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Easter Week in Baptist culture
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___We’ve been back in Texas a year and a half now, but we’re still readjusting to certain elements of the general culture (like where did all those SUVs come from?) and the Baptist culture. After living more than a decade on the other side of the Mississippi River, it’
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MARK WINGFIELD
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s sometimes hard to remember that things are different here in the Southwest, where we grew up and lived before.
___We’ve been reminded of this difference once again as we make preparations for Holy Week, the week we’re now in between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday.
___ The Baptist churches where I grew up in Oklahoma and New Mexico put all their eggs in the Easter Sunday basket. I never even heard of a Good Friday service until we moved East--much less a Maundy Thursday service or a Tenebrae. Perhaps this was because my childhood churches shunned all things that gave even an appearance of being liturgical or embraced by Catholicism. Or maybe it’s because we were so busy putting on big Easter pageants that we didn’t have time to stop and reflect on the journey to the Cross.
___ Anyway, over the last years of our sojourn in the East, we got accustomed to attending Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services at our Baptist churches. These are quite popular among Baptists in many other parts of the nation and appear to be catching on in the Southwest now. But local culture still makes a difference.
___ I asked our pastor at Wednesday night dinner last week why our church was having a Maundy Thursday service but not a Good Friday service. Seemed odd to me to do Maundy Thursday but not Good Friday, since Good Friday is the better known of the two.
___ His answer was purely pragmatic: We can’t get a good enough attendance at both, so we roll them into one. Another longtime church member at the table chimed in to explain that it’s too hard to get people to come to church on the Friday night before Easter, so the Thursday service is better.
___ Who would have ever thought Baptists weren't willing to go to church often enough?
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___I know Texans like to do their own thing, especially Texas Baptists. But maybe we can learn from our fellow Baptists "over there" and also our Catholic brethren.
___ We Baptists do love to focus on the Resurrection. And
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ALISON WINGFIELD
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that should be our main emphasis, for without it the Cross would be meaningless.
___ But if we never take the time to reflect on the journey to and the suffering on the Cross, then we miss the point of Jesus’ resurrection.
___ Some of the most meaningful church events I’ve ever attended have been Good Friday services. When we first moved to Kentucky, I was a bit nervous about all the Holy Week services, wondering where we had landed and whether we were turning into Episcopalians. Then I discovered what we had been missing.
___ It’s not that I feel good after one of these services. Not at all. In some ways, your soul sinks to the depths of despair, because on Good Friday, you leave Jesus in the tomb. Death has won at that point. And my sins contributed to that death. Hum a few bars of "Were You There?" and stop at the verse, "Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?" and you get the point.
___ At the end of some Good Friday services we participated in, "death," a person completely covered in black, slinked down the aisle and extinguished the white Christ candle sitting on the altar. And the congregation silently filed out of the sanctuary.
___ But, oh, the joy of Easter morning. After being in our own tombs of reflection, we awakened to the sunshine and celebrated Jesus’ Resurrection with great fervor. The Christ candle snuffed out on Friday night returned triumphant into the sanctuary burning brightly, and our spirits soared.
___Wow.
Mark Wingfield is managing editor of the Standard. Alison Wingfield is a freelance writer. The Wingfields moved to Texas from Louisville, Ky., where Mark had been editor of the Western Recorder, in which this column appeared weekly.
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