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August 26-September 2, 2009 – Festival traditions

Contributed by Jay Gamelin 
Pastor of Jacob’s Porch, ELCA campus mission to The Ohio State University

Warm-up Question:  What is a tradition in your family you would love to see continue? Perhaps think of holidays or vacations or eating dinner together. What is a tradition you wish would go away? Perhaps how mom always asks you to recite the Gettysburg address every July 4th, even though you’re not 8-years-old anymore.

The traditional -- and very messy -- tomato food fight of the La Tomatina Fiesta of Buñol (Valencia), Spain.

The traditional -- and very messy -- tomato food fight of La Tomatina Fiesta of Buñol (Valencia), Spain.

The world is the canvas and festivals are the paint. Every year, people gather in campgrounds, state fairs, amphitheaters, back yards, city streets, and parks to celebrate culture, music, and tradition. One thing you can count on — each festival maintains its own identity by highlighting the fun, local, and sometimes downright weird. Here are a few unusual festivals occurring around the United States and abroad.

The Wooly Worm Festival of Banner Elk, NC, celebrates tiny wooly caterpillars that come out in droves each fall. The highlight of the festival is the wooly worm race in which contestants race their own segmented caterpillar up a piece of string against other worms. The winner leaves with the pride of their worm being the fastest of the festival.

And what is a festival without a certain amount of saliva hurled at great speed? The Rossville, KS, Tall Corn Festival highlight is a corn kernel spitting contest. The Blenheim Cherry Fest (Ontario, Canada) includes a cherry pit spitting contest. However the most serious about the art of spitting seeds must be the people in Luling, TX, in the Luling Watermelon Thump festival. This is the home to the world championship of watermelon seed spitting, the record being 68 feet, 9 and 1/8 inches by a local man in 1989. In addition to the watermelon spitting contest, the Luling Watermelon Thump includes a watermelon carving contest which would not be so unusual if it were not a requirement that the carving be worn like a hat.

In Tibet, on their annual new year festival, Buddhist monks pay tribute by creating enormous colorful sculptures from yak butter. Sculptures of the Buddha, flowers, birds, ancient people, and homes attract 150,000 people annually. Sculptures can take anywhere from a few days to a month to create.

Some other unusual festivals include the Gloucestershire Cheese Rolling Contest in Gloucester, England, the Frozen Dead Guy Days of Nederland, CO, which celebrates all things macabre, the Australian Darwin’s Beer Can Regatta where competitors build boats of beer cans, and the famous La Tomatina Fiesta of Buñol (Valencia), Spain, which hosts the world’s largest food fight. More than 90,000 pounds of tomatoes are hurled about the town square resulting in one fun, gooey, sticky time. Remarkably, within hours of the event, the town square is back to normal. The smell however takes a few days and a perhaps a few rainstorms to get rid of.

Discussion Questions

  • What traditions does your town, school, or state have that one might find unusual? Try to see them from an outsider’s point of view and describe the tradition.
  • What sort of traditions does your church have that you think are important to your identity as a parish? Make a list of some of the studies, programs, and events your church does regularly. Would you call these unique to your church?
  • How would you describe your worship? Traditional? Contemporary? Mixed? Something else? Describe the traditions within your service that would make it recognizable as such.

Scripture Texts (NRSV) for Sunday, August 30, 2009.

(Text links are to oremus Bible Browser. Oremus Bible Browser is not affiliated with or supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can find the calendar of readings for Year B at Lectionary Readings.)

For lectionary humor and insight, check the weekly comic Agnus Day.

Gospel Reflection

Tradition is a beautiful thing. It helps ground us in our history. In a way, it is how the ancient continue to teach us today, by handing down ideas and thoughts and habits through our traditions. Tradition’s roots are to be honored and adored and truly respected. But what happens when we begin to lose sight of these roots and begin to focus on tradition itself? What happens when we begin to honor the tradition rather than what tradition points to?

In our lesson today, the Pharisees confront Jesus for not holding to ceremonial washing traditions. These traditions probably come from important reasons; ways to keep hands, food, and dishes clean so that diseases do not get passed on. Or perhaps the traditions help ingratiate the washer with thankfulness toward God who has provided the meal, the dishes, the time, and everything to put a meal together. The tradition comes from holy roots, roots designed to teach us about ourselves, God, and how to care for one another’s health. However, the Pharisees have focused so much upon the tradition that they have forgotten the reason. Tradition existed for its own sake, to be done because it was “supposed” to be done, not because it pointed beyond itself.

