Journeys of faith: Palm Sunday and Easter in Amwell Township
Lawrence Briggs Sr. holds a plaque showing where he traveled in Israel at his home in Amity.
Jason Mihal, dressed in Middle Eastern garb like that worn by Christ, cradles a 3-week-old orphan lamb from the Brady Farm in Scenery Hill as part of the Palm Sunday observance at North Ten Mile Baptist Church.
Lawrence Briggs Sr., shown at his Amity home, holds a certificate showing that he was baptized in the Jordan River while traveling in Israel.
Lawrence Briggs Sr. stands in front of his garage with Bible verses on the door at his home in Amity.
Good Shepherd or Lamb of God: Jason Mihal of Waynesburg, youth leader at North Ten Mile Baptist Church, takes a symbolic walk on palm branches fellow members placed in the aisles of the church.
A quilt made several years ago by members of North Ten Mile Baptist Church noting the 225th anniversary of the congregation’s founding is the focal point of a stairwell connecting the sanctuary to the fellowship hall and classrooms.
Easter lilies are one component of an elaborate stained-glass window highlighted by sunshine on the morning of Palm Sunday at North Ten Mile Baptist Church.
The sanctuary built in 1904 is the fourth for North Ten Mile Baptist Church, which was established as a congregation in 1773. A log church and two wooden ones preceded it.
Parishioners enter North Ten Mile Baptist Church on Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week, passing an ornate window that depicts, according to Gospel accounts, Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane just before his arrest.
North Ten Mile Baptist Church parishioner Geri Sowers incorporated a cave into the letter “C” and a cross for the letter “T” in a banner that made its debut Palm Sunday.
Crosses sometimes seem to sprout from the lawns of the faithful this time of year. Or flags and banners with a religious theme flap in spring breezes, only to be replaced with the stars and stripes for May’s Memorial Day.
Regardless of the season, at the home of an Amwell Township couple, one sees an example of the entreaty found in the Biblical Gospel of Luke, where Christ tells his followers, “Whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God.”
Lawrence Briggs Sr. and his wife, Beckie, visited the Holy Land in 1998, around the time they posted the titles of favorite hymns and the citations of three Bible verses and a listing of the Ten Commandments on their RV shed and garage.
Briggs, 79, is retired now, after a career as a butcher, or, as he prefers to call it, “animal surgeon.” He worked for many supermarket chains, many long gone from this area: Loblaw’s A&P, Acme and the Food Gallery, where he was a manager. He also worked for an independent market in Washington’s West End and in the dietary department of the former Western State School and Hospital in Canonsburg.
When he cuts into things now, it’s likely to be a walnut or pine tree he has felled.
Briggs decorated the side of the shed with the titles, “How Great Thou Art,” “Rock of Ages,” “Family of God,” “Heavenly Sunlight,” “Amazing Grace,” “The Sweet Bye and Bye,” “Jesus Loves Me” and “At Calvary.”
Along with a sprinkling of musical notes are wooden cut-outs of a clarinet, a tribute to his clarinetist wife, and a saxophone, the instrument of choice of his grandson, Lucas Gatten.
After two decades of winters and uncounted rain and wind storms, the letters are somewhat rough, but still readable. A touch-up seems unlikely. Briggs said, “My wife won’t let me get up on a ladder.”
Beckie Briggs watched from a back porch as her husband told of their Middle Eastern trip.
“He just wanted something to put there,” she said.
One motorist told him she’d see the name of a hymn or spiritual song at the bend in the road and sing it on her drive to work to begin her day.
“I used to sing in the choir, but my voice, I can’t carry it long enough,” Briggs said. “I sang tenor. I don’t have the breath I used to have.”
A Baptist, Lawrence Briggs Sr. has been baptized twice – once locally and, the second time, in the Jordan River.
“It’s moving,” Briggs said of the experience. “We were there, and it was the thing to do.”
When Briggs, a deacon at North Ten Mile Baptist Church, hears accounts read from the Bible during a service or class, he can think back to places he’s actually set foot. Briggs has a map in a folder bearing the words, “I walked where Jesus walked.”
When some hear the words, “Holy Land,” they may think of desert, but Briggs found the terrain to be rocky rather than sandy. And for a place often thought of as hot and dry, Briggs’ tour group in January 1998 awoke to a 6-inch accumulation of snow.
His tour group visited various sites in Jerusalem: the scene of Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, the arrest of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
Briggs recalls the modern-day Garden of Gethsemane as having “a lot of trellises,” roses, greens and walkways. The exact location of the garden is unknown, as is the tomb of Lazarus. Residents of the areas told him, “This could be the place, or it could not be the place. But we believe it is the place.” Two of Briggs’ Biblical citations come from the Gospel of John, Chapter 11, which tells of Christ reviving the dead Lazarus.
John 11:26 quotes Jesus as saying, “Whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” Briggs’ wall of faith also cites the shortest verse in the Bible, John 11:35, when, at the raising of Lazarus, “Jesus wept.”
The SeeTheHolyland.net website notes Bethany, the village of Jesus’ relatives Mary, Martha and Lazarus, is especially significant during Easter to pilgrims because, “in their eyes, Lazarus’ resurrection prefigured that of Christ.”
The Briggs’ garage door lists John 3:16, one of the most famous Bible passages: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” It’s sometimes called “The Gospel in a nutshell.”
Speak to Briggs for any length of time, and he’s likely to extend a warm invitation to accompany him to the church he loves like a member of his family.
The Rev. Dr. Gary Schneider, pastor of North Ten Mile Baptist Church, pointed out in his Palm Sunday sermon many Christians focus on the joy of that day. But Schneider showed another facet of the story and its hidden sadness. The disciple John tells of Jesus not only weeping at the death of Lazarus, but also during what is known as his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, because he knew of the destruction to come at the hands of the Romans in just a few decades.
The congregation has a unique way of beginning Holy Week, which culminates in Easter. On Palm Sunday, Jason Mihal of Waynesburg, youth leader, dressed in the garb of a Middle Easterner and cradling a 3-week-old lamb in his arms, walked over palm branches spread upon the aisles of the sanctuary. Bleating and baa-ing, the orphaned lamb and the man who resembled a shepherd made their way through the crowd. It was a warm morning for early spring, and nestled next to Mihal’s voluminous garments, the lamb seemed to be quite uncomfortable, kicking the man who carried it.
Schneider became pastor of North Ten Mile Baptist in 2000, and he started what has become a Palm Sunday tradition there, bringing the idea with him from his previous pastorate in Louisiana.
“This year, we almost didn’t have a lamb,” Schneider told parishioners. The ewes from the usual farm had given birth in January, and a 3-month-old lamb is much bigger than one that was born just three weeks ago.
“Of course, Jesus didn’t carry a lamb on Palm Sunday, but the symbolism is very strong, because Jesus is the Lamb of God,” representing sacrifice, Schneider said after the service as the lamb with the starring role and a traveling companion were placed in a crate for their trip back to Brady Farm in Scenery Hill.