Incline Our Hearts

Were You There

On this Good Friday, many of our congregations will sing the powerful hymn “Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord).” An African-American spiritual that dates to the 19th century, it is a hymn of gut-wrenching emotional impact. The hymn asks, in repetition, a series of questions, each with its own verse: “Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they nailed Him to the tree? Were you there when they pierced Him in the side? Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb?” And then each verse says, “Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.”

From a purely logical point of view, of course, none of us can answer that we were there, thousands of years ago. But from the view of faith, we believe that we are there, every Holy Week. We are there, with our Lord Jesus, as he makes the journey of his suffering and death. And we are there, with the astonished disciples, as they discover the empty tomb. Let us not hold the events of Good Friday and Easter at a distance: an old story from long ago. But let us go there, in spirit, and in heart, to be with our Savior in his pain, that we may be with him in his glory. Lent is over. Holy Week is coming to an end. There is nothing more for us to do than to be there with the one who died and was raised for us.

I wish everyone a blessed rest of Holy Week, and a joyful Easter.

Bishop Poulson Reed