The Church at Green Hills, where we are among the newest members, has been presenting “The Living Nativity” – the Christmas story – for nearly 30 years running.  It is an excellent retelling of the familiar story of the birth of Jesus – with several well-attended showings on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings one week-end before Christmas.  With an attractive staging – including live animals – it is a very nice production.

This Easter season, for the first time, the church has presented “The Road to Resurrection” – taking groups of twenty people from scene to scene from the week leading up to Easter.  The presentation began with a Palm Sunday scene, when Jesus arrived in the city of Jerusalem to Messianic acclaim by the crowds gathering for the annual Passover celebration.

Our next stop found us in the Upper Room with the disciples of Christ at the celebration of the Passover, where we had the opportunity to taste each of the elements of a traditional Passover Seder meal.

Our host explained the significance of each of the items which make up the traditional Passover meal.

Our next stop took us into the dungeon where Barabbas was imprisoned, awaiting the decision of the people whether he should be put to death for his crimes, or should be set free because the crowd insisted on having Jesus crucified in his place – though Jesus was innocent of any crime.  When Barabbas learned that he was being set free, he wondered aloud how it could be that an innocent man was to die a cruel death in his place – as he very well should have wondered!

From the dungeon we made our way to the scene of Christ’s crucifixion where one of the soldiers who was assigned to put Christ to death explained his amazement at the scene which unfolded as he told of the cruelty of Christ’s death and his surprise at His demeanor when, from the cross, He extended forgiveness to those who were demanding His death.

Following the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, we were introduced to Mary Magdalene as she prepared spices to take to the grave out of her desire to express her devotion to the Savior, who so dramatically changed her life, by anointing his body according to the custom of the Jews in that day.

Because Easter had not yet dawned, we were left to ponder all that Jesus experienced in that final week before the truth became evident that He could not be held by death!  As the Apostle Peter expressed it to the Day of Pentecost crowd in Jerusalem fifty days later – “Therefore, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ – this Jesus whom you crucified.”  As a southern preacher appropriately announced to a Good Friday crowd one year, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming!”