I’m not the gardener in our household. I think I have mentioned this before. I truly don’t know what I’m doing either with the decorative plants out front or the food that is growing in the back. At the Youth Group flower fundraiser last year I almost made a very accidental HUUUUUGE donation because I didn’t understand how many flower plants were in a flat. I mean, I know nothing. During the pandemic, I got a little on board with the houseplant trend, but, my part of our little plant area often looks like a plant hospital. This is not my arena. I love plants! I enjoy them a great deal. I just require some more knowledgable help to keep them alive.
Celtic spirituality, both pre-Christian and Christian, has given us the language of thin places to describe places where it feels like the realms of the human and divine mingle. “Heaven and earth,” the Celtic saying goes, “are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter. Journalist and author, Eric Weiner, writes of thin places, “[They] relax us, yes, but they also transform us – or, more accurately, unmask us.”
People often talk about temples and cathedrals as thin places, or particular geographies – mountaintops or beaches – but in a New York Times travel article, Weiner argues that thin places can be more unconventional as well – a city park, a bookstore, or even a bar. Thin places give us a glimpse or a feeling of a reality different from what we typically experience – a reality more closely aligned with God’s spirit and intentions than we typically see.
One of the defining features of The Wizard of Oz, the movie from which we’re drawing illustrations of the spiritual journey this Lent, is the switch from sepia toned story-telling to the brightly colored scenes that takes place as Dorothy walks out of her farmhouse, displaced from Kansas, into the magical garden of the Munchkinland town square. Gone are the monochromatic brown tones, and our movie and TV screens are flooded with all kinds of color – from the yellow road, to the green leaves, to blue skies and multi-colored flowers.
(One thing a few folks have pointed out to me is that if your viewing of The Wizard of Oz started with the TV screenings anytime between the 1950s and maybe mid-1980s, you may have never known about this switch. I grew up with mostly color TVs, but those who only had black and white sets missed this transition that the earliest audiences saw in the theater and later audiences could see at home. That had not occurred to me before!)
After she walks through the garden a bit, wondering if she’s in Kansas still or maybe over the rainbow, an iridescent pink bubble begins to float onto the scene. Appearing larger as it descends to the ground, eventually it dissipates and reveals Glinda, the Witch of the North, standing before Dorothy. Wearing a puffy pink ball gown, covered in tulle studded with crystals and sequins, poofy sleeves, and long satin gloves, atop her head a sparkly crown, about a foot tall and in her hand is a glittery star-topped scepter, she offers the first words spoken to Dorothy in Oz.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been calling these stories where Dorothy runs into new friends and brings them along on her journey the “pick-up stories.” A bit different from pick-up lines, except that they are the origin stories of these friendships that build over the course of the movie. Origin stories like those of a couple that is married or the birth of a child are often told and retold over a lifetime, but I’d venture to guess that many of us also have origin stories for our friendships, especially those deep friendships that carry us through thick and thin.
I can remember the pick-up story of my first best friend, Alexis Kerschner, from when we were about 4 years old. My family had recently moved into a brand new town house on High Beam Court in Columbia, Maryland. While we were eating dinner one night, my sister’s eyes got huge and she pointed out the window she was facing, causing us to turn and look through it. There was a growing fire in the dumpster in the middle of the neighborhood parking lot. After calling 911 to report it our family went outside to watch the action along with a number of other families. And that’s where we met the Kerschners. Most of my early childhood memories are involve our two families together.
Stephanie and Alexis, not too long after meeting at the (literal) dumpster fire
Peter is not on board with this new revelation from Jesus. For the first time in his ministry Jesus is telling his disciples what he knows is the inevitable end he will meet. The miracles he has performed, the people he has touched, and even more importantly the good news he has proclaimed and the authority with which he has proclaimed it, is disturbing the usual order of things and that is only going to intensify. Those who are comfortable with their position in the community are finding their comfort and power challenged. Those who are used to setting the rules are finding their rules critiqued. Those who are used to interpreting the law of God are hearing new interpretations. And they don’t really like it.
Jesus is preaching a good news about a new kingdom and those who are doing just fine in the current kingdom aren’t too enamored with this idea. Jesus knows it, and he knows how far they will go to get him to stop – all the way to death on a cross.
This is the first week of our Lent series with The Wizard of Oz. Rather than considering the story allegorically, where each character or scene or motif corresponds directly to a biblical figure or place or concept, we’ll be focusing in on different themes in the story that overlap with the traditional Lenten themes of spiritual growth and discipleship.
We start our walk to Easter with scripture and song, “Over the Rainbow” of course, to get us thinking about the role longing plays in our spiritual journey. Traditional Lenten practices include creating a sense of longing through fasting, but the experience of longing for God’s love and presence, longing for a new reality that feels as far as the other side of the rainbow, isn’t something most of us have to try to create.
A worship video of this sermon, starting with the scripture readings, is available below, and the manuscript can be found by clicking “Continue reading.”
The sanctuary appointments are a bit unconventional for Lent this year, the result of a successful seasonal planning project undertaken by the Worship & Music Committee. For a little while now, we’ve been building up to having a more collaborative planning process that involves worshipers in identifying themes for specific season. This is the first product of that effort. The worship planning team came up with five possible themes; I narrowed the list down to three that I thought would be “preachable” for five Sundays of Lent. Two of them were pretty conventional, but the third, The Wizard of Oz, was outside of the box. One of the pieces of advice I gave the team was that if they wanted to be creative, we needed to “go big or go home.” Decorations needed to be all-in to convey the theme, or it would just be a few awkward references in the sermon and liturgy each week and some scattered yellow bricks.
With more excitement than I anticipated they took up the challenge! A couple of planning meetings, some social media posts to gather items for decoration, and one decorating party later, the sanctuary took on a very different look for Lent. The memories of the fourteen of us, ages 7-84, hanging fabric from the ceiling with the 40′ lift, spray painting shoes, cutting out and setting up a green skyline on the wall behind the chancel are absolutely priceless
I know that for the liturgical traditionalists among our worshipers (and honestly, I consider myself one of them) these decorations during Lent could be a bit surprising, so with the Worship & Music Committee I’m inviting the whole congregation to engage open minds and flexible spirits as we move into this season with faithful creativity and curiosity. The themes will feel fairly traditional – longing and lament, spiritual journeys, good and evil, spiritual friendship, authenticity before God – but the colors and the moods, along with the movie clips will stretch our expectations a bit. I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all.
For Some Reason 