Lent/Easter Articles
Psalm 22: Cry of Anguish, Song of Praise
The following service was designed to be part of an arts week at Regent College. The readings were organized by Stacey Gleddiesmith and Robert Lockridge. The service was coordinated by Stacey with help from Aminah Al-Attas Bradford, Robert Lockridge, and Andrea Tischer. Various Regent College students and faculty members contributed their artistic talents for this service as we sought to exegete and communicate the text of Psalm 22 through various art forms.
Service
Call to worship: Spoken prayer 1
Beyond Blame
Historically, Christians have used some verses from the gospel accounts of Jesus’ suffering to figuratively bludgeon Jewish people. But does our awareness of this historical misuse of Scripture make any difference in the way we plan and lead worship, especially during Lent and Holy Week? Can we apply some principles to dealing with those “troubling tellings” while still taking the Scriptures very seriously?
Going Viral: What's Your Song?
If you’ve been anywhere near a computer in the last decade, you’re familiar with the phenomenon called “going viral.” It’s what happens when email inboxes, websites, and social networks light up like postmodern switchboards at the discovery of something new: the video of the cat doing that thing, the unexpected hit single, or that new author nobody’s ever heard of before who’s written something incredible. Suddenly, with unprecedented speed, everybody knows about it.
Worshiping the Triune God: Proclamation
This article is the third in a series introducing “Worshiping the Triune God,” a working document published after the inaugural meeting of the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) in June 2010. (For parts 1 and 2, see RW 100 and 101.)
Highlighting the Church Year with Dance
We are a church relishing in the resurrection. I like to think that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary who heard the good news of Christ’s resurrection did not simply hurry off to tell this exciting news, but that they danced. “They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him” (Matt. 28:9). How could they have kept still?
Connecting Baptism and Lent
Q. I’ve heard that baptism and Lent are supposed to go together, but I don’t know why, and I haven’t noticed any such connections made in my church. Should there be?
I Believe in the Resurrection
Confessions of faith come in many forms, from traditional ecumenical creeds like the Apostles’ Creed to personal testimonies. The following is an exposition on the resurrection and what we believe about that historical event. It is appropriate to use anywhere a typical creed would function in a worship service, but it is especially appropriate for use on Easter Sunday during a service celebrating the resurrection.
—JB
Banners for Lent and Easter
Our church was looking for some new banner ideas for Lent and Easter. We decided to create two banners—one with an image of a crown of thorns, and another with an empty tomb. Here’s an outline of the process we followed.
"You Have Heard It Said . . ."
While reading Tim Keller’s book Counterfeit Gods and contemplating a series of messages on idolatry during the Lent season, I realized that perhaps each violation after the first two of the ten commandments (you shall have no other gods; you shall not make idols) points to some expression of idolatry. And then I read Keller’s reference to what Martin Luther wrote in his Larger Catechism: “The fundamental motivation behind law breaking is idolatry.”
Jerusalem News Broadcast: Palm Sunday
If Palm Sunday occurred today, how might it be covered by the media? That was the question I found myself asking as I was preparing for Palm Sunday and thinking about the gospel reading. My answer to that question comes in the form of the following Palm Sunday “broadcast.”
Songs for Lent, Good Friday, and Easter
The seasons of Lent and Easter bring countless images of our Lord’s suffering, passion, and resurrection. What better way to capture the significance of this image-rich season than through these songs with their rich texts and music?
Walking the Stations of the Cross
The sun threw its first gloriously warm beams of the spring season upon the singing birds, busy trucks on the downtown street, a neighborhood band rehearsing somewhere out of view. Children scampered eagerly over the playground across the street as we gathered from our homes, schools, and places of employment.
A Creative Communion
There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work (1 Cor. 12:4-6).
An Arts Festival for Holy Week
Symbols, shapes, and colors help us to visually embody the Christ story and spiritual truths of Holy Week. As artists reveal these biblical images through paint, glass, photography, or mixed media, we visually relive Jesus’ last earthly days in Jerusalem. This was the purpose of Trinity’s first arts festival, “A Celebration of Christ-centered Arts,” a two-day event held on Palm Sunday weekend in 2009. The festival was open to the public all day Saturday and on Sunday afternoon. The art also became an engaging part of our Sunday worship service.
Get That Dead Thing Off the Pulpit
There on the pulpit, my sermon was dead. Again. It was just too much: too heavy, too complicated, too cumbersome. It had given up its Holy Ghost. But I carried it up there to preach anyway. The truth is, after twenty years of preaching, I got lost for a while, and I preached a lot of roadkill.
For the sake of my soul and for the souls of my hearers, I’ve identified three forces from within and without that were killing my sermons before God made me able to breathe life into them again.
Giving It Up for Lent, Easter Egg Hunts
Q We hear a lot about people “giving things up for Lent.” What implications might this practice have for corporate worship?
A Individuals often go without a certain food or activity as a way to make Jesus’ journey toward the cross more prominent in their life. But perhaps congregations could consider similar practices or emphases communally.
Good Friday News
For this litany David Gambrell took Psalm 22, a traditional psalm for Good Friday, and interspersed it with quotes from The New York Times (Good Friday, March 21, 2008). Consider putting together a similar service using current news articles. You could use two readers—one for the psalm quotes (in italics) and one for the news quotes (roman)—or use many readers by having
different readers for each of the news quotes.
Psalm 22. For the director of music. To the tune of “The Doe of the Morning.” A psalm of David.
Identifying with Christ
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Psalm 22, one of the greatest laments in the psalms, begins with this poignant cry of Christ on the cross. The Jews who had gathered at the foot of the cross (whether to mourn or to mock) would have heard these first few lines of the psalm and been led by their theological training to recall the psalm in its entirety. It is as if Jesus spoke the entire psalm as he hung in agony on the cross—proclaiming both his profound identification with a suffering world and the unlikely victory his suffering would produce.
It Depends
It depends.” That was the inconclusive response my wife gave when I wondered aloud about what kind of art is best in worship. I was trying to make a case for “real” art. You know, original paintings and inventive sculpture and glorious fabric art of epic scale. Certainly not the everyday photos everyone is posting online—and I do mean everyone. Last month, Google announced that it had indexed 10 billion images! Even if we have permission to use a tenth of those images, that’s a lot to choose from.
Just Enough . . .
Jesus turned to Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns’” (Matt. 16:23).
When I read that verse, my first response is that I want that kind of wisdom to rightly discern what is not of God. But then Jesus goes on to say to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (v. 24).
Kingdom Submission
The following service was part of a Passion Week emphasis in Trinity Western University’s thirty-minute campus chapels in the spring of 2010. Our intent was to “watch and pray” with Jesus: to listen to the prayers of his heart at this most crucial time in his passion, and thus, as the disciples longed to do, be taught to pray. To do this, we interwove Luke’s record of the Gethsemane prayer with the High Priestly prayer in John 17. The overall spirit of the service was contemplative, with lots of room for silence.
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