REVered - Nails & Good Friday

Several years ago we started a tradition to launch Holy Week.  At the end of our Palm Sunday services, we invite people to stop at the exits to pick up a nail from the baskets the ushers are holding.  I ask them to carry it with them until Good Friday.  I suggest that they place the nail in a prominent spot for the next 5 days.  The point is to focus on the fact that Jesus was nailed to the cross because of our sins.  I want to personalize it.  That’s why I ask everyone to take a nail with them.  The stories people have told me through the years are amazing.  God uses that little physical reminder in incredible ways, including opening doors to witnessing.  A friend told me on Sunday that last year he carried his nail in his pocket through a metal detector at the airport and subsequently had the opportunity to talk about Jesus to two TSA Agents.

We end each Good Friday service (3, 5 and 7 pm) by asking people to take their nail and pound it into a huge wooden cross - we have 3 stationed throughout the room.  Jesus died for you.  Pounding a nail into a cross is a vivid reminder of that reality.  The only sound heard as people leave is of loud hammering of nails into crosses.  A sobering reminder of the death of Christ by crucifixion – for the sins of the whole world!

If you can join us at one of our services this Friday, please do.  If not, I invite you to focus on a nail.  The point is obvious.

John 19:17 -18 – “Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha).  Here they crucified him, and with him two others — one on each side and Jesus in the middle.”