The New England Church Pulpit

New England Congregational Church UCC
Aurora Illinois


"PLAYING AND PRAYING TOGETHER"
Mardi Gras
Last Sunday of Epiphany

March 2, 2003
Here’s a trivia question for you: what part of your body never stops growing? Here’s a hint: it’s the only one of the senses that is direct-wired to the brain. It is the most important of the senses for participating in today’s mardi gras celebration. It is, of course, your ears. They never stop growing, and they are hard-wired directly to your brain. Your eye sees in pixels and must assemble them in the brain to get the picture, but your ears are directly connected.

I’m just back from a clergy conference where our presenter reminded us that true visions aren’t seen, they are heard. Sound becomes sight, and insight. Creation, he commented, is a sound event...God said, and there was. And we are continuing creators with God, even today. We create an experience of sound and rhythm today that rejuvenates us for the coming lenten season when we will hear God in quieter ways. Today we pull out all the stops because God also comes to us in the shape of energized sounds and dixieland rhythms.

Many years ago there was an advertising campaign to promote relationships: the family that prays together, stays together. Some years later, someone added: the family that prays and plays together, stays together. Today we have come to pray and play and make music because this is the stuff of family. This is the very mortar that makes of individual stones a building, the glue that holds a diverse group of people together, the tuckpointing that bonds individual bricks of different colors, the lead in windows that binds together colored stained glass of varying sizes and shapes and makes of them a piece of art.

Lent will come soon enough and we will have time to reflect in quiet ways, but today we are praying and playing together to fatten up our souls, as it were, for the leaner season of our lenten journey to Easter.

So come as creators, come with growing ears, bring the rhythm of your soul and your body, and access God directly through the pure sounds of music.

–Gary L. McCann

PASTORAL PRAYER

God of note and melody, Essence of harmony and rhythm, Creator of playful music that inspires our souls to dance, visit us in this time that we may soar into your holy presence even as we move and have our being on terra firma. Faced with a war that threatens millions of lives, we seek some experience that will give us hope in that which is beyond our own understanding of life.

In this global community in which we find ourselves, we pray for peace. We pray God to bless America even as we pray God to bless Iraq; Ash Wednesday is also the beginning of the Islamic New Year. We pray this to be a season of repentance from arrogant self-centeredness where both nations claim to have the ear of God; we pray this to be a season of change where peace reigns among the human family of the world.

May we be strengthened today as we sing, as we pray, as we play and make merry at the end of this Epiphany season, fortified with the experience of your presence in the company of those with whom we gather today, ready to do our part for peace, and encouraged toward love of friend and enemy as Jesus lived. In the hope of Peace and Joy, Amen.

Copyright © 2003 by Gary L. McCann. All rights reserved.

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