Confession (Anastasia)

God, there are times we act
As if we belong only to ourselves,
Forgetting who we are, and whose we are.

Forgive us for the times
We have used others for our own ends,
Directing them toward our preferred path,
Rather than seeking to discern with them
Which path will lead them towards you.

Forgive us for the times
We have come to believe
That there is no hope.

Help us find the melody of holiness
That will make our souls dance again;
The notes which will remind us of
what we almost lost.

Keep us grounded in your heart.
Call us back to one another.
Call us back to you.

Amen.

Prayer of Confession,
God on Broadway Series:
Anastasia

Confession (Dear Evan Hansen)

Loving God,
You who see us more clearly
Than we ever see you,

We confess the stories we make up
to pad the empty places of our lives,
the false images we create in word and picture

To buffer our true selves
from our neighbors, from pain,
and sometimes even from you.

These lies are
no more comfortable
than the truth.

They hurt, too, God.

Forgive the avalanche of words and actions
that serve no good purpose at all.
Forgive all the ways in which we fall down;
And knit our broken pieces back together. Amen.

Prayer of Confession,
God on Broadway Series: 
Dear Evan Hansen

Confession (Lion King)

Holy One–
Mighty, Tender, and Challenging,

We must confess that we sometimes get lost.
We lose the sound of your voice within us,
The powerful truth that you spoke before time began,
And we feel as if we are going it alone.

Sometimes the world seems to laugh.
The powers threaten to devour us.
The night and the scope of our problems
Make us feel tiny and friendless.
We are tired, ashamed, vulnerable.

Forgive us for what we have done, and left undone.
Reach within us and give us hope and courage.
Set our spirits aflame.

Remind us of who, and whose we are:
We are your children. We cannot do this alone.
We need you. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Prayer of Confession:
God on Broadway Series
The Lion King (Pentecost Sunday)

Dear Leah: A God on Broadway Sermon (Wicked)

The Text from Broadway: “I'm Not That Girl” from the Broadway musical Wicked.

There's a girl I know, he loves her so....I'm not that girl...

The Text from Scripture:  Genesis 29

So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah...

Audio Recording of Scripture & Sermon can be found here.

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Dear Leah, 

Because our stories are all alike, and a little bit different, I wonder:  

Growing up, did you and Rachel argue over what beauty means?  Did she wield her good looks like a weapon?  Did she taunt you for your bad eyes?   What did you think, when your cousin Jacob came to town?  When he noticed your sister – like everyone did – and you remained unseen?

All those seven years as Jacob worked – did you know what your father had up his sleeve?  Did you try to talk him out of it?  Or did you embrace it as an escape, your last, best, chance for finding a partner, for leaving a difficult home?  

At the altar, how did you feel?  Were you sick inside?  Were you silently grateful?  And on your wedding night, in the darkness of the tent, knowing that your husband imagined he was touching someone else?   Were you able to weep then, or did you hold off until the morning, when a portion of the truth was revealed?   Over the days of the honeymoon, did you hope you could come to terms with one another?   For the next seven years, how did you hold the pieces of your broken heart together, seeing him work day after day for the love of another?

If we could sit down over a cup of tea, I would ask you these things, and seek to learn from your strength.  And then, when you were done saying the things that needed to be said, I would share what I have with you…

Whatever You Want: A God on Broadway Sermon (Chicago)

The Text from Broadway: “When You’re Good to Mama” from the Broadway musical Chicago.

There's a lot of favors I'm prepared to do - You do one for Mama, she'll do one for you!

The Text from Scripture:  Mark 6:14-29

Herod’s daughter came in and danced, thrilling Herod and his dinner guests. The king said to the young woman, “Ask me whatever you wish, and I will give it to you.” Then he swore to her, “Whatever you ask I will give to you, even as much as half of my kingdom.”

---

Our soloist and I had a little chat when she was in to rehearse the other day, “Are you ok with me vamping it up a little bit?”  It happens all the time with this Broadway series – a singer will come and say “are you sure you’re ok with…..”  Ab-so-lutely.  Nobody could ever honestly slap a G rating on the Bible.   If we were to just focus on the nice wholesome bits on a Sunday, there would be a whole range of human experience that would not be reflected in our common worship.   Life is not G-rated.  So we bring it all to God –  heart, soul, mind, strength… hands, feet, and head (whether it’s connected or not).

Let me give you a little window into King Herod’s court:  the royal family tree has enough scandal embedded in it to parallel the most sordid reality television.    Let me recap just the current generations:  Woman marries her uncle.  Woman dumps her uncle and marries her other uncle.  Great-niece dances for great-uncle and a room full of party guests in a way that’s worth half a kingdom…or the head of a prophet.  

Just what kind of a Gospel are we running here?  Perhaps it would be best not to invoke Biblical family values too hastily. Herod’s birthday banquet offers an unsettling vision of what it’s like when self-interest is the name of the game, when everybody’s a free agent waiting to be bought off, and every decision is high stakes.

A fabulous birthday party thrown by Herod, for Herod.   It’s a great day in Herod’s world– he knows his own tastes, and he’s in charge.  Nobody’s going order the anchovy pizza or give him a clunker of a gift.  Nothing but the best for Herod.  Nobody he doesn’t want there, either.  Everybody invited for a reason – someone to impress, someone to intimidate, someone to manipulate.   He knows how to throw a razzle-dazzle kind of party.

God on Broadway: Herding Cats

Since mid-June, I've been preaching and planning worship around themes pulled from Broadway musicals.
I tried God on Broadway as a short preaching series last summer as way to get myself out of a preaching rut.  As it turned out, it's also good for worship attendance.  The church vitality folks will tell you that visiting musicians bring along a fan club of friends and family.  I can't claim to have been that strategic. I just wanted to have a little bit of fun.

Having stumbled into a winning strategy, though, when it came time to plan this summer's worship arc, I knew what I had to do.  In my innocence, I committed myself to rounding up twelve consecutive weeks of singers who were willing to offer their talents for free.  I thought I could have this accomplished by Easter, so as to promote the series.  In the end, it was a bit like playing 3D chess to match up singers' availability with weeks we still had to fill, and ensure that it wasn't for a show we'd already scheduled at another point that summer.  After a few rounds of shuffling, the season looked like this: