Painting Pentecost

Text: Acts 2:1-11

My initial painted exploration (painted while the text audio was on repeat):
the proclamation. The light shining in the darkness. The Spirit making a way

Pivotal moments in the sermon:

• "The Spirit reminds us that God works beyond our language and understanding. There was a sound LIKE rushing wind and a phenomenon LIKE tongues of flame, but these are similes. Just like all of our understanding can only give us a glimpse of God."
  
  (but)
  
• "...perhaps the Pentecost miracle wasn't that fire came down from heaven or that the sound of rushing wind filled the place. ...perhaps the miracle wasn't even that people started speaking in languages previously unknown. Perhaps the miracle was that God's word--God's message--was HEARD. Understood.
  ...in a world where the church is perceived as judgmental, hypocritical, and homophobic, perhaps we need to ask ourselves what words--what messages we're proclaiming (regardless of the language).
  
  (so)
  
• "...the Spirit is poured out on all who are present. ALL hear the call to share God's wondrous deeds! We SHOULD use our words--limited though they may be, the Spirit will carry them to completion."

Therefore.... the whole church was invited to come forward and paint words--words of God's mighty deeds that we feel called to share and proclaim. (or, in recognition that the Spirit moves beyond our human language, people were also called to simply put paint on the canvas--to mark presence and participation.

I called in some favors (made good use of gifts) from the congregation and the painting was turned into an altar runner that will remain on the communion table throughout the season of Pentecost:

Reflection: there was something very pastoral about sketching an outline that the congregation came alongside and filled...   And, btw, I initially intended to do a simple line off the dove (like in my painted reflection above) but the banner took on a life of its own. The final flame image was much more free and vibrant. (just like the Holy Spirit blows where it wills).

....Oh, and we also did this in both services:

Dear Fabulous Brass Player,

Pentecost Sunday is June 8th .

As you (might) know, the Acts 2 Pentecost story depicts the Holy Spirit pouring out on gathered believers in the form of rushing wind and fire.  It was a blazing moment of unexpected Holy disruption.

...so what better to express “rushing wind” than the use of wind instruments? What better to depict the dramatic entrance of the Holy Spirit than brassy fanfare? And what better to celebrate that moment of unexpectation than an unannounced quintet who sneaks into the service and plays from the back of the worship space?

Singing Art into a Sermon

Text: John 14:15-21

Admittedly, this sermon was shaped less by exegetical art than by a conversation with high school student. She sings in the praise band, so I'll claim music as the mode d'art, but the conversation went like this: "…you say 'we love you God' in your prayers and most of the praise songs talk about our love for God, but I wonder--do I really love God? How can you actually love a God you can't see or hug?" (She didn't know the lectionary texts I had been considering, but her question solidified the text and the direction of the sermon).

As preparation, I spent a good deal of time listening to music--songs/hymns about loving God (or general songs about love that popped into my head).

...and I ended up using a song as part of the sermon:

Father, I adore You

And I lay my life before You

How I love You

Jesus, I adore You

And I lay my life before You

How I love You

Spirit, I adore You

And I lay my life before You 

How I love You

I started with the first stanza, Preached for a bit (pushed the question of loving God. Not just God loving us, but us loving God...is love an action or a feeling?) and then used the second stanza to mark a shift to the sermon body (five ways we can love God: Obey God's commands, wonder and marvel at God, spend time with God, love God's people, and practice the presence of God--recognizing that the Holy Spirit is with us even if we can't hug God). The third stanza beautifully captured and reflected the final image in the sermon.
 

I was concerned about the perception of singing from the pulpit. I didn't want people to think I was showing off, but I also wanted to sing it well (didn't want my voice to crack in the middle).  I'm so used to diving in with some sort of opening line that taking a breath to sing--it felt so strange! Then, once I started singing, I was immediately self-conscious about all kinds of things I hadn't thought through.
Do I look up? Close my eyes? Sing faster? ...is this ME singing to God? Or does the song simply exemplify/frame the message?  Should I have warned people or set the song up? Should I have practiced this?
(I closed my eyes and tried to make it my authentic prayer, slowly settling into my voice and the acoustics).

It felt incredibly vulnerable.

...and it definitely caught people off guard. Some jerked their heads up. Some smiled. (someone later confessed: "at first, I thought you had made a mistake or something.")

The transition from speaking to singing was very strange (I cut straight--no mention or build up… as if the song itself took the place of transitional sentences to the next thought) but it kept me very present in the message.

The song's structure brought out the fullness of the text's  Trinitarian references (Jesus speaks of asking the Father to send the Spirit") and the connection between love and obedience/surrender was absolutely perfect ("if you love me, obey my commands"). I didn't intentionally seek this song out, but it dialogued flawlessly with the sermon I was already writing. This sermon would not have worked if I had decided to sing and then sought out a song…..

...but the best moment of the whole sermon happened in the contemporary service. I sang the final stanza, said "amen" and started to walk off the stage but the music director had me stay. He changed the final song (on the spot) so that the whole congregation sang the song together--expressing and practicing the sermon itself:

"Father/Jesus/Spirit we adore you
And we lay our lives before you
How we love you."

