PALM SUNDAY 2008

Holy Week has begun, as it usually does at my church, with our “Passion Drive Thru.” We gather as a congregation to present a series of 8 tableaux representing the agony suffered by our Savior for our salvation.

In spite of rain on Saturday, we erected the seven sets, from the triumphal entry, to the Last Supper, Christ’s prayer in the Garden, His arrest, His trial, His collapse and Simon’s substitution to carry the Cross the rest of the way to Calvary, and the empty tomb. (Calvary is permanently represented by three empty crosses next to the highway, filled on the night of the drive thru and on Good Friday.)

It is an all-members’ effort and, along with our Nativity drive through in December, marks one of the fellowship highlights of the year.

Over 150 cars came through in the two and one-half hours of the presentation, and if we touched only one person’s heart with the good news, it was worth the wind and snow flurries and sore muscles from putting things up and taking them down in the space of thirty-six hours.

The high point for me, as I portray Pilate, is to hear all the cars out on the highway as they suddenly slow down when they see three persons “hanging” on the crosses. This was my 11th year, and it never ceases to make me realize how stark was that scene, how grim was the price, and how much God’s grace through Jesus Christ means to me.