Interactive Worship in the Butterfly Garden

On Sunday, I was in charge of our Worship Together service.  And I felt like I had no ideas.  Every idea I came up with, I had done before.

Our 9:45 service is fairly unique, blending elements from Sunday School and a traditional worship service.  We have a liturgy that we follow most weeks.  Instead of a sermon, we have a puppet show or a reader's theatre or some sort of interactive approach--although occasionally we don't.  We break into small groups where we model a Faith 5 approach to faith development that families can practice in their homes (discuss highs and lows, tie to Bible reading, pray, bless each other).  Every other week, we have an arts/craft project of some kind.  

Lately, after several years of this approach, I feel my creative well running dry.  I was doubly distressed, because it was Palm Sunday.

Our first week with the Palm Sunday text, the week before Palm Sunday, our pastor asked us to think about the best ways to show love to each other.  So, on Palm Sunday, we talked a bit about that.  And I brought up showing appreciation.

Then we moved our worship outside.  Our church has lovely butterfly gardens, so we walked through them together.  We stopped and noticed signs of God's love and resurrection (yes, jumping ahead to Easter). 

And we did our Faith Five as we walked, a sort of stations approach.  At the first stop, we talked about our highs.  And the second stop, we discussed our lows.  At the next stop, we talked about how our highs and lows intersected with the Bible reading that instructed us to love each other.  At our last stop, we prayed and blessed each other.

So, at each stop, we began by noticing God's beauty and generosity, made manifest in the garden.  And then we did the Faith Five portion.

It worked beautifully.  I've noticed that when we sit at a table, under the fluorescent lights, we don't all pay attention.  We have trouble staying focused--or we get too focused on just one step of the Faith Five.  But moving outside, even though the walk was short, brought all our attention to a single focus.

It helped that it was a beautiful morning:  a cold front had come through, so the temperature was perfect with low humidity.  The sun beamed over us all.

When I look back over all the worship experiences I've tried to create, all the spiritual formation I've tried to foster, all the experiential encounters with the Divine, I don't know that I'll see Palm Sunday 2015 as a high point.  But as a woman who was feeling drained and uninspired, I'm happy for how the Holy Spirit used that blank space to create something that felt meaningful.

Children at the Healing Service

Yesterday, in addition to all the Palm Sunday festivities, we did healing.  When it's a day when the service will run long, we often have healing stations where people can stop as they leave Communion.

I was one of the healing ministers yesterday.  I anointed foreheads with oil and said, "Accept this oil as a sign of God's love and grace and healing, through Jesus Christ our Lord."  I looked deep into the eyes of people who looked up at me.

I was surprised by how many parents with children stopped in front of me.  I blessed parents and children.  The children, some of whom had been quite hyper on the way up to Communion, grew quiet and somewhat somber.

At the other healing station, I watched a young girl wrap her arms around the healing minister, and her little sister followed her example.  The healing encounter with the mother turned into a group hug, a different kind of laying on of hands, but theologically in the same neighborhood, I think.

There are days when I'm the healing minister when I can feel a kind of energy coursing through me.  Once, a parishioner asked me, "Did you feel that too?"  I knew exactly what she meant.  I nodded.

Of course, I'm just the vessel.  But I know that many people aren't willing to go even that far.  It can be hard to find healing ministers.  It can be hard to find Communion assistants, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

I thought back to an earlier time when we might have thought that children didn't need healing.  But it's hard to believe that these days. 

We can all use a visible sign of God's love and grace and healing.

I thought back, way back, to an Ash Wednesday service I attended at an Episcopal church--it was the only church that was close to my Lutheran theology that had a noon service.  I taught at night and couldn't make it to the evening service.

Apparently an AA group usually met at the church at noon, so they arrived, and some of them stayed for the service.  It was an interesting group that came up for ashes:  little old ladies who didn't want to drive after dark, an assortment of people making time for Ash Wednesday in their workday, some homeless people who wandered through, and some people who wore their brokenness most openly.

Our Sunday healing service isn't quite that interesting.  But I know that we have the same kinds of needs for healing that every assemblage of humans has whenever we gather.

The Hush Before Holy Week Begins

Today, across Christendom, churches will celebrate Palm Sunday; many churches will also celebrate Passion Sunday.  Today, we hurdle into Holy Week--many pastors will be leading as many as 15-20 services between this morning and Easter evening. 

Today, many of us will receive palms.  The leftover palms will be burned and mixed with oil and saved for next year's Ash Wednesday service, where they will be smudged on our foreheads and we will be reminded of our essential dusty nature.

Palm Sunday reminds us that the people who will be our friends today may turn on us tomorrow.  The adoring crowds of today may turn accusatory by the end of the week.  And yet, as we journey through our lives, suffering every sort of betrayal, the Holy Week trajectory reminds us of the joy we will also experience along the way:  good meals with friends, deep conversations, a God who so wants deep connection with us that he will wash our feet.

And the hectic hurry of Holy Week ends in Easter, where we are reminded of the ultimate promise:  no matter how bad it gets, God has a plan.  We may not be able to see it, we may not be able to believe it, but God is hard at the work and play that is the redemption of creation.

Now that's Good News!

Poetry Saturday: What to Do with the Ashes

It's strange to see Holy Week just on the horizon.  I am still in an Ash Wednesday frame of mind.  I am still wrestling with the idea that we do all we do, only to come to dust.  It does seem to be a bit late for this existential crisis.  Or maybe, here at midlife, it's a crisis come just on schedule.

I read Roz Chast's Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?, about the decline and death of her very old parents.  At the end, she talks about deciding what to do with her parents' ashes.  They sit in their separate boxes in her closet.