Jesus points out that cleanliness does not come from activity alone but from a place much deeper. What does it mean that someone follows all the rules of hand-washing but does not care for the other? (see the list from Mark 7:21-22) Cleanliness is not what we do, but is a way of life. Tradition is not the point. It is what the tradition points to, that is the point.

When we think of tradition in the church, we often think of worship. For many, traditional worship is a holy experience, a beautiful and transforming act that re-centers us in God and our community. In more contextual worship, or what you might call contemporary, they too come with their own traditions and ways of doing things, if done a little different from so called traditional worship. But isn’t it easy to go through the motions in either and not think about what we are doing? It isn’t like us to get so tied in what we are supposed to do that we forget why we do it? Isn’t the goal about “who” we worship and not “how” we worship?

Many of our own worshipping traditions have grown out of our theology, and also from our culture. Just like the festivals, worship is born of where they were grown. A wooly worm festival would not work in a place where there are no wooly worms. Butter carvings would melt in Arizona sunshine and some people just might find a Frozen Dead Guy festival too dark and depressing to attend. For their culture, it makes sense, but for others they may feel strange. So too, our worship reflects the culture from where they were born. For some, our culture is a white, western European, culture. This culture gave birth to what we may call “traditional” Lutheran worship. For others, they worship from an African American culture, Caribbean culture, Native American culture, or just about any culture you can imagine; these, too, are “traditional” in that they may be born of their culture’s traditions in worship.

This doesn’t mean that one group worships the right way and the others do not, it only means we can worship in many ways with many traditions and in many languages. God is present in all these places of worship, no matter how comfortable or uncomfortable you are. The goal is not the act of worship but the God in and with whom we worship. This is the root of all worship, traditional and contemporary and cultural.

When we invite someone to worship with us, we invite them not to the “usual” but to the “unusual” of our particular congregation. We invite them into our own traditions and ways of worshipping. It is our hope to invite them into our traditions not as an act but as a way of pointing to God. Our hope is that we may not find ourselves so tied to the outside cleanliness of the act that we forget where our tradition points us, to an unfettered relationship with the Creator.

Quotables:

  • “Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening.”
    Barbara Tober, president of Acronym, Inc
  • “Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.”
    W. Somerset Maugham, English Playwright and Novelist
  • “Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can’t even describe, aren’t even aware of.”
    Ellen Goodman, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist
  • “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”
    G. K. Chesterton (1874 – 1936), theologian
  • “Traditionalists often study what is taught, not what there is to create.”
    Ed Parker, Grandmaster, American Kenpo

Discussion Questions

  • Have you ever been to a worship service that made you feel uncomfortable or like an outsider? What was it that made you feel this way?
  • Do you think there is a wrong way to worship? Share your thoughts on why or why not.
  • Think about your church and the worship service(s). Imagine you are a guest to the church, you have never been to church before in your life and you have never heard of Jesus. What are things you do in your church, things you may call a tradition that a guest might find strange or unusual? Kneeling? Raising hands? What points to and describes our relationship with God?

Activity Suggestion

Resident Alien

Have the group walk through their usual worship service. Think of everything they do as a part of normal worship: standing, sitting, kneeling, how the pastor dresses, the songs that are sung, musical instruments used, confession, passing the peace, raising hands, laying on of hands, folding hands, bowing heads, languages spoken, how Communion is distributed, who helps lead worship, art and symbols, how you enter and leave worship, etc. Make a list of these things on a black board, newsprint, or just a sheet of paper. Now take a look at these things from an outsider’s point of view.

Discuss:

  • Describe how it may feel as a guest to encounter these things.
  • Discuss what you think the point or purpose of these acts may be. Why do we kneel? Why do we or perhaps just the pastor hold hands a certain way when praying? Why do we use some instruments and not others to lead the service?
  • What do you think your worship says about your church? What things would you say are important to your congregation, and are shown by what you do or do not do in worship? What does your worship say about you? What does it say about God? About Jesus? The Spirit?
  • Lastly, what would happen if someone tried or did something unusual in your service? How would people react? Are there good reasons for this reaction? What are they? How about negative reasons? What are they?

Closing Prayer

Jesus, you teach us not to focus on the outside things but rather the inside deeper cleanliness you have given us through your death and resurrection. It can be so easy for us to be distracted by how we worship that we forget it is you to whom we give thanks and praise. Forgive us for claiming we know best, and open our hearts so that we may worship you with our hearts as well as in our holy traditions. Help us to remember the reasons for our actions. We pray this in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

August 12-19, 2009 – True Blood: blood drinkers appear to be just around every corner

Contributed by Pastor Scott A. Moore
Eisleben, Germany

dracula288Warm-up Question:  What do you eat or drink when you need energy real fast? And, when you need long-lasting energy?