---

"When you put biblical truth to the songs used in churches, you’ll have the congregation leave singing the sermon. You’ll have God’s thoughts, things that are God-breathed, stuck in their heads. It’s sad to think about a really catchy tune paired up with bad theology because that could, honestly, do a lot of damage in church." - Laura Story

The Great Banquet

...wrote an entire sermon about the importance of the servant in Jesus' parable. 

I was fascinated by that 'in between status' of one who is part of the household and yet also goes out to bring others in (c.f.the servant in Luke 14:15-24 and "those who hear" in Revelation 22:17). I wanted to push that image of hospitality/evangelism. In fact, I was all ready to preach it, but I just couldn't sleep. ...and something hit me.

Something said 'don't push--be open' and I realized that--for myself--I had been pushing so much (working so much) that I, myself, hadn't even bothered to sit at the banquet. I had refused God's hospitality in order to check off my own excuses. 

So the sermon became a question--or a series of questions (Where are you in this text?
How is it with your soul in that place? -and- Is that where you need to be right now?)

And the manuscript--my eloquently articulated textual manuscript--became this:

I'm proud of the product (I actually brought this--only this--into the pulpit with me) but the process itself was revelatory. I recorded some notes/thoughts, but I'll have to upload them another time. Revelations have been uploaded (as of 9/8/14)




 

Using Bread Machines in Worship

The only thing better than the taste and smell of freshly baked bread is incorporating those elements in worship. We did that this past Sunday and it was a wondrous celebration of Word and Table. Our Christian tradition has no shortage of resources about bread (we used the Luke 13 parable of the leaven and the "Great Thanksgiving for Thanksgiving or other meals" from the United Methodist Book of Worship). However, practical tips about setting up bread machines during worship were a little harder to find... so here are some things I learned:

• For scent purposes, you probably want 3 or 4 machines (we had two working in our contemporary service and could barely smell them in our large worship space. One was 'ok' for the sanctuary narthex, but I would've wanted 2 in there also).
• Check the cycle times on your bread machines.
•  The 'knead' cycle or the 'punch' cycle are noisy, so avoid those during worship. You want the BAKING to occur during the service (or just before).
• Some machines have silencing options, but most of them beep when finished. We did not find this distracting during the service, but we also explained it to the congregation, so it wasn't a surprise.
• Test your bread machines ahead of time!!! Even if you don't do a full bake cycle, press the buttons and 'start' your cycle. Nothing is worse than calculating all your times, filling all the machines, and then getting a surprise error message.
• Give your machines plenty of space--If your recipe doesn't have enough water and/or the machine is old, the machine might move during the knead cycle. I tested one machine and it rocked its way off of my kitchen counter! On Sunday morning, I set the machines on the floor and then put them on tables during the final rise and bake cycles.
• Make sure you're not plugging multiple machines into the same electrical circuit--especially if your breakers tend to trip. We flipped through breakers and figured out exactly which plug went to which breaker switch.
• If you're using fresh bread for communion or as part of the service:
• Make sure you leave enough time for the bread to cool. For our 9:00 service, we set the machines to go off at 9:35 and the bread was still steaming when we broke it open for communion! It was breathtaking, but still a touch warm.
• Have volunteers ready to remove the finished bread (and the kneading paddles that often get stuck in the bread). ...and make sure they know how the machines work. Some baskets need to be turned or wiggled 'just so.' In a perfect world, your volunteers would be the people who owned those machines. 
• When we moved from the sermon to the communion liturgy, I simply asked if our fresh bread was ready and one of our volunteers yelled 'yes!' and brought two loaves forward on a wooden cutting board (covered with white cloth). It was an informal procession.
•  For bread removal, don't forget to have oven mits, cooling racks, plastic spatulas and wooden spoons ready.
• Mix the dry ingredients ahead of time. All I had to do was measure water, dump in a large ziploc of bead mix (see below), and add yeast. Ta dah!! It cut down on mess and time.
• If you're NOT using fresh bread for communion, you can still invite people to 'taste and see' the goodness after the service. We had a bread maker going in the narthex, so I removed the fresh loaf after the benediction and invited people to continue the worship experience on their way out of church... (or if you have leftovers, make sure to invite people back to the altar to consume the elements. They won't last long!)
• Please, please, remember to offer a gluten-free option. Even if it's wafers instead of bread, you'll be surprised how many people are usually excluded from eucharist because of food allergies.

Our Bread Machine Recipe for Communion

(compiled from all the different machine books, this recipe yields a slightly crumbly crust, but it tears easily for intiction):

Mix Ahead of time:

•  3 cups flour
• 1.5 TBS sugar
• 1.5 TBS dry milk
• 1 tsp salt

To add later (check your machine for which order they go into the basket):

•  1.5 TBS butter. 
• 1 cup and 2 TBS water.
• 2 tsp yeast (I used bread machine yeast)--make sure it doesn't touch water