This week on LL we’ll be working sort of “backwards-ish” through Holy Week. Today we’ll be thinking about what we need for the “big” Easter services–things we need to print in a bulletin–as well as thinking through Easter Sunrise, for those of us who do that. (watch for a sunrise post later today, when we’ll be far more awake than we will Sunday morning at 6-7-8am!
Tomorrow we’ll be creating for Friday and Thursday. Wednesday be sure to stop in for conversation about an Easter Vigil.
Of course, you can always check out the conversations already ongoing by clicking the sidebar links!
SO: Easter morning’s big service. What time is your big service? What mood are you going for? How do you decorate? Which Easter story are you reading (Mark? John? one of the others?)? If you’re going with Mark, are you stopping at the shorter ending or adding one of the longer endings?
What creative elements will be part of your Easter service? What very traditional elements will you have? (We always end with the Hallelujah Chorus.) What new thing would you like to try to introduce this year, or what’s something unusual you hope to convey? (besides that someone rose from the dead, which is pretty unusual in itself!)
Drop your words, themes, images, phrases, or seeds-of-ideas into the comments and let’s write some liturgy together!
(here are some photos illustrating our theme this year–who rolled the stone–feel free to use! If you’d like original files, leave your email address in the comments and I’ll send them on. I took these photos on a 2004 trip to the middle east.)
Our theme this year is “Who rolled the stone away?” so…I’ll be working on that. We have some liturgy from a couple of years ago that is sort of non-specific because I didn’t get something done in time to print (so many different services, so many bulletins, so much early printing…). However, I do have a children’s time!
Get some adult volunteers (probably about six), and have them stand very close together. I’ll cover/wrap them in gray fabric, then have the kids take turns trying to push them around. After they’re unsuccessful as individuals and as a group, I show a picture of a grave stone (I took the photo the first time I was in Israel/Palestine…I’ll see if I can add it to the post) and we talk about how the fact that it’s so heavy, and the women were worried about moving it, shows us that God is involved in this story–only God could move the stone so easily (or something), and God can do lots of things we can’t, like bring life out of death.
Here’s what I’ve got going in my mind in terms of metaphors…
http://theblueroomblog.org/2012/04/02/lets-get-the-guy-out-of-the-tomb-already/