A Grieving Good Friday

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
On Easter Sunday morning, I worshiped in Greensboro, North Carolina where Bambi's mother, Mrs. Lilly Wilson, passed away the Friday before. Certainly given the circumstances, I was profoundly grateful for the great Good News of Easter that Christ robbed death of its prey. But I sorely missed being with God's people at the top of Poplar, rubbing shoulders with beloved fellow pilgrims, soaking up the beauty of stained-glass light, and thrilling to the music of the best choir this side of heaven.

I was thankful my friend Edd Rowell was available to fill the pulpit with his usual wit, wisdom, and passionate faith. And I was grateful for staff colleagues and others who urged me to stay by Bambi's side in North Carolina rather than rush back to Macon to preach. Still, for any preacher who loves his or her craft, being out of the pulpit on Easter is a trying ordeal.

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Holy Week

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
As this column is being written, the church is in the midst of Holy Week. But though the dark shadows of Good Friday yet loom, there is no doubting how the story will end. On Easter Sunday, Jesus will rise with the dawn to vanquish the darkness of sin and death, so on that blessed day we will gather to sing and shout our Alleluias.

The journey of Lent--the forty days preceding Easter--is a time to enter more deeply into Jesus’ suffering and passion.  During Lent, we revisit Jesus’ challenge to Jerusalem--and us--as he unmasks our hypocrisy, pride, and willful blindness. Seeing the escalating tension, we feel the tightness in our stomachs as the story rushes toward it terrible climax. On Palm Sunday, we leave the top of Poplar with heavy hearts. As one child told his mother, tears streaming down his cheeks, “They killed Jesus again!”

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Competing Processionals

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
In their short but masterful work, The Last Week, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan imagine two processions entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

The first was a peasant band, cheering wildly, as their champion rode into town for the Passover festival. John’s Gospel tells us the adoring crowds cut down palm fronds to make a carpet for their advancing king (John 12:3) The crowds cried, “Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!” (Mark 11:9-10). The object of their affection sat astride his donkey, gaze fixed ahead, stoic and silent. As his admirers would soon learn,  he was indeed a king, but not the king they wanted or expected.

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Selling Easter?

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
Recently, the news wires hummed with the story of a church in Ohio sponsoring an Easter Sweepstakes. Two lucky winners will walk away with $500 each just for showing up for Easter Sunday worship!

Apparently, such theatrics "work" if the goal is to pack the pews with lottery winner wannabees. Last Easter, the sponsoring church more than doubled its usual attendance.

Today I read about a Georgia pastor who is planning to jump his motorcycle, Evel Knievel-style, over nine buses outside a Baptist church in Florida. This enterprising daredevil for the Kingdom also plans to jump through a wall of fire.

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