pure gospel

I love having people in my life who send me links like this where I then found this.  It is a collection of well crafted “graphic” (meaning design, not gore) representations of key moments in the Easter story, largely built around text from the Gospels.  The artist is a designer for a large church. In case you don’t know it, visual imagery of the digital nature is a huge addition to 21st century emergent faith communities, aka Protestant churches led by adults my age who likely grew up in evangelical traditions and are now seeking to define “church” in a new way.  A graphic designer is probably the second hire.  After the church planter, but before the worship leader.

Light-hearted ribbing aside, I think this is a direct response to the days of yore.  We were the earnest ones who spent Sunday after Sunday in cream colored sanctuaries where a single wooden cross marked the dimensions of our faith.  Very few visual cues or prompts were incorporated into worship.  Maybe the occasional clip art image or nature photo overlaid with scripture would show up on a powerpoint slide, but that wasn’t until 1996.  I give this bit of background because I think several of those reading this Lenten blog are of the Catholic persuasion and might not understand a faith context in which visual stimulus played little or no role in the worship space or experience.  No eight foot bloodied Christ hanging over the altar.  No pale Virgin standing serenely to the side.  No altar swathed in red on feast days.  Heck, no feast days at all.  Anyway, back to the images…

Inspired by those Word Bible Designs, I’m giving myself a challenge.  I selected a word from the Gospel reading for six of the Holy Week days and will create from that word.  I will use the same parameters that I did for the art + music night.  Short bursts of creativity with whatever is on hand at the time.

The six words are:

tethered – Palm Sunday

fragrance – Monday

hand – Tuesday

silver  – Wednesday

clean – Thursday

torches – Friday

I tried to make selections that alternated between nouns and concepts.  I also tried to focus on words that  are important to the overall narrative.  For example, I really wanted “rooster” for Tuesday, but that is probably not an essential piece of John’s description of the intimate meal that becomes the backdrop for the change that takes place in Judas.