Once again, it is very cool to be a vampire.

The recent best-seller series, Twilight, with a second movie installment on the way, and the HBO series True Blood (adapted from the Southern Vampire Mysteries, novels written by Charlaine Harris) prove the public’s thirst for this most sanguine of themes.

These stories have not just filled the imaginations of many young people (not to mention quite a few older folk), they have also worked very hard to help us see the mysterious and supernatural in our hum-drum, everyday (read: boring) lives. Beautiful, interesting, and extremely talented vampires in our towns and in our schools… a much better sell than in the days of dreary Transylvania with a pasty-complexioned man wearing an old, dusty tuxedo who sleeps in a coffin and says, “I vant to zuck your bloooood” and then turns into a bat and flies away.

Where the Twilight story is satisfied with living within its created fantasy world, the creators of True Blood have decided to work at blurring the line between that Southern fantasy world and the world in which we live. HBO, with the help of the marketing firm, Digital Kitchen, created 30 fake ads for products by real companies we all know, all geared for those blood drinkers living among us. This campaign is striving to create an air of authenticity in order to help viewers believe the story.

Discussion Questions

  • Where you afraid of vampires as a little kid?
  • What do you find intriguing or repulsive about the vampire legends in general?
  • What do you appreciate about the particular vampire stories that are told in Twilight or True Blood?
  • Why do you think there is such a huge interest in the vampire legends these days?
  • What do you imagine living forever would look like? What would you be willing to do in order to achieve that? Where would you draw the line?

Scripture Texts (NRSV) for Sunday, August 16, 2009.

(Text links are to oremus Bible Browser. Oremus Bible Browser is not affiliated with or supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can find the calendar of readings at Lectionary Readings.)

For lectionary humor and insight, check the weekly comic Agnus Day.

Gospel Reflection

In the first years of the Church, after Jesus ascended into heaven, the disciples did what he commanded them to do. They made disciples by teaching and baptizing, they preached, and they gathered around the table and shared in that special meal Christ instituted for them known by a variety of african eucharistnames: the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, Eucharist, just to name a few. Jesus says in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, “take and eat, this is my body… take and drink, this is my blood”. And here in the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”

The Jewish leaders in our Gospel story ask the question that has troubled believers and non-believers alike for centuries: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” How indeed? The idea of really eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood has bothered many for 20 centuries. It seems somehow really gross.

We don’t seem to be too bothered, however, by the idea of this kind of eating and drinking when we think about Edward Cullen or Jessica Hamby eating flesh or drinking blood (and yes, all of the die-hard vampire fans will say, “They only drink blood!”). It doesn’t seem to gross us out that much. We shy away from really trying to sit with the idea of what that means when we think about the miracle-working and eternal Son of God, who doesn’t need to eat and drink but instead gives himself for our consumption. Jesus is like the anti-vampire, who lives and gives his life for those who feast on him. It is easier to quickly think about Jesus words as a mere signs. He couldn’t have really meant what he said, could he?

A good question for those of us who celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus by sharing in this special meal might be: why do we believe and teach these strong and vivid words of eating and drinking Jesus if there isn’t something more going on than eating some bread and drinking some wine? Why would Jesus say, “this is my flesh, this is my blood… those who eat of my flesh and drink of my blood have eternal life… my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink”?

There are certainly many ways to twist and turn Jesus’ words in order to make them more palatable or easy to digest. We do know, however, that Jesus gave himself to us. Not only in the cross, not only in the words we share, but also in a meal. Bread and wine, broken and shared. Christ’s true body. Christ’s true blood. It doesn’t get more authentic than that.

Discussion Questions

(Information on communion in ELCA Worship’s FAQs. Some of these FAQs may be helpful background for your discussion.)

  • What do you think about when you receive (or watch others receive) communion?
  • Why do you think Jesus shared his body and blood with the world this way?
  • What form of “bread and wine” do you prefer or think is best? (wafers, bread, wine, grape juice) Why?
  • What different forms of receiving the bread and wine of Eucharist have you experienced? (at a rail, passing and giving to each other, separate small cups of wine, common cup, intinction, kneeling, standing, walking by a “station”, etc.) Which do you prefer or think is best? And why?
  • How would you explain Communion/Eucharist/Lord’s Supper to a friend who doesn’t know what Christians do?

