Bible Study, via Preacher

Nobody is going to mistake Jesse Custer, the lead character of AMC's comic-book-inspired TV show Preacher, for a good pastor. But on the third episode, "The Possibilities," which first aired June 12, he did a pretty decent job officiating a funeral.

Earlier in the episode, he performed baptisms, and maybe his heart wasn't in it. But when it came to the funeral at the end of the episode (spoiler, I guess), it seemed that he was taking his job seriously.

He read from 1st Corinthians 15:51 (and 52, although he only identified 51), a passage which is often read at funerals.

^"Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed — in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed."

First, the show gets credit using a real verse (I'm looking at you, X-Files), from a real translation (the New International Version), a translation which seems like a reasonable choice for a small church in rural Texas). Second, it was quoted properly, and in context. And although Pastor Custer is a troubled man - a very, very troubled man - he read the words with an appropriate sense of the moment. As if the words he spoke, their message, have power.