The Well – Knoxville, TN

Located in the former location of Knoxville’s venerable 4620 Jazz Club.

Remedy Coffee – Knoxville, TN

Adam Whipple & the BringRains.  Come take in the city night with us.

Ballet Gloria’s “Home” – Clayton Performing Arts Center – Knoxville,TN

Performing music for Ballet Gloria.

Ballet Gloria’s “Home” – Clayton Performing Arts Center – Knoxville,TN

Performing music for Ballet Gloria.

Easter on Easy Street

Last year, I was playing guitar at a friend’s church for Easter Sunday.  The year before that, I think I was playing guitar at my parents’ church.  This year, I am once again at a friend’s church.  Oh, and the roof is leaking at Sinclair’s Eve as we speak.  It seems that there exists some grand scheme of collusion to keep me from being meditative on Easter Holidays.  I admit the bitter spike of jealousy as I hear of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Tenebrae services, all presumably full of people who are praying together, visiting the Stations of the Cross, singing “Were You There?” with fear and trembling.  There is so much that I feel I miss, but my kids need me to buy milk and peanut butter, so I call up my worship pastor friends and beg for last minute paying gigs at other churches.  Do you need a keyboard player?  Do you need accordion?  Guitar?  Penny whistle?  I love my friends, and I’m grateful, but it’s hard to look out on a congregation of people who haven’t seen your dirty laundry and not take their thanks with a hefty grain of salt.  It’s hard to take communion, though I always relish the chance.  Meanwhile, I always wonder if I’d even enjoy an Easter service at my own church, given that I’ve never been.

It occurred to me that I should ask myself a question:  What is it I actually want out of Eastertide?  This prompting came shortly after my wife and I tore the door frame off and set a stock pot on the floor to catch the Lord’s blessing as it came dripping through the roof like a quadriplegic looking for a healing.  Did the guy who actually owned the house find that miracle convenient?  We didn’t tear our own roofs off to get to Jesus; we tore off yours.  He was in your house, after all.  Jesus seems to take it in stride, funnily enough, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.  We can only hope the homeowner’s heart was not as miserly as my own.  Every recorded miracle seems to have its element of inconvenience.  Perhaps that has some bearing on the lack of supposedly miraculous healing in a society bent on the expeditious.

So what do I want out of Eastertide?  In taking measure of it, I would say I want to actually worship the Lord with people who know me well, curmudgeonly warts and all.  I would like to have a small Anglican service in which the poetry of the readings and the rhythm of the liturgy lend peace to my troubled mind.  As of now, I would prefer the house to be clean and leak-free so that I can enjoy my weekend.  Oh, and I’d like some money so I don’t have to worry about there being gas enough to get to work on Tuesday.  The yard being mowed would be nice icing on the cake, too.

In short, I want it to be easy.  But Easter was anything but easy.

A man – let us remember, yes, he was a man, a human being – having waged his late-night garden battle and stood silent before his accusers, having been mercilessly flailed by Roman soldiers (who, as Michael Card points out, had no limit of forty-lashes-minus-one), and having hauled a large beam of wood up a hill, proceeded to continue willingly toward his most excruciating death with what strength he had left.  No summons for legions of angels escaped his lips.  No complaints.

Of course, it’s presumptuous in the highest degree to equate any of my blithe American sufferings with those of Christ on the cross.  My busy schedule is no Roman spike, and a leaky roof is hardly a cat-o’-nine-tails.  However, in the many Seder meals celebrated and the vigils kept, it must be remembered that

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming – not the realities themselves.  For this reason, it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.

                                                                                                              -Hebrews 10:1

I tell myself this to help cure me of the acrid stench of covetousness in my heart.  In earnest, I would love to be surrounded by those shadows, if only to be reminded of the truth that casts them.  However, it is good to recall that we are given icons to lead us to the Lord, slant-lighted pictures that flicker in our peripheral vision and catch us off guard with the Gospel.  Bless the Lord for having a sense of humor.  The joke is on me.  If my trivial issues become the liturgy and the catechism that instruct me in the grace and mercy of God, then it is questionable whether or not a better Easter could be devised.  Of course, one of these days, you might find me next to you at that Seder meal.

I shall be happy to be there.

Bill Wolf – Easter: Stories & Songs – Mountain City, TN

At NCEX Correctional Facility.

Private event – Knoxville, TN

2nd Presbyterian Church

Private event – Knoxville, TN

2nd Presbyterian Church