She thought about dumping them somewhere, but she had problems with all of the possibilities.  I loved this sentence:  "Throwing their ashes off the side of a boat makes as much sense to me as tossing them into a wastebasket at Starbucks" (p. 227).

I've thought about this issue of what to do with ashes since my mother-in-law died.  We talked about tossing them into the ocean, but she never really went to the beach down here.  She had feelings for Indiana, but if we had driven back there, we would have been unfamiliar with her landscape.  In the end, my spouse buried them in the yard of our old house, and the bougainvillea tree that he planted always bloomed extravagantly. 

We decided that she was as fond of our house as any place.  And we liked the idea of her returning to the earth, instead of sitting in the gray cardboard box.

We are both Ash Wednesday and Easter people, always conscious of that Ash Wednesday message that we are dust and to dust we shall return--and yet, we are also resurrection people.

When we were discussing ashes and what to do with them, this poem came to me.  The people in this poem are entirely fictional.


Ash and Salt


For a year after you died,
I reread all those childhood books,
revisit Winnie, Madeline, Charlotte, and Wilbur.

I remember you reading
these books that provided us a private language
of blustery days, bad hats, and great pigs.

I make myself the foods that provided comfort once:
fudge, grilled cheese sandwiches, boiled custard,
pancakes with chocolate chip smiles.

I light the candle I find in a closet
of a house I won’t live in much longer.
The candle consumes itself.

I decide it’s time to let you go,
to set this yapping dog of grief free.
And so, with the full moon above,

 and the sea sucking my ankles,
I try. I hurl clumps
of ashes into the waves.

I trust that they’ll be gone
by morning, that no little children
will make a gruesome discovery at sunrise.

Lacking the proper language, with no sacrament,
I lick my fingers
that taste of ash and salt.

Heading To Holy Week

As we head to Holy Week, how can we hear the familiar stories with fresh ears?  How can we move closer to this story that's so distant from us in time and place?

Do the palms obscure the real Jesus?

What feet are waiting to be washed?

What table waits to be set for a meal made new with meaning?

The soldier looks impassively at the Passion.  How are we colluding with our empire?

So many wounds to bind.

How can we celebrate Easter with the taste of ashes still in our mouths?

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, March 29, 2012:

First Reading: Isaiah 50:4-9a

Psalm: Psalm 31:9-16

Second Reading: Philippians 2:5-11

Gospel: Mark 14:1--15:47

Gospel (Alt.): Mark 15:1-39 [40-47]


Palm Sunday has become a busy Sunday. Somewhere in the past twenty years, we've gone from hearing just the story of Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem to hearing the whole Passion story--on Palm Sunday many Christians leave the church with Jesus dead and buried. It's downright disconcerting to those of us who return to church for the rest of Holy Week--we hear the same stories on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. It makes for a long, Sunday Gospel reading--and reinforces one of the paradoxes of the Passion story: how can people shout acclaim for Jesus in one day, and within the week demand his Crucifixion? Maybe it's good to hear the whole sad story in one long sitting, good to be reminded of the fickleness of the crowd.

It's one of the central questions of Christian life: how can we celebrate Palm Sunday, knowing the goriness of Good Friday to come? How can we celebrate Easter with the taste of ashes still in our mouth?

I find myself still in an Ash Wednesday frame of mind. Perhaps you do too. It's been a tough year for many of us. We’ve suffered job loss or house loss. If we’ve kept our jobs, we’ve said goodbye to colleagues. In any year, some of us lose loved ones in any number of ways. Because we are mammals that think and know, we are always aware that there will be horrors yet to come. We live in a culture that seems to prefer crucifixion to redemption.

Palm Sunday offers us some serious reminders. If we put our faith in the world, we're doomed. If we get our glory from the acclaim of the secular world, we'll find ourselves rejected sooner, rather than later.

Palm Sunday also reminds us of the cyclical nature of the world we live in. The palms we wave this morning traditionally would be burned to make the ashes that will be smudged on our foreheads in 10 months for Ash Wednesday. The baby that brings joy at Christmas will suffer the most horrible death--and then rise from the dead. The sadnesses we suffer will be mitigated by tomorrow's joy. Tomorrow's joy will lead to future sadness. That's the truth of the broken world we live in. Depending on where we are in the cycle, we may find that knowledge either a comfort or fear inducing.

It's at times like these where the scriptures offer comforts that the world cannot. Look at the message from Isaiah: "The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him that is weary. . . . For the Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been confounded; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near" (Isaiah 50, first part of verse 4, verse 7, and first part of verse 8).

God promises resurrection. We don't just hope for resurrection. God promises resurrection.

God calls us to live like the redeemed people that we are. Turn your face to the light. Turn away from the dark. Commit to redemption. Commit to new life. With a peaceful mind, wait for the resurrection that God has promised to you.

The Feast Day of the Annunciation

Today we celebrate the Annunciation, the feast day that celebrates the encounter between the angel Gabriel and Mary, who would become famous as the mother of Jesus.  He gives her the vision that God has for her; she agrees.

I have a blog post about this feast day up over at the Living Lutheran site.  Here are some quotes to whet your appetite:

"I find Mary an interesting model for modern spirituality. Notice what is required of Mary. She must wait."

"She must be present to God and be willing to have a daily relationship, an intimacy that most of us would never make time for. She doesn't have to travel or make a pilgrimage to a different land. She doesn't have to go to school to work on a graduate degree in theology. She isn't even required to go to the temple any extra amount. She must simply slow down and be present."

"We might think about how we can listen for God's call. Most of us live noisy lives. We're always on our cell phones and computers. We've often got several televisions blaring in the house at once. We're surrounded by traffic and the loud beats booming from cars. We've got people who want to talk, talk, talk. Maybe today would be a good day to take a vow of silence, inasmuch as we can, to listen for God."