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.
On Sunday the proclamation of the word took place through the words of Scripture themselves. It’s not often that many of us hear this whole story – – from the anointing of Jesus through the last supper with his disciples to his death and burial. It’s not often that we hear how the crowds shouted “Hosanna!” on Sunday, wondered what’s coming next on Thursday, and then denied Jesus and scattered in the days that followed. It’s not often that we hear the fear of Jesus’ enemies turn into anger and, ultimately, violence.
For Some Reason 