February 18, 2018 - First Sunday in Lent - Beginning the Journey

A few new things happened in today's worship. First was using the ELW Setting 6 liturgy for the first time at Creator, The second was splitting the Bulletin into a Master Bulletin for the season of Lent and a Bulletin Supplement for the weekly changes. Congregation reaction should be coming in over the next few weeks.

I attended Pastor Michelle's installation service at Zoar yesterday afternoon and sang a different Kyrie, Gospel Acclamation, Sanctus, and Lamb of God than I had sung before. Like the Kyrie, Glory to God, Gospel Acclamation and Sanctus in the morning worship it takes some repetition for these melodies and notes to work from your lips to your heart. One notable variance it that you could hear many of those gathered at Zoar were comfortable singing these liturgy pieces where the Creator congregation was obviously still trying to become familiar.

Lent is the season where we follow Jesus on his forty day journey to death. Pastor Ray reminded us that we know this is not the end of the story. We do know that and yet by reflecting on that during Lent we lost something critical in what Jesus did. It is like retelling the Abraham and Isaac story and saying "Don't worry, remember God won't have Abraham sacrifice Isaac".

Pastor Ray pointed out the distinction between 'remembering Jesus' and 're-membering Jesus'  The context here is not the same but, to my mind, one is a passive Lenten journey and the other a more active engagement. The new liturgy, in some ways, accomplished a more active engagement by making us less comfortable.

I noticed at today's worship, in front of the altar, Pat Salisbury set out a remembrance of her husband Robert. There was a small table with a picture of him surrounded by flowers. There are moving personal tributes that affect us without us knowing the person to whom the tribute is dedicated. This was certainly true for this touch by Patsy.

Another active part of the journey promises to be a book study devoted to The Day the Revolution Began, a book by N.T. Wright. The subtitle is Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus' Crucifixion. Our forum after the service focused on the first couple of chapters and introducing various theories of atonement that were not directly discussed in the chapters but will be necessary to have knowledge of as various meanings of the cross are discussed,