This is the first week of our Lent series with The Wizard of Oz. Rather than considering the story allegorically, where each character or scene or motif corresponds directly to a biblical figure or place or concept, we’ll be focusing in on different themes in the story that overlap with the traditional Lenten themes of spiritual growth and discipleship.
We start our walk to Easter with scripture and song, “Over the Rainbow” of course, to get us thinking about the role longing plays in our spiritual journey. Traditional Lenten practices include creating a sense of longing through fasting, but the experience of longing for God’s love and presence, longing for a new reality that feels as far as the other side of the rainbow, isn’t something most of us have to try to create.
A worship video of this sermon, starting with the scripture readings, is available below, and the manuscript follows.
The sanctuary appointments are a bit unconventional for Lent this year, the result of a successful seasonal planning project undertaken by the Worship & Music Committee. For a little while now, we’ve been building up to having a more collaborative planning process that involves worshipers in identifying themes for specific season. This is the first product of that effort. The worship planning team came up with five possible themes; I narrowed the list down to three that I thought would be “preachable” for five Sundays of Lent. Two of them were pretty conventional, but the third, The Wizard of Oz, was outside of the box. One of the pieces of advice I gave the team was that if they wanted to be creative, we needed to “go big or go home.” Decorations needed to be all-in to convey the theme, or it would just be a few awkward references in the sermon and liturgy each week and some scattered yellow bricks.
With more excitement than I anticipated they took up the challenge! A couple of planning meetings, some social media posts to gather items for decoration, and one decorating party later, the sanctuary took on a very different look for Lent. The memories of the fourteen of us, ages 7-84, hanging fabric from the ceiling with the 40′ lift, spray painting shoes, cutting out and setting up a green skyline on the wall behind the chancel are absolutely priceless
I know that for the liturgical traditionalists among our worshipers (and honestly, I consider myself one of them) these decorations during Lent could be a bit surprising, so with the Worship & Music Committee I’m inviting the whole congregation to engage open minds and flexible spirits as we move into this season with faithful creativity and curiosity. The themes will feel fairly traditional – longing and lament, spiritual journeys, good and evil, spiritual friendship, authenticity before God – but the colors and the moods, along with the movie clips will stretch our expectations a bit. I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all.
This year’s short Epiphany season, the time after Christmas and before Lent, means that even this early in February it is already Transfiguration Sunday. This is the week of the year when we typically read the story of Jesus taking a few disciples up a mountain where they see him change before their eyes and hear the voice of God declare, “This is my Son, the Beloved!”
We hear that story again this year, but the majority of our focus this year is shifting to one of the several “pre-quels” that sheds some light on the transfiguration. 2 Kings 2 tells of the prophet Elijah, one of the ancestors in faith who appears on the mountain to talk with Jesus during the transfiguration. Elijah is unique among prophets because his death is recorded with a dramatic, divine flair. With his student and successor Elisha watching, chariots and horses of fire come to earth to carry Elijah in a whirlwind to heaven.
What do this stories of an encounter with divine power tell us about God’s presence in times of grief and transition?
The full worship video for this service is available here.
During Pub Theology last week, while extending my welcome to the group of over 50 people who had gathered, the 1980s alternative rock song, “Personal Jesus,” by the band Depeche Mode came on in the brewery. It made my Gen X heart sing. It also gave me a spontaneous “way in” to our conversation that night about where and how we find meaning and purpose in our lives.
The song is on my mind again as I’m think about the story we explored in worship, the story of Jesus healing Simon’s mother-in-law in the gospel according to Mark. It’s a very personal act of Jesus, emphasized by the intimacy of Jesus taking the woman by the hand, and yet it is surrounded by very public acts of healing and exorcism. Is Jesus Simon’s mother-in-law’s “Personal Jesus”? What does her response to the healing tell us about her own answer to that question?
The worship video of this sermon is also available here.
For Some Reason 