COMMENTARY: Crabtree on Saturday, Church on Sunday

c. 2000 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.) RALEIGH, N.C. _ Crabtree Valley Mall is an astonishing sight on the eve of Holy Week. Located in that suburban blur where a proud old Southern city gives way to […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

RALEIGH, N.C. _ Crabtree Valley Mall is an astonishing sight on the eve of Holy Week.


Located in that suburban blur where a proud old Southern city gives way to the glossy energy of high-tech Research Triangle Park, the upscale mall is jammed.

Cars circle its three-story parking decks hunting for slots. Lines form everywhere _ at the bread shop, the hair-care boutique, the cellular phone kiosk, at some giveaway featuring mascara-laden girls in tiaras, at every food vendor, from hot dogs to sushi. Thousands of shoppers drift in and out of the mall’s 200-plus stores. Not even the premium prices of Brooks Brothers, Lord & Taylor and Coach seem to faze anyone.

I see city kids in hip-hop baggies, suburban girls in impossibly tight jeans, couples of every age and mix, babies in strollers the size of Volkswagens, at least a dozen distinct nationalities, and a sea of Tommy Hilfiger red-and-blue.

The mood is festive. No matter that the stock market tanked last week, throwing into disarray business plans based on the lure of phantom profits and salary projections grounded in stock options. No matter that layoffs are spreading.

I am fascinated by it all. Maybe I don’t get out much, and this is normal stuff on American Saturdays. But I marvel at such a concentration of prosperity, at the swirling diversity of our melting-pot society, at the ability of so many people to occupy the same space peacefully, at the apparent ordinariness of $120 running shoes, $600 men’s suits, and $400 imitation Tiffany table lamps.

In this heavily churched region, many of Saturday’s happy shoppers will be sitting in churches on Easter Sunday. We will hear how a festive crowd greeted Jesus but turned violently against him, how the religious staged a sham trial, how a weak governor agreed to kill an innocent man, and how mockers watched him die.

We will hear about the women who came to his tomb to perform burial duties but found it empty. We will sing joyful songs of “Easter triumph, Easter joy.” We will return to our homes. If it’s still raining, many will return to Crabtree Valley Mall for another tour of its pleasant confines.


I don’t know what to make of Crabtree on Saturday and church on Sunday. I don’t know that it’s a worrisome conflation, or different from any prior era.

Our minds can handle diversity. Intellectually, it’s no big thing to fill our plates with work, play, shopping, family, home, hair care, Pokemon, faux sushi, $120 Nikes and resurrection stories.

Emotionally, we are able to embrace a smorgasbord of tax-season stress, worries about stock prices, happy time with children, young love, irritation at busy salesfolk and confusing tales told by women carrying burial spices.

Spiritually? Maybe we can handle that, too.

It seems impossible to overstate the chasm between the Gap on Saturday and Golgotha on Sunday. How these two settings occupy the same planet is bewildering. How high-tech Raleigh can be so prosperous and much of the world so desperate is bewildering. Yet we manage it, week after week, savoring career success on Saturday and confessing Jesus as Lord on Sunday.

I don’t want to say that any of this is bad. I don’t feel like a moral failure as I carry a purchase to the car and return to join my family for supper in the Food Court. Many signs of Godliness are on display here: respect for others, peaceable behavior, apparent serenity, smiles at children, love in all flavors. The stirrings we feel on Sunday while worshipping with friends and family will be just as real.

It’s just bewildering. It’s bewildering how we transition so smoothly from marketplace to holy place, from laughing at the mall to singing hymns of praise.


Maybe we are stronger in facing the mall’s temptations because we hear the gospel on Sunday. Maybe the empty tomb makes sense of the empty pocket that we noticed while gazing at merchandise beyond our reach.

Maybe the journey from mall to church, from dream to faith, from fullness to emptiness, from our success to God’s victory _ maybe that journey is the wilderness-wandering that faith always requires.

DEA END EHRICH

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