Activity Suggestion

Same-day activity
Learn how to set the table/altar for Eucharist. With help from someone in your congregation, see what your congregation uses for wine and bread. Find out what all the various things on the altar/table are and what they mean.

Few-day activity
Make a communion set for your congregation out of pottery or wood. There are lots of opportunities to talk about the meaning of the Eucharist during this kind of activity.

Long-term activity
Train and send participants either for a one-time experience or as permanent members on home communion visits. If you do not have this kind of ministry, talk about establishing one.

Closing Prayer

O God, who sustains and upholds us, we hunger and thirst for you in our lives. Feed us with your love, feed us with your truth, and feed us with the life-giving power of your Son, Jesus Christ, the Bread of Heaven. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.

June 3-10, 2009 – Idaho man fails to sell “hand of God” rock on eBay

Contributed by Pastor Julie A. Kanarr
Holy Trinity Lutheran Church
Port Angeles, WA

Warm-up Question: Where would you look for signs of God’s presence?

Paul Grayhek, a resident of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, decided that a giant rock he discovered in his backyard after a small landslide looked like the hand of God. Grayhek, age 52, had lost his previous job and was praying for a sense of direction in his life when discovered the rock on March 8, 2009. Grayhek determined that the rock’s appearance and proximity to his house was a direct sign from God that he should follow his dream of becoming a counselor for troubled youth. “I prayed between licking my wounds and looking for a job,” he reported. “We rarely get rockfalls and this formation is twenty feet from my house. It’s definitely a symbol of the hand of God in my life.”

Grayhek recently put the rock formation on eBay, intending to auction it off and use the money to help pay for his education. His idea was that the massive nine foot by four foot “hand of God” rock formation would actually remain in his yard, and that the buyer would be purchasing the “complete and exclusive rights” (including literary and movie rights) to the rock.

Grayhek’s rock formation did garner a lot of attention, and at one point, his eBay listing had over 5,000 “hits” in an hour. Grayhek was pleased by all the publicity “his hand of God” rock received. He was interviewed by multiple radio and newspaper reporters from around the world and received over 800 e-mails. He attributed the interest in his “hand of God” rock to a deep spiritual hunger in people’s lives. “There were days when I didn’t get a lot of sleep,” Grayhek said. “I answered 95 percent of all those messages. I think it touched a lot of people.”

Grayhek’s rock attracted a high bid of more than $16,800. But as all three of the top bidders backed out, Grayhek realized that he was being “played.” Grayhek noted that he wasn’t very sophisticated when it comes to on-line auctions, and admitted that he had “muddled” the auction. Still, he was unfazed.

Although nobody actually ended up buying the rights to his rock, Grayhek did grant free permission for a picture of it to appear in a book that Harry Charon is writing. Charon’s book will also feature a grilled cheese sandwich bearing a possible image of the Virgin Mary, a tree trunk that might have an imprint of Jesus, and a picture from the Hubble Space Telescope that some people believe shows an image of Christ. “I don’t know if it (the rock formation) would mean anything to me, but that’s not the issue,” explained Choron. “The issue is what it means to the person who discovered it. I think in general people just want to feel they’re connected somehow, that miracles do occur, and it’s something that supports their faith.”

As for Grayhek, he has decided that the purpose of his rock was to help him spread the word of God. “I’m convinced now that’s why the hand showed up in my backyard” he explained. “It wasn’t just a symbol for me to strengthen my faith; I was supposed to share it.” He still intends to finish his master’s degree in social work and become a counselor for troubled youth, but hasn’t yet figured out where he will get the $10,000 he needs to pay for his schooling next year. “I have no idea,” he said. “It’s just called faith and trust. I’m surprisingly calm about it.”

For more information and to see a picture of the rock, check out: www.2news.tv/news/43640977.html

Discussion Questions
  • What thoughts and emotions do you have in reaction to Paul Grayhek’s ideas about his rock? (For instance, are you sympathetic toward him? Cynical? Skeptical? Amused?)
  • Do you think that God communicates with people through personal, private signs? Why or why not? Is it possible for something to be an answer to prayer without being a direct sign from God? Why or why not?
  • How would you determine whether or not something is a sign from God? What criteria would you use? What might happen if someone falsely concluded that a particular event or object was a sign from God?
  • Do you think that living with an expectation that one might find signs of God in ordinary objects is supportive of faith in God? Or is it a hindrance to genuine faith?
  • Think about a time in your life when you have had an important decision to make (or imagine a time when you may have to make such a decision in the future). Do you tend to make those kinds of decisions on your own or in consultation with others? Where do you turn for guidance? What role does prayer play for you in this? How might you seek to discern God’s will for you at such a time? Where do you see the “hand of God” at work in your life?

