Pentecost - The River

Last night was our Pentecost Service. This year we called it 'The River' as the lectionary gospel text was from John 7 where Jesus speaks of the those that come to him knowing the Spirit as a river of living water flowing from within them.

We focussed quite a lot of attention on thirst and thirstiness. The first section of the room was asking questions to enable us to get in touch with our thirstiness (while eating dry crackers). What are we thirsty for?

The second section was drawn from Jeremiah's prophecy where God tells Israel that they have abandoned him the fountain of living water and dug for themselves broken and dirty cisterns - in other words they have tried to satisfy their own thirstiness. I made new labels for small water bottles that I filled with dirty water to represent this:


Here's 3 of them - 'Be Popular', 'Work Harder', and 'Look Good' but there were others too.
So the idea was to think about the ways we try to satisfy our own thirstiness.

As we moved deeper into the theme text there was an opportunity to consider what it meant for us to 'come to Christ' - what does that mean, how do we connect with Christ, what helps us etc.

Then we moved to the river we had made out of material and relieved our cracker-driven thirst with cups of cool, clean water (with the words of Christ 'come to me and drink' on them).

The river flows out into the world - our intercessions and offering were focussed on WaterAid and the Burma cyclone - and then we finished with Communion and anointing those who wanted it with oil blessed at the Cathedral in Holy Week.