Wednesday, March 26, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
 Mosaic
Who will hear of all these statutes and say,
‘This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.’
For what great nation is there
that has gods so close to it as the LORD, our God, is to us
whenever we call upon him? – Moses
At Grace church Sunday in Austin we moved from station to station during what has come to be known as a Mosaic worship service. Whereas the ravishing mosaics in Ravenna are composed of thousands of small colored Italian tiles to create a picture, we walked through a mosaic of six stations: praise, confession, generosity, prayer, communion and gratitude, creating a picture of worship as we walked and talked, prayed and sang.
The worship team took turns playing quiet music, inviting us to praise during our forty-five minute visit. I felt the cello tones deep inside my chest, vibrations whispering and peaking over and over. At our confession station we each (several hundred of us) took a small sheet of thick paper, wrote what we thought about our sin – our idolatry, our lies. Taking a few minutes while holding our confessions in our hands, we prayed, received forgiveness as best we could. Then in a gesture of faith we each crumpled our paper in our hands and threw it deep into a black basin, never to be seen again.
During the many years of my time at Transforming Center retreats at Marytown, north of Chicago, I visited the chapel to light a candle. I tried to light my candle as soon as I arrived, so it would be burning throughout the retreat’s three days. A trailing scent of candle wax rested just beneath the surface in one of the most beautiful chapels in the world. I went there often, sometimes to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet at 3 pm, a prayer which my friend Ken taught a group of us at a Wisconsin retreat years earlier. I partook of the Eucharist during the noon service when I could get away from our retreat for an hour. I admired the chapel’s dedicated group of committed adorers who filled a 24-7 schedule of prayer in the presence of the Eucharistic elements. The silence we invited into our Transforming retreats filled me, and God’s still small voice seemed easier to hear.
At Grace last week our friend Diane stood near a table full of candles, welcoming whoever wanted to pray. Hundreds of candles, beautiful in the darkened church, invited us into a quiet space of hopes and dreams. I thought of our kids and grandkids, and of all I prayed at Marytown for our family, and prayed for them again.
Just beyond the candles stood another basin, this one deep and wide, ready to receive the “widow’s mites” the church fathers provided for us over the last few weeks. Can I imagine giving beyond my means, as the widow gave? Asking the new question, “How much should I keep?” In prayer we put our mites into the deep bowl. I thought about what it means to give and sacrifice in my giving, and how easy it is for me to fall short.
We are learning that contentment blossoms in generosity, and generosity quietly creates contentment. We shared several black markers and wrote some parts of what we are thankful for on large white boards in the center of our mosaic. The lines waiting for a marker were long. Many of us wrote a paragraph or two. So much to be thankful for.
Several pastors held bowls of broken wafers to share with us, as we found our way to the Communion station. “The body of Christ, broken for you.” Other pastors offered us the blood, in small plastic cups as usual but in this place, at this moment, more precious than silver, more costly than fine gold.
We sang again and departed, to our classes, to our homes, to our meetings with friends, having met with God in a rich, personal way one Sunday morning.
Take care and be earnestly on your guard
not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen,
nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live,
but teach them to your children and to your children’s children.
(Deuteronomy 4, Psalm 147, John 6, Matthew 5)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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