Scripture Texts (NRSV) for Sunday, June 7, 2009.
(Text links are to

oremus Bible Browser. Oremus Bible Browser is not affiliated with or supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can find the calendar of readings for Year B at Lectionary Readings.)

For lectionary humor and insight, check the weekly comic Agnus Day.

Gospel Reflection

The readings for today (Holy Trinity Sunday) invite us to consider how God chooses to become known to us. In the Gospel, we hear the story of Nicodemus who comes to Jesus at night to ask him questions about God and faith. Nicodemus approaches Jesus with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism. On the one hand, Nicodemus recognizes that the “signs” that Jesus has been performing are an indicator that Jesus is a “teacher who has come from God” (verse 2), but on the other hand, he struggles with what Jesus has been teaching because it does not fit in with his existing understanding of God and salvation. Nicodemus’ conversation with Jesus is filled with misunderstanding and ambiguity. The confusion arises because the Greek word “anothen” (verse 3 — pronounced aah-no-thin) means both “from above” and “again.” Nicodemus wonders how it is possible for a person to be literally born “again” (anothen) while Jesus describes how one must be born “from above” (anothen) (verse 7).

Nicodemus seeks signs of God’s hand in the world, but he has difficulty recognizing that the sign of God’s presence is fully embodied in Jesus, “the Word made flesh and living among us” (see John 1:14). As his conversation with Jesus unfolds, he becomes increasingly confused (compare verse 2 with verse 9). By the end of this passage, Nicodemus has disappeared quietly back into the night. However, Nicodemus does appear at two other points in John’s gospel. He challenges the other Pharisees who want to judge Jesus without giving him a fair hearing (John 7:50-51). He also accompanies Joseph of Arimathea to seek Pilate’s permission to remove Jesus’ body from the cross, brings the spices to prepare his body for a proper burial (John 19:38-42). Nicodemus is on a journey that finally leads him toward faith.

Like Nicodemus, we also seek signs of God’s hands, and like him, we may struggle with confusion and misunderstanding and look for those signs in the wrong places. The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus reminds us that signs of God’s work don’t come to us as private messages or hidden in ordinary objects. God’s love is for the whole world, shown through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus names the cross as the sign of God’s love for the world. In John’s Gospel, the cross is portrayed as the instrument of God’s redeeming love. Jesus is the one who demonstrates the greatest love by laying down his life for his friends (see John 15:13). By being lifted up on the cross, Jesus draws all people to himself. This sign of death becomes a symbol of life and salvation. The hand of God is at work in the cross of Jesus to bring redemption and life for all.

Discussion Questions

  • Compare and contrast the experiences of Nicodemus in the Gospel with the experience of Paul Grayhek (from the “hand of God” rock news story). What was each of them seeking? In what ways were each of them disappointed? In what ways were each of them transformed?
  • Imagine that Jesus, Nicodemus, and Paul Grayhek from the news story were in a conversation together. What do you think they would say to each other? What questions would they ask one another? Where would each of them see the hands of God? Invite three persons from your group to “role-play” that conversation.
  • What do you think about when you look at a cross? How, where, and when do you (and/or your congregation) use the sign of the cross (either as a physical object or as a gesture)? What meaning does that carry for you?
  • In what ways is Jesus a sign of God’s love for the world? Where might you look for signs of that love today? In what ways do you experience God’s presence through worship? In what ways does God’s love for you shape how you live your life?

Activity Suggestion

Signs of God; Signs of faith

Name as many signs and symbols of faith as you can that are in your church, or that you are familiar with.

  • What are they and what do they represent?
  • Do you know the history of some of them? (cross, water, sea shell, fish, candles and light, liturgical colors, loaf of bread, etc.)
  • Considering today’s world and your generation, what new symbols of faith and God can you imagine or create that would communicate our Christian faith with others? God’s love for all people everywhere? If you have a special youth meeting space or room, use some of the new symbols of faith to “decorate” your space and as springboards to discussion. (Keep any existing or traditional symbols or signs up as well.)

Closing Prayer

Dear God, we give you thanks that your love and forgiveness is for all people everywhere. Help us to never forget your presence in our lives and that you call us to do your good work – to be your hands – in the world. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.