This Sunday (Feb 21) at 11:00 am AGAPE (Dave Scherer) & Rachel Kurtz will be with us. The 11:00 am worship will weave Dave & Rachel’s music with a time of prayer and a message by Dave. For those who do not find Hip Hop music on the top of their list, we will have our usual (fabulous) music team at 9:30 am. I’ll be sharing the message at 9:30 am. We’d love to have you stay for both 9:30 and 11:00!
This week is our second week of Lent. Our journey began in the early morning hours of Ash Wednesday as we marked the start of forty days of Lent. Traditionally, Lent is a time for Christians to enter a period of self-reflection, prayer, and preparation in anticipation of the celebration of Easter. The symbolism of forty days has many roots, including the flood and forty years of wilderness wanderings, but inspiration for this time most likely comes from Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness where he, like Moses and Elijah before him, spent time in preparation for his ministry.
Hopefully you have been able to view the Vulnerable Renderings of our Artist-in-Residence, Erik Castellanos. Erik experiments with portraiture as a way of expressing how he sees and experiences a person. We will wonder about how Jesus might have been vulnerable as he moved from life into death and beyond to his resurrection during this season.
We will also invite our community to share renderings of our life together with daily photographs. The United Methodist Church’s “rethink church” campaign has organized this effort on social media over the last few years and we’re hopeful this will be a meaningful practice for some in our church community this year. Here is more information about the photo-a-day Lenten journey. Encourage your Kitchen Table to participate and invite folks to tag photos with #thetable40days.
Outline for Vulnerable Renderings (a six-week journey through the season of Lent at the Table)
•February 10: (Ash Wednesday) 7:00 am – a 45-minute worship service with communion, ashes, music, prayer & reflection
•February 14: Luke 4.1-13 Vulnerability in temptation
•February 21: Luke 13.31-35 Vulnerability in sacrifice
•February 28: Luke 13.1-9 Vulnerability in needing others
•March 6: Luke 15.1-3, 11b-32 Vulnerability in Grace
•March 13: John 12.1-11 Vulnerability in accepting generosity
•March 20: Luke 19.28-40 (Palm Sunday)
•March 24: Maundy Thursday (6:00 pm in Social Hall)
•March 25: Holy Friday (7:00 pm in Sanctuary)
•March 27: Easter Sunrise (6:30 am Rose Garden McKinley Park) Celebrate Easter (9:30 am & 11:00 am Sanctuary of Central UMC)
In our series on Blueprint for Discipleship, we ask each person to reflect upon the people they watch over in love and the people who watch over them in love. This is often the first time people have considered who they watch over in love beyond their family members. Now that your Kitchen Table has been practicing watching over one another in love, invite those gathered to name aloud some of the people they watch over in love and some of the people that are currently watching over them in love.
In reflecting on this text, Michael B. Curry writes, “For Jesus, God’s passionate dream, compassionate desire, and bold determination is to gather God’s human children closer and closer in God’s embrace and love. That mission and commitment is at the center of Jesus’ work. Like a mother hen, God seeks to draw, embrace, include, and welcome God’s children into the family of humanity that God has intended from the dawn of Eden itself” (Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide (Kindle Locations 2713-2716).
What difference does it make in your life today to imagine God as a mother hen who draws, embraces, includes, and welcomes all? Name one way you hope to embody this mission & commitment in the coming week.