “this your family” locates our identity in relationship rather than achievement. Family language means belonging by gift, not by merit. Even when we fail—when we deny, betray, or hand one another over to fear—our status as God’s people is not erased. The collect asks God to sustain that belonging, to keep the family intact even when human sinfulness threatens to tear it apart. This is the context in which we approach the cross: as beloved children who have wandered and wounded, yet remain claimed.

At the center of the prayer is the startling claim that our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross. Two things demand our attention. First, Jesus’ willingness. The cross is not merely something that happened to him; it is the path he embraced. That willingness reveals divine freedom—not coercion, not fate, but the Son’s free self-offering in union with the Father’s will. Even Gethsemane’s agony does not contradict this; it deepens it, showing that willingness can coexist with profound cost.

Second, the phrase “given into the hands of sinners” names human responsibility without flinching. The cross exposes the reality of our brokenness—our capacity to harm, to fear, to destroy what is good. But it also becomes the place where God’s mercy meets that brokenness head-on.

Here the theological heart of Good Friday beats strongest: the cross is both substitution and solidarity. It is substitution because Christ bears what we deserve, standing in our place under the weight of sin and death. It is solidarity because Christ enters fully into our condition, taking on human flesh and human suffering. These two realities must hold together. Substitution alone risks making the cross a legal transaction; solidarity alone risks reducing it to moral example. But the gospel insists on both: God does not merely sympathize with human pain from a distance, nor does he simply absorb our guilt mechanically. Instead, God in Christ enters our suffering, takes it upon himself, and transforms it from within. The cross unmasks our sin and, in the same moment, reveals the depth of divine commitment to restore us.

The collect closes with a Trinitarian doxology: the crucified one now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. This is the hinge of our hope. The cross is not the final word; resurrection and reign are. But notice: suffering is not discarded or forgotten in the resurrection. It is taken up into the life of the triune God. The wounds remain, glorified. The crucified one reigns precisely as the one who was pierced. What does this mean? That our suffering, our betrayals, our frailty are not outside the divine life but held within it, redeemed and transformed. We worship a God who sees, who suffers with us, and who brings suffering into the economy of new life.

This prayer shapes how we face suffering and how we treat one another. It calls us to lament honestly, to name betrayal and pain without hiding it, while trusting that God’s gaze holds us. It calls congregations to preach a cross that is both costly and hopeful, to practice confession and reconciliation as spiritual discipline, and to embody a family whose identity is given by grace rather than performance. What does that look like? It looks like communities that do not hide their wounds but bring them to the cross. It looks like leaders who name sin clearly and proclaim mercy more clearly still. It looks like people who forgive because they know themselves forgiven.

On this Good Friday, let us stand as the family God beholds. Let us bring our betrayals and our hopes to the foot of the cross, trusting that the One who was willing to suffer now lives and reigns, and that in his life we are held, forgiven, and sent into the world with mercy.