Good Friday Recap

Rooted in long-standing partnership with the Scottdale Area Association of Churches, our congregation has been part of a meaningful post-pandemic rebuilding—one that gave rise to a new shared tradition: the annual Good Friday service reflecting on the Last Seven Phrases of Christ, hosted at Calvin Presbyterian Church. Included here is the bulletin from that service, representing all participating ministries, along with the sermon transcripts from Rev. TJ Lucas and Rev. Doug Wigginton of The Reformed Church. We were also grateful to share this sacred space with our associate minister, Pastor Nicole Tascarella (soon to be ordained), who offered a special song woven with a word.

‘I thirst”

By Doug Wigginton

Good Friday Meditation: Calvin Presbyterian Church

April 3, 2026

Before I begin, I would like to ask two rhetorical questions for your private reflection. The first is, do you thirst, and what or who do you thirst for?

My text is just two words: “I Thirst.” In its original form, it’s a single word, dipso—a Greek verb that means to be parched, to thirst after, to lack, or to long for something. These words reach beyond physical thirst, touching on something much deeper. The psalmist confirms this truth in his prayer, “O God, …earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you.”

Although some will admit their thirst for fulfillment, many resist identifying and acknowledging the One who causes it.

Since we are made in the image and likeness of God, we are naturally drawn to our creator. Augustine said it best: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

It seems we are always chasing after fulfillment through things like people, possessions, position, and places.

Our pressing need to fill the void in our hearts with something other than God

leads us into an addictive cycle. So we keep on doing what we have always done, even though we never achieve the lasting satisfaction that we desperately seek.

It’s understandable why some might see our relentless quest for something more as a character flaw. Others, including myself, understand our restlessness as a divine gift—a grace-filled, persistent pull that keeps us searching until we find our rest in God.

Consider the encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman. Apparently, she attempted to quench her thirst through a series of relationships. She was taken aback when Jesus, a Jew, disregarded the established religious customs by asking her for a drink of water.

His intentions were far from ordinary: Jesus said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I give will never thirst. The water that I give will become a spring of water springing up into everlasting life.”

Ready to receive the Good News, Jesus reveals to her His true identity: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is/ who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, she asks for a drink of this water.

Jesus knows and expresses some details of her life, including her five marriages and her current living arrangement. Astonished by his knowledge, she believes he’s a prophet.

So when Jesus declared himself to be the long-awaited Messiah, she believed.

Filled with the joy of her newfound salvation, she hurried home to share with the townspeople that she had met the Messiah. They came to see and hear for themselves, and they, too, believed.

Now fast forward to Calvary. At 9 a.m., Jesus was nailed to the cross. Not long after, someone, maybe a Roman soldier, offered Jesus something to drink. Jesus had to be incredibly thirsty, but when he tasted it, knowing that the wine vinegar and myrrh would numb his pain and cloud his thinking, he spat it out. You see, Jesus was not about to take any shortcuts that would prevent the fulfillment of His Father’s plan. So in spite of his total exhaustion and excruciating pain, he endured the humiliation and cruel hostility of humanity.

As noon neared, darkness—symbolizing God’s judgment—covered the land. Jesus, the Passover Lamb, was about to take upon himself the sin of the world. With only minutes left, the greatest transaction the world has ever known was about to transpire.

So when Jesus cried out in agony, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” he was calling for His Father, who had forsaken Him during His darkest hour. Therefore, when Jesus uttered the words, “I thirst,” He was expressing his profound thirst for God.

The good news is that Jesus is tireless in his thirst for each of us. No matter your past, where you’re from, or what you’re going through, the cup of his salvation is always open to you. As Jesus put it, “Ask, and it will be given to you.” This isn’t just a one-time thing; you’ll need to refill now and then, but whenever you do, no matter why, the fountain of living water will be there for you.

Thanks be to God for His gift of thirst.

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Dust to Dust

By Rev. TJ Lucas

We Started With Dust

We started this Lenten journey on Ash Wednesday …“You are dust and to dust you shall return…

That's why I don’t dust. It could be someone I know.”

