Grief over Injustice, Hope for Wholeness—Introduction A Series for Lent, Holy Week, and Easter

This is part of the worship series, 
"Grief Over Injustice, Hope for Wholeness”

Introduction
Lent 1 | Lent 2 | Lent 3  | Lent 4 |  Lent 5
Palm/Passion Sunday | Good Friday | Easter Sunday 

Introduction

This Lenten worship series takes a deep dive into various injustices in our world and in our local community. It is a hard series with a lot of heavy topics that push us to consider our complicity in perpetuating injustice, but it also encourages us to look with hope not only to what Jesus has already done for our salvation, but also to how he will renew the world at his return.

Our desire throughout the series was for our congregation to better understand issues of injustice so that we are moved not only toward confession, but also toward the transformation of hearts and minds that leads us to act. We were challenged to hold lament and hope together, and both of those themes should emerge as you peruse this series. “A season dedicated to repentance and renewal should not lead us to despair,” Esau McCaulley reminds us; “it should cause us to praise God for his grace” (Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal, 2022, p. 3).

Music Choices

Consider also including global music and voices of marginalized people groups in your worship planning and leadership. The song “How Long, O Lord, How Long,” ^Stuempfle sung throughout the series, poignantly addresses a number of justice issues. We also incorporated it into a prayer in our Good Friday service.

Worship Visuals

For our visual display, we employed the motif of a picture frame, suggested in Jill Benson’s article “Seeking Justice Inch by Inch: Practical Ways to Honor the Image of God in Everyone . Benson references Anne Lamott’s advice to writers for avoiding overwhelm: Focus on what might be seen through a one-inch picture frame. Sometimes when we think about injustice, we can feel overburdened by the weight of it all and at a loss in knowing where to start pursuing justice in our own lives. Imagine instead holding up a one-inch frame and letting the image within those boundaries be your starting point. Seeking justice is taking small steps toward a more just world. We painted several picture frames black and hung them on the wall behind the stage. We also put the children’s cross art in smaller black frames and hung them in and around the larger frames.