The best jokes are funny because they point to a truth. Do you know the truth about the dust in our homes? It is mostly dead skin–it is us. Dying. Shedding. Settling. It is you–dead on the shelf already. We are like that Kansas song Dust in the wind, all your money won’t buy another moment. We are dust in the wind. But then there’s Jesus, and he does something completely different with the dust but we don’t tell it’s story so I will quickly.

He was born in a dusty stable. He steps into the Jordan, dust and water meeting, not to escape the dust that he is but to consecrate it. Then he retreats to the wilderness..nothing but the dust in the wind for as far as the eye can see. He is hungry, he thirsts and is surrounded by death, with the enemy ever present in his ear saying use the dust, to turn it into bread, to take control, he refuses.

He walks the roads, dust rising with every step, calling upon others to follow. He instructs them to shake the dust from their feet when they are not received. (Matt 10:14) And just days ago we watched him enter Jerusalem— low, on a donkey, close enough to feel the ground beneath him. And the people throw down palm branches and coats so the dust is covered, protected, walked gently over as he enters. He does not come in on a war horse trampling the dust beneath him as they want. For them (and us) war and bloodshed is how kingdoms rise and fall. Not His though so he goes lower still…

He Goes Lower

He washes the dust from their feet—not just the faithful ones, all of them: the one who will betray him, the one who will deny him, the ones who will disappear when it costs something. Dust and betrayal in the same room, and still, he stays low. Still, he invites them to share a passover meal.

The Table

The table is important, it is where our lowly King, who has been kneeling and dealing with the dust, lifts himself up as an offering—first to God, and then to us. Bread. Cup.

We go to the table ready to consume, because that is what we are: consumers. We take what was meant to be shared and manufacture scarcity out of God’s abundance. We move through the world half-awake, staggering from one thing to the next, consuming without thinking or feeling. We are zombies—alive in body, but dead on arrival in spirit.

So Jesus lifts himself up and puts himself to our lips. To the living dead he says: Take, eat. Take, drink. This is the choice: we can consume the meal and resume the dead life we put on pause for an hour, or we can receive the Life, remain in Him, and be changed.

From that table he goes to the cross. He is beaten. The same crowd that shouted Save Us won’t save Him. He carries the dead tree towards Calvary until he can’t, and he falls into the same dust he has been walking through the entire time. And now the world finally gets what it asks of us all–death.

Into Your Hands

We have watched him go all the way down—into the dust—and at the end, he does not let the world have the final word over him.

He does not give his spirit to the empire that tried to break Him or the Church that tried to shame him, or the system that tried to consume him, nor to the crowd that abandoned Him.

He gives it back to God in an intimate outcry from his youth.

According to the Gospel of Luke (In John It is finished), Jesus dies with a bedtime prayer—Psalm 31:5—likely taught to Him by His mother. It’s like how many of us were taught.. 'Now I lay me down to sleep' as a plea we use to ward off the primal anxiety of the dark and death that could come within it. But Jesus adds a word: 'Father.

His final word - A plea to his dad with a faithful prayer from the faith of his mother.

“Father… into your hands I commit my spirit.”

He dies with his mother’s prayer on his lips—the cry of a child who knows the dark is coming, but knows whose hands are holding him.

This is our True King’s quiet radical defiance. The world has already decided you are expendable. The system has already treated you like the dirt beneath its feet. It has already marked you "Dead on Arrival." But the dust and darkness is where God does His best work. He started with the dust in the Garden, and He is starting again right here. You are not just a consumer; you are not just dust on a shelf or in the wind. You are a child of God with the breath of heaven in your lungs.

So, stop the zombie shuffle through life and walk tall with God. Stop giving your spirit to the things that eat you alive. The Spirit is calling to the Spirit. The Father is reaching for the clay.

Give it back. Fall into the hands that formed you.Father… into your hands… My life. My breath. My dust. My all.Amen.